Personal Reliance on Alternative Event-Management Processes in Four Countries

Abstract

Organization members seek information from different sources, depending on how familiar they are with the work situations they encounter from one moment to the next. Event-management processes are the sources of information that organization members use to interpret and respond to the sequence of events they experience. Questionnaire items were constructed to ask employees how much they use five event-management processes to respond to two categories of events— day-to-day situations and unusual problems (i.e., exceptional situations). The questionnaires were administered to employees in five electronics-related manufacturing plants located in four countries— the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Hong Kong. The results indicate that the respondents find the distinction among different event-management processes in all four countries. Applications to process-oriented rather than traditional structure-oriented contingency management models for research and application are addressed.

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