Cognitive mapping the topic of employee morale

Cognitive mapping the topic of employee morale

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of employee morale in the subject of Human Resource Management is complex. By making use of the cognitive mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on the employee morale topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of employee morale. The result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on employee morale, should be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping, literature review and employee morale.

Key words: Employee morale, cognitive mapping, literature review

Introduction

As a topic in Human Resource Management, employee morale is complex. It is thus useful to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management, the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping technique can be employed to go through a literature review on  Employee morale. This literature review exercise is taken up and reported in this article.

On the cognitive mapping exercise for literature review

Literature review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims (1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:

Step 1: gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on Employee morale. This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and associated references.

Step 2: consolidate  the main points from Table 1 to come up with a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).

Step 3: link up the cognitive  map variables in a plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under review.

The next section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on employee morale.

Descriptions of cognitive map variables on the employee morale topic

From the reading of some academic articles on Employee morale, a number of main points (e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the  writer. They are shown in Table 1 with explicit referencing on the points.

Table 1: Main points from the employee morale literature and referencing

Main points from the employee morale literature	Referencing
Point 1: "Morale: 1. a state of individual psychological well-being based upon a sense of confidence and usefulness and purpose. 2. the spirit of a group that makes the members want the group to succeed [syn: esprit de corps]. Other sources add things such as: “willingness to perform assigned tasks"...".	Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 1: What is Morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.
Point 2: "Engagement is generally seen by its biggest enthusiasts as a higher level emotional state, beyond simply an elevated level of morale, in which employees feel a strong bond with their organization and will go the extra mile for it".	Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 1: What is Morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.
Point 3: "Some of these crucial management morale factors are: ■ Sense of direction.... ■ Performance focus... ■ Speed and urgency... ■ Leadership style and decision making... ■ Management development and promotion... ■ Management compensation...".	Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 1: What is Morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.
Point 4: "MEASURING MORALE: INFORMAL METHODS   Method 1: The casual chat.... Method 2: The “open door”...    MEASURING MORALE: FORMAL METHODS Method 3: Group/team meetings (not including self-directed work teams)...  Method 4: Self-directed work teams....  Method 5: “360” Reviews...   Method 6: The focus group...  Method 7: The employee opinion survey... ".	Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 2: How do organizations measure morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.
Point 5: "Most organizations which take the path to surveying their employees have multiple goals: 1. They want quantitative data on morale in order to know “how employees are doing” in their organization. 2. Often they have surveyed before and wish to know how things have changed since the last survey. 3. They sometimes wish to be compared to other organizations, such as those in their industry, or ones that have been identified as having “best practices”; ... 4. They wish to identify management issues which need to be addressed; .... 5. They wish to have a basis for action which is based on reality, not on rumor, gossip, or other suspicious and unreliable data sources....".	Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 2: How do organizations measure morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.
Point 6: "Happiness, morale and motivation are closely inter-twined in the workplace, yet loosely connected in the literature (Bok, 2010)".	Tshiteem, K. and M. Everest Phillips. 2016. "Public service happiness and morale in the context of development: the case of Bhutan" Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 38(3), Routledge: 168-185.
Point 7: "Sirota, Mishkind & Meltzer (2005) suggest that morale, the way individuals or groups feel about their work, has four levels: enthusiasm, satisfaction, neutrality and anger. This closely matches the four degrees of happiness/unhappiness in the GNH [gross national happiness]. Morale is associated with both attitude and behaviour, and that, matching the philosophy underpinning GNH, “humanness and humanity are the cornerstones of self-esteem and high morale” (Bruce, 2003, p. 8)".	Tshiteem, K. and M. Everest Phillips. 2016. "Public service happiness and morale in the context of development: the case of Bhutan" Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 38(3), Routledge: 168-185.
Point 8: "... providing training and development results in improved employee morale. This positive relationship is not surprising because training and development have intrinsic value to many employees. They also tend to increase employee productivity, and people derive satisfaction from the ability to perform their jobs in a more efficient and effective manner (Huselid, 1995; Becker & Gerhart, 1996). In turn, working with an able and motivated workforce can improve a manager’s morale".	Chow, C.W., K. Haddad and G. Singh. 2007. "Human Resource Management, Job Satisfaction, Morale, Optimism, and Turnover" International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration 8(2), The Haworth Press Inc.: 73-88.
Point 9: "Despite the plethora of evidence suggesting a relationship between managerial communication and employee morale, and despite the speculation of organizational communication practitioners that improved communication will lead to improved satisfaction, no attempt yet has been made to assess comprehensively the sorts of communication most related to workers’ spirit".	Baird, J.E. and P.H. Bradley. 1978. "Communication Correlates of Employee Morale" Journal of Business Communication 15(3): 47-56.
Point 10: "... a large part of the human resources literature shows that shop-floor non-financial performance measures relating to ‘employee morale’, such as staff turnover, absenteeism and lateness, have been used in human resource management for a long time. They were some of the first measures to be used by human resource managers, and the first phenomenon studied by work psychologists".	Abdel-Maksoud, A., F. Cerbioni, F. Ricceri and S. Velayutham. 2010." Employee morale, non-financial performance measures, deployment of innovative managerial practices and shop-floor involvement in Italian manufacturing firms" The British Accounting Review 42, Elsevier: 36-55.
Point 11: "By morale, we mean the degree to which an employee feels good about his or her work and work environment. Morale is distinguished from motivation, which refers to readiness to act (Lawler, 1973). Morale is broader than intrinsic motivation or job satisfaction, which typically refer to feelings about one's job (Hackman and Oldham, 1975)".	McKnight, D.H., S. Ahmad and R.G. Schroeder. 2001. "When do feedback,  incentive control, and autonomy improve morale? The importance of employee-management relationship closeness" Journal of Managerial Issues XIII(4) Winter: 466-482.
Point 12: "... the effect of a management control mechanism (e.g., accountability, close supervision, feedback) on employee morale depended on whether or not the employee/manager relationship was close. If the relationship was close, the control lifted morale. If the relationship was not close, the control lowered morale".	McKnight, D.H., S. Ahmad and R.G. Schroeder. 2001. "When do feedback,  incentive control, and autonomy improve morale? The importance of employee-management relationship closeness" Journal of Managerial Issues XIII(4) Winter: 466-482.
Point 13: " Some organizations already have high morale without any purposeful effort to reach that point. An especially charismatic leader, a fortunate market position (Google comes to mind), a small start-up with a lot of excitement, expectations and young, idealistic founders and employees … all these individually or in combination can have a powerful effect on morale and represent very fortunate circumstances for everyone involved".	Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 5: Creating/ maintaining the high morale organization: do we create high morale - or step out of the way?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.
Point 14: "Although there is a considerable literature on the general topic of organization morale (Blum and Naylor, 1968, pp. 391-413), there remains some question about the effect of morale on varying aspects of organizational behavior. Part of the problem in assessing morals may be in the manner in which morale, as an organizational variable, has been treated. The effort is sometimes made to use morale as a predictor of other forms of organizational behavior, such as productivity. If, however, the intent of organizational research is to identify problem areas, then, perhaps, morale should be treated as a symptomatic variable rather than as a determinant of other behaviors".	Madron, T.W., J.R. Craig and R.M. Mendel. 1976. "Departmental morale a a function of the perceived performance of department heads" Research in higher education 5, APS Publications: 83-94.
Point 15: "We would argue that in a university, departmental morale can be used in the same symptomatic manner as body temperature is used in medical diagnosis or ratings of the President are used in political analysis. If departmental morale is low, then there may be organizational problems which should be remedied. Furthermore, when departmental morale is low, it is possible to search for the source of that low morale and to attempt  to modify the situation".	Madron, T.W., J.R. Craig and R.M. Mendel. 1976. "Departmental morale a a function of the perceived performance of department heads" Research in higher education 5, APS Publications: 83-94.
Point 16: "Although workplace distress has serious consequences for both organizations and employees alike (Chowdhury & Endres, 2010; Macik-Frey, Quick, & Nelson, 2007), workplace morale and engagement are important because of their relationship with business-unit performance outcomes such as productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and reduced turnover (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). Therefore it is important for organizations to prevent both distress and morale. The most effective way to do so is to correctly identify their origins".	Dollard, M.F., K. Osborne and I. Manning. 2013. "Organization-environment adaptation: a macro-level shift in modeling work distress and morale" Journal of Organizational Behavior 34, Wiley: 629-647.
Point 17: "Drawing insights from organizational theory, and strategic human resource management (SHRM), we reconceptualize the notion of stress as adaptation (Selye, 1956) and propose organization–environment fit as the stimulus and perceptions of workplace distress and morale as the response. In other words, we are framing the issues of workplace distress and low workplace morale as an organizational adaptation problem".	Dollard, M.F., K. Osborne and I. Manning. 2013. "Organization-environment adaptation: a macro-level shift in modeling work distress and morale" Journal of Organizational Behavior 34, Wiley: 629-647.

With a set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1. These variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Cognitive map variables based on Table 1

Cognitive map variables	Literature review points
Variable 1: Drivers of interest in employee morale	Point 5: "Most organizations which take the path to surveying their employees have multiple goals: 1. They want quantitative data on morale in order to know “how employees are doing” in their organization. 2. Often they have surveyed before and wish to know how things have changed since the last survey. 3. They sometimes wish to be compared to other organizations, such as those in their industry, or ones that have been identified as having “best practices”; ... 4. They wish to identify management issues which need to be addressed; .... 5. They wish to have a basis for action which is based on reality, not on rumor, gossip, or other suspicious and unreliable data sources....".
Variable 2: Improve intellectual understanding of employee morale	Point 1: "Morale: 1. a state of individual psychological well-being based upon a sense of confidence and usefulness and purpose. 2. the spirit of a group that makes the members want the group to succeed [syn: esprit de corps]. Other sources add things such as: “willingness to perform assigned tasks"...". Point 2: "Engagement is generally seen by its biggest enthusiasts as a higher level emotional state, beyond simply an elevated level of morale, in which employees feel a strong bond with their organization and will go the extra mile for it". Point 7: "Sirota, Mishkind & Meltzer (2005) suggest that morale, the way individuals or groups feel about their work, has four levels: enthusiasm, satisfaction, neutrality and anger. This closely matches the four degrees of happiness/unhappiness in the GNH [gross national happiness]. Morale is associated with both attitude and behaviour, and that, matching the philosophy underpinning GNH, “humanness and humanity are the cornerstones of self-esteem and high morale” (Bruce, 2003, p. 8)". Point 11: "By morale, we mean the degree to which an employee feels good about his or her work and work environment. Morale is distinguished from motivation, which refers to readiness to act (Lawler, 1973). Morale is broader than intrinsic motivation or job satisfaction, which typically refer to feelings about one's job (Hackman and Oldham, 1975)". Point 17: "Drawing insights from organizational theory, and strategic human resource management (SHRM), we reconceptualize the notion of stress as adaptation (Selye, 1956) and propose organization–environment fit as the stimulus and perceptions of workplace distress and morale as the response. In other words, we are framing the issues of workplace distress and low workplace morale as an organizational adaptation problem".
Variable 3: Effective employee morale practices	Point 3: "Some of these crucial management morale factors are: ■ Sense of direction.... ■ Performance focus... ■ Speed and urgency... ■ Leadership style and decision making... ■ Management development and promotion... ■ Management compensation...". Point 8: "... providing training and development results in improved employee morale. This positive relationship is not surprising because training and development have intrinsic value to many employees. They also tend to increase employee productivity, and people derive satisfaction from the ability to perform their jobs in a more efficient and effective manner (Huselid, 1995; Becker & Gerhart, 1996). In turn, working with an able and motivated workforce can improve a manager’s morale". Point 12: "... the effect of a management control mechanism (e.g., accountability, close supervision, feedback) on employee morale depended on whether or not the employee/manager relationship was close. If the relationship was close, the control lifted morale. If the relationship was not close, the control lowered morale". Point 13: " Some organizations already have high morale without any purposeful effort to reach that point. An especially charismatic leader, a fortunate market position (Google comes to mind), a small start-up with a lot of excitement, expectations and young, idealistic founders and employees … all these individually or in combination can have a powerful effect on morale and represent very fortunate circumstances for everyone involved". Point 15: "We would argue that in a university, departmental morale can be used in the same symptomatic manner as body temperature is used in medical diagnosis or ratings of the President are used in political analysis. If departmental morale is low, then there may be organizational problems which should be remedied. Furthermore, when departmental morale is low, it is possible to search for the source of that low morale and to attempt  to modify the situation". Point 16: "Although workplace distress has serious consequences for both organizations and employees alike (Chowdhury & Endres, 2010; Macik-Frey, Quick, & Nelson, 2007), workplace morale and engagement are important because of their relationship with business-unit performance outcomes such as productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and reduced turnover (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). Therefore it is important for organizations to prevent both distress and morale. The most effective way to do so is to correctly identify their origins".
Variable 4: Learn from employee morale practices	Point 4: "MEASURING MORALE: INFORMAL METHODS   Method 1: The casual chat.... Method 2: The “open door”...    MEASURING MORALE: FORMAL METHODS Method 3: Group/team meetings (not including self-directed work teams)...  Method 4: Self-directed work teams....  Method 5: “360” Reviews...   Method 6: The focus group...  Method 7: The employee opinion survey... ". Point 6: "Happiness, morale and motivation are closely inter-twined in the workplace, yet loosely connected in the literature (Bok, 2010)". Point 9: "Despite the plethora of evidence suggesting a relationship between managerial communication and employee morale, and despite the speculation of organizational communication practitioners that improved communication will lead to improved satisfaction, no attempt yet has been made to assess comprehensively the sorts of communication most related to workers’ spirit". Point 10: "... a large part of the human resources literature shows that shop-floor non-financial performance measures relating to ‘employee morale’, such as staff turnover, absenteeism and lateness, have been used in human resource management for a long time. They were some of the first measures to be used by human resource managers, and the first phenomenon studied by work psychologists". Point 14: "Although there is a considerable literature on the general topic of organization morale (Blum and Naylor, 1968, pp. 391-413), there remains some question about the effect of morale on varying aspects of organizational behavior. Part of the problem in assessing morals may be in the manner in which morale, as an organizational variable, has been treated. The effort is sometimes made to use morale as a predictor of other forms of organizational behavior, such as productivity. If, however, the intent of organizational research is to identify problem areas, then, perhaps, morale should be treated as a symptomatic variable rather than as a determinant of other behaviors".

The next step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on employee morale. The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.

A cognitive map on employee morale and its interpretation

By relating the four variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a cognitive map on employee morale, as shown in Figure 1.

These cognitive  map variables, four of them altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of employee morale. The links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable.  If there no signs shown on the arrows, that means the influences can be positive or negative.  For further information on employee morale, readers are referred to the Literature on employee morale Facebook page.

Concluding remarks

The cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables involved in employee morale. The resultant cognitive map promotes an exploratory way to study employee morale in a holistic tone. The experience of the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as employee morale in Human Resource Management. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should also find the article informative on this mapping topic.

Bibliography

1.      Abdel-Maksoud, A., F. Cerbioni, F. Ricceri and S. Velayutham. 2010." Employee morale, non-financial performance measures, deployment of innovative managerial practices and shop-floor involvement in Italian manufacturing firms" The British Accounting Review 42, Elsevier: 36-55.

2.      Baird, J.E. and P.H. Bradley. 1978. "Communication Correlates of Employee Morale" Journal of Business Communication 15(3): 47-56.

3.      Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 1: What is Morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.

4.      Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 2: How do organizations measure morale?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.

5.      Bowles, D. and C. Cooper. 2009. "Chapter 5: Creating/ maintaining the high morale organization: do we create high morale - or step out of the way?" Employee Morale, Palgrave Macillan.

6.      Chow, C.W., K. Haddad and G. Singh. 2007. "Human Resource Management, Job Satisfaction, Morale, Optimism, and Turnover" International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration 8(2), The Haworth Press Inc.: 73-88.

7.      Dollard, M.F., K. Osborne and I. Manning. 2013. "Organization-environment adaptation: a macro-level shift in modeling work distress and morale" Journal of Organizational Behavior 34, Wiley: 629-647.

8.      Eden, C. and P. Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70, in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.

9.      Eden, C., C. Jones and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

10. Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).

11. Literature on employee morale Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-employee-morale-1892871127618131/).

12. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).

13. Madron, T.W., J.R. Craig and R.M. Mendel. 1976. "Departmental morale a a function of the perceived performance of department heads" Research in higher education 5, APS Publications: 83-94.

14. Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).

15. McKnight, D.H., S. Ahmad and R.G. Schroeder. 2001. "When do feedback,  incentive control, and autonomy improve morale? The importance of employee-management relationship closeness" Journal of Managerial Issues XIII(4) Winter: 466-482.

16. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University, U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April 10, 2017].

17. Tshiteem, K. and M. Everest Phillips. 2016. "Public service happiness and morale in the context of development: the case of Bhutan" Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 38(3), Routledge: 168-185.