Recent Submissions

  • The Function and Dynamics of Interpersonal Trust within Workplace Learning in High Pressure Context

    Wall, Tony; Scott, Debbie; Hudson, Nigel E. (University of Chester, 2022-03-30)
    Against the backdrop of increasingly stressful bidding and sales workplace contexts, this study investigates the function and dynamics of interpersonal trust within workplace learning in high pressure context. It has significant relevance and importance to practice, as work related stress and ill health has become an international concern within the bidding profession, where relatively little is documented about the experiential ways in which knowledge is attained and how this may contribute to or mitigate the stress experienced by bid professionals. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to conduct twelve in depth interviews with six bidding professionals. Contributions from the study include the importance of vertical trust and management support for learning in high-pressure context; the importance of positive emotion, humanity, social empathy and care for trust decisions; that a long-term learning strategy encourages trust motivation and trust decisions by reducing short-term perceived risk and sensitivity to trust discrepancy; and deliberate manipulation of trust for learning can arise when intra-team competition is high. Implications for practice include the necessity for career-long experiential learning curricula that balance the immediate and long-term development needs of the individual, with proactive engagement and an increased sense of control mitigating the perceived high pressure caused by a chaotic and highly reactive work context. The study proposes a framework for practice that can inform the design and delivery of workplace learning curricula for those working in this context.
  • Understanding Founders’ and Successors’ Expectations of British Higher Education Related to the Chinese Family Business: An Extrapolative Expectation Perspective

    Leong, Kelvin; Lam, Wing; Harris, Phil; Zhu, Ke (University of ChesterUniversity of Chester, 2023-02)
    The importance of family business and thus family business succession is well supported in the literature. As part of their succession plan, Chinese family businesses tend to send the prospective successor to study in an overseas university. However, there is little attention paid to the effectiveness and efficiency of the successors’ overseas education and its impact on the family business succession. In particular there is a lack of attention on the expectation of the founders and successors’. This thesis is about exploring and explaining the similarities and differences in expectation of successors’ overseas education between founders and successors of family businesses in China. 60 informants comprising 30 pairs of successors (who were studying a business course) and business founders completed identical questionnaires separately. This was then followed by in-depth one-to-one interviews with respondents. Adopting extrapolative expectation theory, which holds that expectations are caused by prior experience, a comprehensive conceptual framework is developed, followed by corresponding hypotheses. The findings support the hypothesis that the business founders’ expectations about the business-related factors of a business degree course are significantly higher than the expectations of successors themselves. On the other hand, the expectations of founders and successors for non-business-related factors were similar, for instance: for the development of English skills. A follow-up in-depth qualitative research in the form of interviews was conducted with the business founders and successors. Qualitative data analysis helps to reveal that while there are some interesting differences associated with respondents’ background, gender and personality, the result of the analysis shows that work experience plays a key role in explaining the difference in expectations of the founders and successors. In addition, four competing theories (intention, relationship, gender and personality) failed to explain such differences. The thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge in understanding the expectations of the family business on successors’ overseas education. It shows that, due to differences in work experience, the expectation of business founders and their successors differ significantly in many aspects related to the successors’ overseas education. This is important as literature tends to consider the multiple influences of various individuals within a family on major decisions as one decision-making unit. The differences in expectation have major implications in their choice of courses and satisfaction of successors’ overseas education, which in turn affects the effectiveness and efficiency of the longer-term family business succession process. The findings of this thesis help the family business, policymakers and researchers to see a potential issue in the family business succession process that is largely ignored. It is suggested that more resources can be put by policymakers into raising awareness of the different expectations that are identified. Family businesses should work on the differences in expectations including enhancing both understanding and the successors’ solid work experience before studying abroad. The findings of this thesis highlight an important but unresearched area for researchers to be further explored. Finally, the project design, which adopts a complementary mixed-method approach and compares the views from business founders and successors, is unique and helpful to understand the research question through different lenses.
  • How leaders step up successfully into demanding leadership roles and sustain that success

    Rowland, Caroline; Shaw, Peter A. (University of Chester, 2011-06)
    This is the supporting documentation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by publication. The research issues addressed were the extent to which the four Vs of vision, values, value-added and vitality are pre-requisites for an individual to be able to step up successfully into demanding leadership roles, and at times of major change, what are the key requirements that enable an individual to continue to step up into demanding, leadership roles successfully and sustain that success? The proposition which has been tested in a wide range of contexts is that leaders step up successfully if they apply a balance of the four Vs of vision, values, value-added and vitality. The research concluded that continuing to step up successfully and sustaining that success involves a clear focus on coherence, context, courage and co-creation. It is the active interplay between these two sets of requirements which determine whether a leader is able to cope successfully with demanding leadership challenges in a sustained way. This relationship is illustrated in the diagram below. The research was based on an exploratory approach which was inductive whereby the perspectives of a wide range of senior leaders were sought both in terms of their experiences and what was observed. The research also included an element of auto-ethnography. The approach of the four Vs was published in the book, “The Four Vs of Leadership: vision, values, value-added and vitality”. This framework was tested with a wide range of senior level leaders in different sectors. The rigorous use of this framework was then applied to develop clarity of thinking in areas such as career choices, decision-making, business coaching and the taking on of new opportunities which were set out in a sequence of subsequent books. The interplay of the four Vs and four Cs has contributed to the leadership impact of a range of senior leaders at times when they have been handling rapid change. The work furthers understanding about sustaining leadership effectively through times of turbulence.