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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate and clarify the relationship between business process improvement and employees’ behavior. More precisely, the purpose is to test whether a business process improvement initiative has a positive impact on performance and employees’ behavior, namely, motivation, communication and knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach The empirical research of this paper was conducted in the year 2013 in an ICT company on 52 employees who worked in the company’s R&D Centre. Business process improvement is analyzed in the change of work method for software development. Two projects of software development were observed. The data about the projects were collected by using the company’s documentation. The data about employees’ behavior were collected by a specially designed questionnaire. Findings Business process improvement led to better results and overall performance. Furthermore, it was found that business process improvement enhanced three important elements of employees’ behavior. These are motivation, communication and knowledge sharing. Research limitations/implications The main limitations of this study are small research sample, focusing on just the way of business process improvement and on only one company. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized and considered as being generally accepted. Practical implications The findings of this study could be useful for ICT companies because it shows the benefits of the Kanban method. Originality/value The major contribution of this study is to prove the positive impact of business process improvement initiatives on overall performance and on the special elements of employees’ behavior. This cognition enhances the existing knowledge on business process improvements.

The aim of this paper was to examine the role of organizational justice and leadership behavior orientation in predicting job satisfaction by focusing on three organizational justice dimensions (distributive, procedural, and interactional justice) and two leadership behavior orientations (task and relations-oriented behaviors). The empirical research was conducted in Croatia, during 2019. The research sample included 298 participants. Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to empirically test proposed hypotheses focusing on organizational justice and leadership behavior orientation as predictors of employees’ job satisfaction. Research results showed that interactional justice, distributive justice and relations-oriented leadership behavior have an almost equally powerful impact on job satisfaction. Those variables are based on social relations, which revealed the importance of connections among people and social interactions for job satisfaction development. Additionally, findings suggested that procedural justice and task-oriented leadership behavior did not affect employees’ job satisfaction. These results additionally bring social interactions in the focus of job satisfaction development. A better and more in-depth understanding of these links allows management to be efficient in rapidly changing organizational circumstances to stimulate employees to work effectively. Therefore, in order to enhance employees’ job satisfaction, managers need to create a working environment that is friendly, honest, and encouraging. They have to pay attention to relationships with their employees, providing them the perception of justice, respect, and trust, as well as motivation in everyday activities. Upcoming lines of research should put effort into further exploration of this cognition, by exploring some other social relations variables and their mediational impact on job satisfaction.

The aim of this paper is to prove the connection between the participation of knowledge workers in an organization and its performance, as well as to define how the change of the participation of knowledge workers influences organizational performance. The empirical research was conducted on a sample of 40 companies. Using a specially designed questionnaire, the research data, which includes data about the participation of knowledge workers in each company and indicators of companies' financial performances, was collected. The empirical results discovered a statistically significant positive correlation between knowledge workers' participation and organizational performance and also showed how each financial indicator of a company's performance will change if the knowledge workers' participation changes. Furthermore, the results show that the growth of knowledge workers' participation in companies is not adequately followed by increased awards and other expenditures related to these workers, which could be a significant factor of the low productivity of these workers, which has also been proved by this research.