Vlerick Repository

• Integrating corrective actions in project time forecasting using exponential smoothing

  Martens, Annelies; Vanhoucke, Mario (Journal of Management in Engineering, 2020)

  Earned value management (EVM) and earned duration management (EDM) are established methodologies to monitor the project performance during execution. These methods serve as a basis to forecast the final project duration and/or project cost. The aim of this paper is to improve the accuracy of project time forecasting by extending exponential smoothing for project time forecasting using EVM and EDM with the integration of corrective actions that are taken during project progress. In order to evaluate the forecasting accuracy of this approach, eight projects conducted in recent years have been followed up in real time. Based on the nature of the observed corrective actions, six distinct categories of corrective actions are identified. The empirical experiment showed that explicitly integrating the occurrence of corrective actions into the forecasting process improves the forecasting accuracy of traditional forecasting methods and forecasting methods using standard exponential smoothing, especially for the middle and late phases of projects. Consequently, by including corrective actions in the forecasting process, project managers can predict the final project duration more accurately.
• Weber and legal rule evolution: The closing of the iron cage?

  Jennings, Devereaux; Schultz, Martin; Patient, David; Gravel, Caroline; Yuan, Ke (Organization Studies, 2005)

  Institutionalists have emphasized the importance of law for the spread of bureaucracy and examined its effects; but they have not examined the evolution of law as an institution in its own right, particularly from a Weberian standpoint. In this paper, we investigate whether or not there is an inexorable proliferation and refinement of rational legal rules within a law, as we have found to be the case with bureaucratic rules. In other words, are the same tendencies toward proliferation and refinement associated with the ‘closing of the iron cage’ found in the context of legal rules? An examination of all sections of a regional water law over a 90-year period shows that the number of law sections and the text covered by the sections actually declines over time, through alternating phases of gradual expansion followed by rapid collapse; that is via punctuated equilibrium. Most of the expansion is due to revisions of existing sections, rather than to births of new sections. Poisson models of births and event history models of revisions show that the sources of the proliferation within the law are, in fact, some of the same ones anticipated by Weber: the interpretation of the law by the courts, changes in political parties, and shock events such as war. But, in contrast to Weberian predictions, the result of this evolutionary process appears to be a law that is smaller, tighter and more functionally differentiated.
• It is time for justice: How time changes what weknow about justice judgments and justice effects

  Fortin, Marion; Conjuharenco, Irina; Patient, David; German, Hayley (Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2016)

  Organizational justice is an important determinant of workplace attitudes, decisions, and behaviors. However,understanding workplace fairness requires not only examining what happens but also when it happens, interms of justice events, perceptions, and reactions. We organize and discussfindings from 194 justice articleswith temporal aspects, selected from over a thousand empirical justice articles. By examining temporalaspects, ourfindings enrich and sometimes challenge the answers to three key questions in the organizationaljustice literature relating to (i) when individuals pay attention to fairness, including specific facets, (ii) howfairness judgments form and evolve, and (iii) how reactions to perceived (in)justice unfold. Our review iden-tifies promising avenues for empirical work and emphasizes the importance of developing temporal theoriesof justice.
• Systemic justice and burnout: A multilevel model

  Haines,Victor; Patient, David; Marchand, Alain (Human Resource Management Journal, 2018)

  With the aim of extending organisational justice research to embrace significant and enduring aspects of the workplace context, this study examines organisational culture and human resource management (HRM) as constitutive dimensions of systemic justice and relates them to employee health. Bridging organisational justice, HRM, organisational culture, and occupational health research, we advance and test a multilevel model relating systemic justice to burnout. Data collected from 60 organisations; 89 employee groups; and 1,976 employees provide support for the hypothesised relationships between justice‐oriented culture, in terms of organisational values and group culture, and justice‐oriented HRM. In turn, justice‐oriented HRM related directly to employee burnout and indirectly through employee perceived job control and supervisor social support.
• Increasing interpersonal and informational justice when communicating negative news: The role of the manager's empathic concern and moral development

  Patient, David; Skarlicki, Daniel (Journal of Management, 2010)

  The authors report two studies exploring the role of a manager's empathy in delivering negative news more fairly. In Study 1, 132 practicing managers completed a scenario task in which a layoff was to be communicated. Trait empathic concern predicted interpersonal and informational justice of written messages. In Study 2, 81 students provided face-to-face feedback to a confederate, which was videotaped. An empathic induction resulted in higher levels of interpersonal and informational justice relative to a control group. Furthermore, the empathic induction had a greater effect on interpersonal and informational justice for communicators who were high (versus low) in moral development.

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