Humor as a tool in the management toolkit has been underutilized and not well understood. Yet, humor has been found to result in many positive employee and organizational outcomes such as lowered stress and higher productivity. Further, it is asserted to be selectively and effectively applied by managers with the right knowledge of humor to enhance their relationships with subordinates. This paper specifically postulates how several types of humor can affect subordinate attributions of managerial competence and satisfaction with supervision. The proposed relationships are hypothesized to be moderated by gender.

This study examined learning for matched pairs of mentors and proteges who participated in a formal workplace mentoring program in the United States. The use of matched pairs enabled the analysis of how affective trust, perceived organizational support, and mentoring received were related to the learning by both the proteges and the mentors. Protege learning was positively related to protege affective trust and the amount of mentoring received by the protege. Mentor learning was positively related to mentor affective trust and protege perceived organizational support. Recommendations are offered to enhance the learning for participants in workplace mentoring programs.

We present an experiential exercise to teach key principles of training design. Selected students participate in a self-learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation training program, CPR Anytime®, offered by the American Heart Association, while the rest of the class observes. The class then assesses the use of several training design principles in the observed program. Finally, students discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the training program, making recommendations for improvement.

Organic Delights is an experiential exercise designed to help undergraduate business students learn about corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this exercise, students assume the role of a senior manager of a fictional restaurant and caterer. The challenge for the managers is to evaluate and choose among six proposals to promote the company’s CSR. Students are first requested to evaluate the proposals on their own and then, later, to evaluate the proposals by working with a group of students who represent the company management team. The exercise enables students better understand the concept of CSR and reflect on the meaning and obligations of socially responsible business leadership. The exercise and recommendations for the debriefing are provided.

Staffing can be an administrative or a strategic function. When conducted strategically, staffing helps an organization to acquire the human capital necessary to create competitive advantage and to achieve its business goals. Because many human resource courses do not take a strategic approach, this paper presents exercises designed to help students to understand that a staffing strategy must be based on an organization’s business strategy and to provide students with the opportunity to develop staffing policies and practices that can support and advance an organization’s business strategy.

Purpose This paper aims to examine how employee perceptions of organizational context relate to willingness to mentor. This research will help organizations to understand the relationship between organizational context and willingness to mentor to encourage mentoring. Design/methodology/approach This study used a survey approach. Employees who worked in the development, production and marketing of pharmaceuticals were administered a survey questionnaire. Data were analyzed through structural equation modeling. Findings The findings showed that the downsizing experience was negatively related to willingness to mentor, and the threat of being downsized was negatively related to perceived organizational support. In contrast, perceived organizational support was positively related to organization-based self-esteem, which, in turn, was positively related to willingness to mentor. Research limitations/implications The relationship between perceived organizational support and organization-based self-esteem, with its subsequent positive effect on willingness to mentor, indicates the importance of organizations’ providing their employees with needed organizational support. Conversely, the negative relationship between the downsizing experience and willingness to mentor, and the threat of being downsized and perceived organizational support, indicates the need to separate mentoring programs from downsizing events even if it means delaying the initiation of a mentoring programs. Originality/value Research on the impact of organizational context on willingness to mentor is limited, and this study helps to address that gap.

This study provides insight into the factors that influence satisfaction with an Internet-based practitioner–student mentoring relationship that is part of an undergraduate business school curriculum. Practitioner mentors are especially important because they can help student protégés learn the skills needed for their professional development, encourage the formation of professional networks, and enhance the protégés’ satisfaction with their education. In this study, we examine a number of factors that can potentially influence satisfaction with the mentoring relationship, including the protégé’s networking to find a mentor, protégé trust in the mentor, protégé self-disclosure, the level of protégé understanding of the mentoring program’s objectives, and how effectively the mentor serves as a role model. Hypotheses were tested through a structural equation model. The results showed that mentoring relationship satisfaction was positively associated with networking to find a mentor, trust in the mentor, protégé self-disclosure, protégé understanding of the objectives of the mentoring program, and the degree to which the protégé viewed the mentor as a role model. In addition, mentor trust was positively associated with the level of protégé self-disclosure. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and recommendations on how to strengthen satisfaction with practitioner–student mentoring relationships are provided.

This study provides insights for theory and practice into employee willingness to mentor. This is especially important in passing knowledge from one generation of employees to another at a time when ageing populations are seen in many parts of the world. The study examines the relationship of contextual prosocial motivation with willingness to be a mentor while simultaneously considering various individual level influences on contextual prosocial motivation. Hypotheses were evaluated through a structural equation model. Results showed a positive relationship between contextual prosocial motivation and willingness to be a mentor. Additionally, organization-based self-esteem was positively related to contextual prosocial motivation, while proximity to retirement was negatively related to contextual prosocial motivation. Implications of the findings for human resource development are discussed with suggestions offered to strengthen contextual prosocial motivation of employees.

This study reveals influences from individual and organizational contextual factors on an employee’s willingness to be a mentor to others. Organization-based self-esteem, an important individual construct that was shown to affect willingness to be a mentor was itself, influenced by contextual factors such as, employee’s experience with downsizing, perceived organizational support, and threat of future downsizing. Hypotheses were evaluated through structural equation models for mediating influences of factors in the study. Results showed significant positive impact of perceived organizational support and organization-based self-esteem on willingness to be a mentor, and negative impact of downsizing experience on willingness to be a mentor. Organization-based self-esteem was found to mediate the relationship between perceived organizational support and an employee's willingness to be a mentor. Finally the perceived threat of future downsizing was found to negatively impact perceived organizational support.

The article examines the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a mediator of the relationship between board composition and corporate reputation. It considers evidence that board diversity and composition improve CSR and the increasing importance of CSR in evaluating firms. A view of CSR in terms of institutional strength and technical strength is presented, wherein the former is said to be based on positive actions toward diversity and community stakeholders while the latter is based on positive actions towards stockholders, consumers and employees. Health care companies were assessed in consideration of how the boards of such firms may be more proactive in managing CSR responsibility initiatives in order to enhance stakeholder relations.

This article explores how the diversity of board resources and the number of women on boards affect firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings, and how, in turn, CSR influences corporate reputation. In addition, this article examines whether CSR ratings mediate the relationships among board resource diversity, gender composition, and corporate reputation. The OLS regression results using lagged data for independent and control variables were statistically significant for the gender composition hypotheses, but not for the resource diversity-based hypotheses. CSR ratings had a positive impact on reputation and mediated the relationship between the number of women on the board and corporate reputation.

The authors have successfully applied formal specification techniques to the construction of medical products. The approach is characterized by concentrating on the use of HP-SL to construct clear and precise specifications of behavior. In a number of collaborative product developments, the effectiveness of the software development process has been improved significantly without getting involved in the 'difficult' formal methods areas of refinement and program proof.< >

This paper gives a technical/scientiic survey of the mathematical semantics of the BSI/VDM Speciication Language, currently being standardised by the British Standards Institution. Following a background introduction , the notion of loose (nondeterministic and underdetermined) speciications and the implications for the underlying type (domain) universe is discussed. This is followed by technical overviews of expression and statement semantics.