Emma Soane

• London School of Economics and Political Science

Managers in many kinds of organizations encounter risks in their daily work. A key challenge involves finding ways to manage risks and prevent harm to individuals or organizations, while retaining risks to realize opportunities. These pressures create a tension between risk management and risk retention that prevails in many sectors and is especial...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has challenged and changed organisations. While the pandemic has brought opportunities for business in some sectors, such as information and communication, and for people who enjoy the flexibility they gain from home‐based or hybrid work arrangements, the realisation of benefits for individuals and organisations is uncertain o...

This report is based on the findings of a nationwide survey of employee attitudes and engagement that was conducted electronically during July 2006, using a stratified sample of 2,000 employees from across the UK. The report is the latest in a long-running series by the CIPD, and provides an independent picture of the experience of work in the UK....

Introduction Simulation-based training (SBT) on shared leadership (SL) and group decision-making (GDM) can contribute to the safe and efficient functioning of a healthcare system, yet it is rarely incorporated into healthcare management training. The aim of this study was design, develop and validate a robust and evidence-based SBT to explore and t...

Background: Small group research in healthcare is important because it deals with interaction and decision-making processes that can help to identify and improve safer patient treatment and care. However, the number of studies is limited due to time- and resource-intensive data processing. The aim of this study was to examine the feasibility of us...

Employees with high core self-evaluations (CSE) generally perform well in their jobs. The enactment of CSE in performance occurs within contexts, and leadership is one form of context that influences the activation and expression of CSE. Drawing on theories of CSE and leader–member exchange (LMX), we characterized the leadership context as the inte...

Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own unders...

Meaningful work has been defined as work that is personally enriching and that makes a positive contribution. There is increasing interest in how organizations can harness the meaningfulness of work to enhance productivity and performance. We explain how organizations seek to manage the meaningfulness employees experience through strategies focused...

Meaningful work has been defined as work that is personally enriching and that makes a positive contribution. There is increasing interest in how organizations can harness the meaningfulness of work to enhance productivity and performance. We explain how organizations seek to manage the meaningfulness employees experience through strategies focused...

Government institutions have responsibilities to distribute risk management funds meaningfully and to be accountable for their choices. We took a macro-level sociological approach to understanding the role of government in managing environmental risks, and insights from micro-level psychology to examine individual-level risk-related perceptions and...

Drawing upon interview data from three case study organizations, we examine the role of middle managers in UK public service reform. Using theory fragments from organizational ecology and role theory, we develop three role archetypes that middle managers might be enacting. We find that rather than wholesale enactment of a ‘change agent’ role, middl...

Purpose – Effective leadership is important to performance in both organisational and sporting arenas. The authors theorised that follower personality would influence perceptions of leadership, and that perceived effective leadership would be associated with performance. The authors drew on Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), Transfo...

This article sheds new light on an understudied construct in mainstream management theory, namely, work alienation. This is an important area of study because previous research indicates that work alienation is associated with important individual and organizational outcomes. We tested four antecedents of work alienation: decision-making autonomy,...

We examined the relationship between information processing style and information seeking, and its moderation by anxiety and information utility. Information about Salmonella, a potentially commonplace disease, was presented to 2960 adults. Two types of information processing were examined: preferences for analytical or heuristic processing, and pr...

Background: To examine the associations between teamworking processes and error rates during vascular surgical procedures and then make informed recommendations for future studies and practices in this area. Methods: This is a single-center observational pilot study. Twelve procedures were observed over a 3-week period by a trained observer. Err...

Under successive regimes since the early 1980s, UK governments have called upon line managers to play a pivotal role in the development and enactment of public service reform. However, there is little empirical evidence from line managers themselves showing how the tensions and complexities inherent within modern public service reform agendas are e...

This article examines the role played by line managers in the link between HRM practices and individual performance outcomes. Drawing on social exchange theory, the authors test a mediated model linking perceived line manager behavior and perceived human resource management practices with employee engagement and individual performance. The study fo...

The current research applied Trait Activation Theory and Social Exchange Theory to explain curvilinear relationships between employee Core Self Evaluations (CSE) and supervisory ratings of performance, and their moderation by the interaction of supervisors’ CSE and employee perceptions of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). Results of multi-level analysi...

Complex regulatory decisions about risk rely on the brokering of evidence between providers and recipients, and involve personality and power relationships that influence the confidence that recipients may place in the sufficiency of evidence and, therefore, the decision outcome. We explore these relationships in an agent-based model; drawing on co...

The present study examined a potential mediator of the job design–performance relationship, namely employee engagement. Data were obtained via a survey of 283 employees in a consultancy and construction firm based in the UK and from supervisors' independent performance evaluations. The results reveal that employees who hold jobs that offer high lev...

We theorized that absence from work is a resource-based process that is related to perceived meaningfulness of work, well-being, and engagement. Broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) and engagement theory (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008; Kahn, 1990) were used to develop a framework for explaining absence. Results of a study o...

The development of mainstream human resource management (HRM) theory has long been concerned with how people management can enhance performance outcomes. It is only very recently that interest has been shown in the parallel stream of research on the link between employee engagement and performance, bringing the two together to suggest that engageme...

Effective measure of employee engagement is relevant to human resource development (HRD) theory and practice. We build on Kahn's (199036. Kahn , W.A. 1990. Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33: 692–724. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references, Psychological condition...

Recent changes in the assessment and management of risks has had the effect that greater importance has been placed on relationships between individuals and within groups to inform decision making. In this paper, we provide the theoretical underpinning for an expected utility approach to decision-making. The approach, which is presented using estab...

This study contributes to our understanding of the mediating and moderating processes through which human resource management (HRM) practices are linked with behavioural outcomes. We developed and tested a moderated mediation model linking perceived HRM practices to organisational citizenship behaviour and turnover intentions. Drawing on social exc...

We report on a qualitative investigation of the influence of emotions on the decision-making of traders in four City of London investment banks, a setting where work has been predominantly theorized as dominated by rational analysis. We conclude that emotions and their regulation play a central role in traders’ decision-making. We find differences...

Theories about trading in financial markets are well developed and practically influential. However, traders' behaviour within these markets appears to deviate substantially from that predicted by theory. Using data from a study of traders within financial markets in London, this article seeks to document this apparent paradox and assess its implic...

In running our increasingly complex business systems, formal risk analyses and risk management techniques are becoming more important part to managers: all managers, not just those charged with risk management. It is also becoming apparent that human behaviour is often a root or significant contributing cause of system failure. This latter observat...

The development of mainstream human resource management (HRM) theory has long been concerned with how people management can enhance performance outcomes. It is only very recently that interest has been shown in the parallel stream of research on the link between employee engagement and performance, bringing the two together to suggest that engageme...

This paper examines the impact of illusory control beliefs on the performance of traders in financial instruments. The authors argue that the task and environment faced by traders are conducive to the development of illusions of control and that individual propensity to illusion of control will be (inversely) related to trader performance. Using an...

Protection of human life and property from flooding is a strategic priority in the UK. We examine how to encourage home owners to protect themselves and their residences. A model of factors that influence the decision to buy flood-protection devices is tested using survey data from 2109 home owners. The results show that the majority of respondents...

We critically examine how evidence and knowledge are brokered between the various actors (agents) in regulatory decisions on risk. Following a précis of context and regulatory process, we explore the role power and personality might play as evidence is synthesised and used to inform risk decisions, providing a review of the relevant literature from...

This paper considers how perceptions of costs and benefits can influence the association between personality and risky choice behaviour. We assessed perceptions and behaviours in six domains (ethical; investment; gambling; health and safety; recreational; social) using the DOSPERT and measured personality using the NEO PI-R. Results from structural...

You may know the five principles for increasing employee engagement: Keep people informed, listen, set clear objectives, match the person with the job, and create meaningful work. Though these tactics provide a good foundation, firms should also tailor engagement programs to reach different types of workers. After studying eight companies with a to...

Cost-benefit analysis has long been used in decision making about public health and security. Frequently, risk and uncertainty are involved, and benefit and cost are not evenly shared by all stakeholders in the activities where public welfare is concerned. The result of cost-benefit analysis may be controversial because it does not consider the con...

This two-year research project, from the Kingston Employee Engagement Consortium Project, analysed levels of engagement across eight different organisations. It offers strategies for engagement and insights into the outcomes of engagement.

Few systems operate completely independent of humans. Thus any study of system risk or reliability requires analysis of the potential for failure arising from human activities in operating and managing this. Human reliability analysis (HRA) grew up in the 1960s with the intention of modelling the likelihood and consequences of human error. Initiall...

In practice, risk and uncertainty are essentially unavoidable in many regulation processes. Regulators frequently face a risk-benefit trade-off since zero risk is neither practicable nor affordable. Although it is accepted that cost–benefit analysis is important in many scenarios of risk management, what role it should play in a decision process is...

The prevalence of water quality incidents and disease outbreaks suggests an imperative to analyse and understand the roles of operators and organisations in the water supply system. One means considered in this paper is through human reliability analysis (HRA). We classify the human errors contributing to 62 drinking water accidents occurring in af...

This article aims to provide an overview and discussion of the sources and effects of individual variation in how individuals make choices and decisions. This review encompasses both the micro and the life-span perspective, with the common assumption that individual differences are part of the evolved human design. Individuals reap the benefits of...

This report gives a brief overview of the main findings and theory of decision-making under uncertainty and perceptions of climate change and food safety. An online survey, completed by 964 participants, assessed a range of decision-making behaviour in uncertain situations, communication needs and perceptions of climate change and food safety, spec...

Efficient market models cannot explain the high level of trading in financial markets in terms of asset portfolio adjustment. It is presumed that much of this excessive trading is irrational 'noise' trading. A corollary is that there must either be irrational traders in the market or rational traders with irrational aberrations. The paper reviews t...

This paper examines the consistency of risk preferences across three decision domains important in most people’s lives: work, health and personal finance. We consider the degree to which the five factor model of personality and a range of factors that influence risk-related decision-making (perceived risk, framing, emotions and cost–benefit analysi...

The concept of risk propensity has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical investigation, but with little consensus about its definition and measurement. To address this need, a new scale assessing overall risk propensity in terms of reported frequency of risk behaviours in six domains was developed and applied: recreation, health, caree...

The concept of risk propensity has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical investigation, but with little consensus about its definition and measurement. To address this need, a new scale assessing overall risk propensity in terms of reported frequency of risk behaviours in six domains was developed and applied: recreation, health, caree...

This is a book about traders in financial markets: what they do, the kind of people they are, how they perceive the world they inhabit, how they make decisions and take risks. This is also a book about how traders are managed - the best and the worst examples - and about the institutions they inhabit: firms, markets, cultures, and theories of how t...

The paper examines the management of traders in financial markets from the perspectives of agency and prospect theory. Using interview data from a sample of traders and managers in four investment banks, the paper argues that managers focus on avoiding losses rather than making gains. This focus emerges from the characteristics of managers and the...

Theories about trading in financial markets are well developed and practically influential. However, traders’ behaviour within these markets appears to deviate substantially from that predicted by theory. Using data from a study of traders within financial markets in London, this article seeks to document this apparent paradox and assess its implic...

The concept of risk propensity has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical investigation, but with little consensus about its conceptualization and measurement of risk propensity. This paper seeks to advance the field through data from a sample of 1,669 managers and professionals. These show the internal consistency and correlates of a n...

This project commenced in October 1996 funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under its Risk and Human Behaviour Programme1. The first year of the project was spent carrying out an extensive review of the relevant literature and conducting pilot studies. This formed the basis for a research strategy enabling data to be gathered that wou...