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In relative performance evaluation systems, appraisers may choose to adopt stricter or laxer evaluation criteria. When laxer (vs. stricter) criteria are used, higher absolute performance evaluations become easier (vs. harder) to achieve. Thus, each appraisee's absolute performance feedback and the mean of the distribution of absolute performance feedback are shifted upward (vs. downward). Yet, relative performance remains constant. When evaluation outcomes depend solely on relative performance, can the adoption of laxer (vs. stricter) criteria—leading to higher absolute performance feedback but no change in relative performance—influence appraisees' satisfaction with performance? Despite the ubiquity of such systems in organizations, research has not addressed this question. This article points to an important gap between practitioners' beliefs and research findings. We show that while most appraisers believe that higher absolute performance feedback will automatically result in more satisfaction with performance, the opposite may also happen. Specifically, we find that appraisees with a stronger (vs. weaker) chronic or contextual need to engage in social comparison are more satisfied with lower (vs. higher) absolute performance feedback. Overall, we demonstrate why and how feedback interventions in relative performance evaluation systems may backfire, and suggest a set of practical guidelines for maximizing appraisees' satisfaction with performance in such systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This article investigates how firms' use of social capital criteria in staffing practices has been affected by China's transitional institutional environment and explores the impacts of person-job fit in the social capital dimension on employees' performance. Empirical results show that non-state-owned enterprises set a higher social capital standard in the hiring process than state-owned enterprises. Foreign-invested enterprises outperform other firms in promoting a better match between individuals rich in social capital and the positions that need such resources. In places with intensive market competition, foreign and private enterprises pay even more attention to employees' social capital when making HR decisions. Moreover, a better match between people and positions from a social capital aspect has a positive impact on employees' performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study examines the value that prior CEO experience has for the companies that hire such CEOs—as reflected in the firms' subsequent market-based performance—as well as its value for the CEO that possesses this experience—as reflected in his or her initial compensation. While we suggest that shareholders tend not to benefit from firms hiring experienced CEOs, we also argue that particular firm and industry contextual factors that shaped the prior CEO experience help ameliorate this detrimental effect. Regardless, we also suggest that prior CEO experience generally stands to benefit the CEOs, in that it brings them a compensation premium over those CEOs without such prior experience. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 654 US CEO succession events that occurred between 2001 and 2004 and found broad support for our hypotheses. We close with a discussion of the implications of our findings for future research as well as what they mean for firms hiring experienced CEOs and for CEO careers more generally. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Organizational learning capability (OLC) and employee flexibility help firms navigate the challenges faced by organizations operating in turbulent environments. OLC includes dimensions such as experimentation, risk taking, openness, dialogue, and participative decision making. Employee flexibility is considered a crucial tool for strategic human resource management in tackling environmental turbulence. Accordingly, we pose the following research question: how, and to what extent, is individual performance enhanced by OLC and employee flexibility in turbulent environments? The major impact that environmental turbulence has on change and flexibility requirements suggests that employee flexibility plays an important role in the impact OLC has on individual performance. However, we found no prior studies that explicitly analyzed this mediating function of employee flexibility. In this study, we tested three hypotheses that link OLC and individual performance, OLC and employee flexibility, and employee flexibility and individual performance. We applied a structural equation methodology, using partial least squares path modeling, to a sample of 174 academics at a Latin American university (a highly turbulent context). Our results show employee flexibility fully mediates the relation between OLC and individual performance given the presence of environmental turbulence. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Integrating opposing theoretical perspectives from the past literature, the authors hypothesize and test a U-shaped curvilinear relationship between gender diversity and workforce productivity. They further propose that the curvilinear effects vary depending on the levels of an organization's human resource management (HRM) investments in pay, benefit, training, and communication; that is, the patterns are more salient when HRM investments are high rather than low. To enhance understanding of how HRM investments have impact on diverse employees, the authors also examine the moderating influence of organizational identification of diverse members that can exert proximal influence on the diversity-productivity relationship. As predicted, results reveal that high levels of HRM investments influence the gender diversity–workforce productivity association to form a U-shaped curvilinear relationship. Organizational identification also yields the same moderating patterns. Research and practical implications are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Using two-year longitudinal data from a large sample of US employees from a service-related organization, the present study investigates the relative effects of three forms of pay-for-performance (PFP) plans on employees' job performance (incentive effects) and voluntary turnover (sorting effects). The study differentiates between three forms of pay: merit pay, individual-based bonuses, and long-term incentives. By definition, these PFP plans have different structural elements that distinguish them from each other (i.e., pay plan form) and different characteristics (functionality), such as the degree to which pay and performance are linked and the size of the rewards, which can vary both within and across plan types. Our results provide evidence that merit raises have larger incentive and sorting effects than bonuses and long-term incentives in multi-PFP plan environments where the three PFP plans are operating simultaneously. Only merit pay has both incentive and sorting effects among the three PFP plans. The implications for the PFP-related theory, as well as for the design and implementation of PFP plans, are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
HR professionals' roles require them to be responsive to both employee needs and top management strategies. However, the need to respond to the often competing employee and strategic agendas makes relationship-building efforts challenging. This study examines the social capital characteristics of HR professionals and the impact on receipt of network benefits and career outcomes. Results indicate that HR professionals benefit from relationships with other HR professionals for career sponsorship and role-related benefits. However, it is contacts who are in higher positions or in other organizations that transfer the most influential benefits, which in turn relate to objective career outcomes. Few benefits are obtained from contacts in non-HR functions. The results illuminate relationship development opportunities for HR professionals. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Decreasing research and development (R&D) can impair the ability of firms to remain innovative in the long run. CEOs have been accused of curtailing R&D investments as they approach expected retirement, yet received findings on R&D investment behaviors of late-career CEOs are mixed. We argue that one reason for these inconsistent findings could be that traditional approaches overlook the fact that CEOs are not isolated agents in making R&D decisions. We build on the premise that CEOs interact with their top management team (TMT) when shaping R&D strategy and advance a contextualized view of CEO dispositions in their late career stages as being constrained or enabled by their TMT. We hypothesize that some TMT attributes (e.g., tenure and age) may amplify, whereas others (e.g., functional experience and education) may mitigate inclinations to reduce R&D. Our findings, based on a longitudinal sample of 100 US manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2008, provide nuanced insights into how different TMT characteristics influence CEO-TMT dynamics, with TMT age and TMT tenure playing particularly pronounced roles. We discuss implications of our CEO-TMT interface approach for theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This article explores the devolution of HRM in a hospital context. Based on secondary data and 128 interviews conducted in nine hospitals across three European countries (Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), we examine roles and responsibility for HRM under devolution and coordination between those delivering it. Findings challenge bipartite conceptions of devolution, identifying a tripartite model with (1) HR practitioners, (2) line managers, and (3) senior professionals (managers and specialists) implementing HRM. Involving senior professionals in HRM reflects long-standing concern regarding managerial legitimacy in overseeing professional work. In the tripartite relationship, each party has scope to contribute to people management: HR practitioners to formulate a strategic framework, HR practices, and provide advisory services; line managers to implement HR practices and interface between HR and frontline professionals; and senior professionals to act as line managers' advocates and provide expert knowledge and credibility to inform people-related decision making. However, lack of role clarity and tensions in coordination relate to the differing goals of, and distance between, the HR function, line managers, and senior professionals. Our theoretical reframing of devolution notes potential for tripartite relational involvement to enhance HR performance in professional service contexts, the contingencies affecting this, and potential implications for the HR architecture. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Do organizational controls facilitate or hinder employees' trust in their organization? We addressed this question through a mixed-methods design using three studies. Based on a literature review and an open-response survey study (Study 1), we developed a theoretical model proposing that organizational control is positively related to employees' trust in their organization, and that this relationship is mediated by procedural fairness and organizational prestige. This mediated model was tested and supported in a quantitative survey of 582 European managers and professional employees from a range of organizations (Study 2). A complementary, qualitative interview-based study (Study 3) confirmed that well-implemented controls facilitate trust in the organization; however, poorly implemented control systems that are inconsistent, overly rigid, or incentivize untrustworthy behavior can undermine trust in the organization. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study examines line managers' rationales regarding reduced-load work (RLW), an emerging talent management practice allowing professionals to reduce their workload and take a pay cut, while actively remaining on a career path. Unlike flextime and telework, RLW addresses professionals' core problems of rising work hours and workloads. Interviews with 42 managers in 20 North American employers suggested that managers were more likely to support RLW for employees whom they saw as (1) high-performers, (2) flexible in their use of RLW, and (3) doing conducive jobs. Interviews with 20 HR experts and 24 senior executives revealed four dimensions of organizational support, two cultural (senior management support and discourse on career penalties) and two structural (adaptation of HR systems and organizational diffusion). In embracing organizations there was a higher frequency of more supportive managers than there was in ambivalent organizations. Managers' rationales were connected to their organizational contexts, albeit loosely, suggesting managerial implementation agency. The same rationales were more likely to be used in supportive ways in embracing contexts and in less supportive ways in ambivalent contexts. This study suggests that managerial and organizational support for flexible talent management practices dovetail in nuanced and important ways. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Based on a three-year ethnographic study of four UK National Health Service (NHS) organizations, we explore the everyday cultural experience of managing clinical and administrative workforces. Although NHS organizations claim to function as enlightened HRM employers, we argue that the inflexible application of metrics-based target systems to clinical and administrative tasks, including HRM operations, can result in dysfunctional outcomes for patient care and workforce morale. Reminiscent of the recent Mid Staffordshire health care scandal, the priorities attached to NHS personnel meeting the demands of performance management systems can prove incompatible with them also meeting the fundamental "human" needs of patients. The everyday experience of health care organization becomes one of employees reconciling competing logics of business efficiency and integrity of care. Trapped metaphorically between shrinking resources and expanding targets, the inclination—on the frontline and at mid-management level—is to extend the integrity of care, although this is sometimes impossible and can prove problematic in terms of system accountability. In response to such organizational tensions the behavior of many frontline and mid-management staffs ultimately reflects a form of "street-level bureaucracy"—a situation in which traditional professional norms are reasserted informally in ways that often transgress prescribed performance systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This article focuses on knowledge management in UK hospitals as an area in which organizational ambidexterity (OA) is a necessary condition. In contrast to much of the literature on OA that looks at senior managers, we focus on the role of "hybrid" middle managers, professional workers who hold managerial responsibilities, in ensuring that the quality of care delivered is at an optimum "safe" level for patients. We examine the influence of prevailing tensions and competing agendas characteristic of a professionalized, public-sector context upon knowledge exploitation and exploration at the middle levels of the organization. Our study investigates how these tensions are experienced and reconciled at the individual level. We examine the contextual and personal circumstances that enable hybrid middle managers to forge workable compromises between exploration and exploitation to facilitate OA. We find that this process is contingent on professional legitimacy, social capital, and a holistic professional orientation. This has wider implications for human resource practice to support the discretion and motivation of hybrid middle managers to facilitate OA for enduring performance and advancement of best practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This conceptual study contributes to an emerging literature at the intersection of strategic HRM and finance, which is concerned with the undervaluation of future-oriented HRM practices in the capital market and consequent disincentives for managers to invest in such HRM practices. More specifically, the study contributes to a search for signals of HRM investments that the capital market either attends to or should attend to. It focuses on potential signals of high-performance work systems (HPWSs), constituting an HRM investment that has been at the center of research in strategic HRM. Based on signaling theory, a model is proposed of relationships among three signal characteristics (signal fit, signal erosion, and signal diffusion) and sustainable signal correlation. The model provides a basis for the exploration of alternative strategies for the establishment of an HRM signal tailored specifically to the needs of the capital market. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
It is a common belief that CEOs must delegate to be successful. We hesitate to support this generalization and investigate how the distribution of responsibility within top management teams (TMTs) can influence the likelihood of a CEO's dismissal. Consistent with an agency theory perspective, our results indicate that CEOs may choose not to delegate their responsibilities to other executive TMT members, so as to benefit from an increased information asymmetry vis-à-vis the board of directors. Taking the resource-based view as a complementary theoretical perspective, we find that non-delegating CEOs benefit from their greater firm-specific knowledge, which the board of directors considers as a valuable resource that should be retained. Our work also demonstrates that a more intense CEO–TMT interaction weakens the relation between non-delegation and the likelihood of CEO dismissal. In sum, our research shows that the CEO's delegation decision does not necessarily lead to a competence distribution that is in the firm's best interest; rather, it reflects a complex interplay between the potentially opportunistic career interests of the CEO, the involvement of other TMT members and the board of directors. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Social exchange theorists argue that organizations that provide developmental assignments raise employee commitment. But such assignments may also undermine commitment by increasing the recipients' value in the external labor market. We compare the effect of developmental assignments on organizational commitment with that of other development practices: coaching, mentoring, training, and support from the direct superior and senior management. We also test whether synergies arise when developmental assignments are combined with the other development practices. Using a sample of 312 highly skilled professionals working in over sixty countries, in a variety of industries and firms of various sizes, we find that developmental assignments are the strongest driver of organizational commitment, together with support from senior management. The positive relationship between developmental assignments and organizational commitment is weaker in the presence of other development practices. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Recognizing the importance for companies of having high-quality employment relationships with employees, previous studies have sought to explain the variability in employees' perceptions of HRM service value. However, most of these studies view employees as inactive in employment relationships and, therefore, do not consider whether employees' own attributes affect their perceptions of HRM service value. In accepting the alternative notion that consumers create value "in use," the current study regards employees as active consumers of HRM practices, and so examines the extent and way in which employees' HRM competences (i.e., knowledge, skills, and abilities) explain the variability in HRM service value. Based on data collected from 2,002 employees in 19 companies in the Netherlands, a positive relationship has been found between employees' HRM competences and their perception of HRM service value, albeit one that is mediated by the perceived quality and nonmonetary costs of HRM services. The main implication of our findings is that employees should be seen as active agents in employment relationships who, through coproducing and consuming HRM services as well as leveraging their knowledge and skills, influence the value of HRM services and have the potential to increase or undermine the outcomes of the employment relationship. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Technology continues to play an ever-increasing role in both our work and private lives. In parallel with this expanding reliance on technology has been a shift in how people now view their jobs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical model that bridges these two areas—technology and employee attitudes (more specifically, work-related feelings of embeddedness). Within our model, we consider aspects of common work-related technologies and key perceptual variables related to technology, and how both areas can influence embeddedness in one's job. We conclude the article by providing examples of how specific technologies that are commonly found in today's work environment may influence job embeddedness perceptions, and we discuss the implications of the model on both theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Previous research has established that relationships with authority figures and procedural justice perceptions are important in terms of the way in which employees react to organizational procedures that affect them. What is less clear are the reasons why exchange quality with authorities is related to perceptions of process fairness and the role of procedural justice climate in this process. Results indicate that individual-level perceptions of procedural justice, but not performance ratings, partially mediate the relationship between exchange quality and reactions to performance appraisals, and that procedural justice climate is positively related to perceptions of procedural justice and appraisal reactions. These results support a more relational than instrumental view of justice perceptions in organizational procedures bound by exchange quality with an authority figure. Our study suggests that it is essential for managers to actively monitor and manage employee perceptions of process fairness at the group and individual levels. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study provides an innovative perspective on empirically assessing HR by focusing on the duality of HR professionals' experiences as both implementers and recipients or internal customers of HR practices given that they are also employees of the organization. We hypothesize that HR professionals experience HR practices more favorably from an implementer perspective as compared to an internal customer perspective. These differences in experiences are likely to be influenced by HR professionals' hierarchical position in the HR department.
Our analyses of 1,271 HR professionals employed by Indian Railways revealed a number of differences between the two types of experience. Some practices (recruitment and selection, training, and employee welfare) were viewed more negatively from the implementer perspective, whereas others (compensation, benefits, and employment relations) were rated more negatively from the internal customer perspective. Those holding more senior HR positions reported more positive experiences of training and employment relations from an internal customer perspective. Overall our contributions draw on the attribution theory and concepts of intraorganizational power and voice, and have implications concerning the effectiveness of HR practices. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The results of research on mergers and acquisitions often point to a need to improve acquisition outcomes and lessen the organizational turmoil that can often follow integration efforts. We assert that viewing acquisition integration through the lens of contextual ambidexterity may improve acquisition outcomes in two ways: by providing an integrated solution to the economic and social tensions in acquisitions, and by enabling managers to effectively confront the competing needs of task and human integration. We also posit that by building on contextual ambidexterity, we can extend the possibilities for both research and practice regarding task and human integration in acquisitions. We also emphasize the role of an integration manager and integration mechanisms in enabling contextual ambidexterity for successful acquisition integration. Finally, we identify implications for research and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
In this article we strive to reconcile equivocal findings about the effects of top leader succession and prior leadership experience on postsuccession organizational performance. In doing so, we draw on insights from theories of human capital, learning, and asymmetric information to better understand the conditions under which leaders increase or decrease postsuccession performance. Employing a sample of 119 newly appointed leaders in the English Premier League (1996–2010), we find the following results. First, relating to the succession event, outside leaders that directly move between leadership positions are associated with higher postsuccession performance while the departure of a prior leader to a leadership position in another organization has a negative effect on postsuccession performance. Second, relating to prior leadership experience, leaders with domestic top leader experience are associated with lower postsuccession performance, while leaders with foreign top leader experience are associated with higher postsuccession performance. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study examines the development and impact of diversity and equality management systems (DEMS). A national sample of human resource managers from 155 Canadian firms responded to surveys about their firm's diversity and equality management (DEM) practices. Cluster analysis and latent class modeling identified three distinct approaches to DEM: classical disparity DEMS showing limited development of DEM-related practices, institutional DEMS involving complex selection mechanisms and monitoring of employment statistics, and configurational DEMS linking diversity to business strategy. Hypothesis-testing analyses indicated that both institutional and configurational DEMS were predicted by coverage by the Canadian employment equity program, federal contractor status, and the presence of a diversity expert on staff. Only configurational DEMS was predicted by inclusion of HRM in developing business strategy. Configurational DEMS positively predicted the employment of workers with disabilities and members of visible minority groups as well as ROA. These findings support the proposition based on strategic human resource management (SHRM) theory that DEM practices should be considered as bundles and that vertical linkage to strategy is important for DEM effectiveness. As such, SHRM theory explains how managers can structure strategic responses to institutional pressures that go beyond requirements to achieve strategic goals. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This article considers the systems of qualifications and training in the long-term elderly care sector in Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Each country faces similar challenges of coping with increasing demand and securing staff for quality and cost-effective care. However, the three countries organize qualifications and training in very different ways. In the case of formal care workers, there is a hierarchy of training and skills, with Germany at the top, Japan in the middle, and the United Kingdom at the bottom. However, comparing the whole workforce, Germany has developed a dualistic structure with both highly and lowly trained workers; Japan has developed a relatively large proportion of moderately trained and qualified staff; and the UK workforce consists of a relatively large proportion of lowly trained and unqualified workers. Explanations are considered and implications offered for human resource management. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
High-performance work systems (HPWSs) are seen as important in helping strengthen competitive strategies of developed-country multinational enterprises (DC MNEs). Commensurate with global competitive pressures and internationalization strategies, emerging-country MNEs (EC MNEs) and indigenous firms are also increasingly adopting HPWSs. HPWSs are not only seen as simply performance enhancing systems, but also as facilitators of internationalization. MNEs represent an important test bed for the HPWSs and their applicability in different national contexts. In this article, we contribute to the extant literature by focusing on HPWS adoption level within domestic subsidiaries of DC MNEs and EC MNEs along with stand-alone indigenous firms in a single-country setting by keeping the host-country environment as constant. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Although health and social care workforces are heavily professionalized, the mainstream human resource management literature has been slow to engage with debates in the field of organizational studies on this distinctive group of employees. This lacuna is addressed by focusing on how the search for more flexible working practices in care services has affected the professions and especially their relationship with their assistant coworkers. The character of this relationship is seen as contingent on the logic of professionalization, in turn based on different notions of expertise, with implications for the allocation of tasks. The article distinguishes between a specialist expertise, encouraging the profession to discard routine tasks, and a holistic expertise, nurturing the hoarding of tasks. This distinction is used to explore the nurse professional project in Britain, a critical case where the statutory regulation of the nursing workforce has remained relatively weak. While noting shifts over the years in the British nursing professions' adherence to these two logics, workplace data on the nurse–health care assistant relationship reveal a fragmented pattern of nursing work consistent with a specialist-discard logic, albeit underpinned by a residual ambiguity among nurses about their preferred professional logic. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This article explores the ways in which employees may experience and respond to tensions inherent in the mix of potentially conflicting human resource (HR) practices that compose hybrid models of employment relations. By drawing on the job demands–resources (JD-R) literature and viewing HR practices as "demands" and "resources," we explore the impact of performance management and employee voice practices on employee well-being, as exemplified by engagement and emotional exhaustion, in a large public-sector organization in Ireland. Our findings suggest that employee voice mechanisms may act as a resource in both enhancing engagement and in counterbalancing the demands presented by a performance management system, thus reducing the deleterious effects of emotional exhaustion. Our study extends understanding of hybrid models of human resource management (HRM) and of the ways in which employees manage the contradictory signals that such models may send in terms of performance expectations. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a valuable contemporary lens on organizational design and action, examining the dynamic relationships between exploitative (extant) and explorative (evolving) resources within organizational contexts and environments. This article analyzes the literature pertaining to ambidexterity and underlines a number of recurrent preoccupations including definition of the nature, characteristics, and normative boundaries of organizational ambidexterity; a predilection toward considering interfirm/unit comparisons of large-scale corporate organizations; and a concentration on the significance of the managerialistic role of the senior management team's disposition and action-orientations. While a few calls have been made for a focus on the micro-aspects, predominant attention has remained on the macro-aspects of organizational ambidexterity.
The aim of the article, therefore, is to conduct a complementary study that considers the boundaries and transitions between exploitative and explorative modes at the intraorganizational, individual micro-behavioral level. To facilitate this, the article surfaces and underscores the paradigmatic modernistic characterization of large areas of the current organizational ambidexterity literature and the implications of this. Moreover, it explores alternative potentially useful critical paradigms that assist in providing tools with which to examine the "micro." The research conducts an ethnographic-style study of a quasi-public training and development organization to illustrate the above background contexts and the micro-interface and boundary of explorative and exploitative modes of organizational ambidexterity in the intraorganizational situation. Within this, the study points up the significance of the role of sense-making in operational micro-moment individual and small-group situations, and their vital influence in ultimately underpinning, and contributing to, macro-organizational ambidextrous contexts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The authors extend prior literature by examining, in two distinct field settings, smallest meaningful pay increases (SMPIs) in terms of magnitude, behavioral intention, and affective reactions. In Study 1, a two-wave study of 177 employees of a university medical center in the United States, the authors find stable thresholds of about 5.0 percent for positive reactions to pay increases (magnitude [5.4 percent], behavioral intentions [4.2 percent], and affective reactions [5.6 percent]). In Study 2, a sample of 495 university employees in Finland, the authors also find stable but slightly higher thresholds of about 8 percent for behavioral intentions (8.4 percent) and positive affective reactions (7.2 percent) to pay increases. They also find threshold effects of −5.7 percent for behavioral intentions and −5.8 percent for negative affective reactions in response to restricted future pay increases levied in the transition to a new pay system. Discussion of the results centers on pay raise administration and future research regarding implied and direct pay reductions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study develops a cross-level model examining the effects of intellectual capital facets (i.e., human, social, and organizational capital) on unit ambidexterity. Further, it proposes that organizational-level high-performance human resource (HPHR) practices significantly shape these effects as well as the unit ambidexterity–unit performance relationship. Hierarchical linear modeling on multisource and lagged data from a sample of 148 business units from 58 US Fortune 500 firms shows that unit human and social capital positively contributes to unit ambidexterity, unit organizational capital has a negative relationship with unit ambidexterity, and organizational HPHR practices amplify the former and mitigate the latter of these unit-level effects. The findings also reveal that the relationship between ambidexterity and unit performance becomes stronger in organizational contexts of heightened HPHR practices. This multilevel approach increases understanding of how units achieve ambidexterity and attain related performance gains. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Employee change cynicism is an unintended consequence of organizational change, which can undermine the effectiveness of change initiatives. Based on social information processing theory, we examine the impact of two human resource roles (administrative expert and strategic change agent) on the relationship between the quantity of organizational change and employee change cynicism. Using multilevel data from 1,831 employees in 70 organizations, we find employees who are exposed to more organizational change report higher levels of change cynicism. However, the strength of the organizational change–cynicism relationship is affected by the role of HR in the employees' organizations. When HR undertakes an administrative expert role, change is more likely to generate change cynicism. When HR undertakes a strategic change agent role, change is less likely to generate change cynicism. Our results suggest that organizations need to think carefully about the role of HR during organizational change and encourage HR to adopt a strategic change agent role. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Cyberloafing—using the Internet for non-work-related activities—is a prevalent counterproductive work behavior in the workplace, but researchers have not yet paid sufficient attention to this issue, especially related to the role of personality in cyberloafing. Recognizing such a research gap, and using a trait activation theory framework, this study examines whether conscientiousness and emotional stability negatively relate to cyberloafing. We further investigate how organizational justice perceptions and psychological empowerment moderate the negative relationship between these personality traits and cyberloafing. Based on a sample of 247 employees, we find that those high in conscientiousness cyberloaf less when they perceive greater levels of organizational justice. In addition, highly conscientious individuals cyberloaf less when they have low, rather than high, levels of psychological empowerment. Implications for research and practice as well as future research directions are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Drawing upon the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) framework, our study extends understanding of the interaction between human resource (HR) practices and the brokering of knowledge by hybrid middle managers. Examining health care delivered to older people in a hospital setting, our study highlights that hybrid nurse middle managers broker knowledge downward through professional hierarchy to their peer group, but find it difficult to broker knowledge upward. Meanwhile, because they lack legitimacy with doctors, they lack the opportunity to broker knowledge interprofessionally. Hybrid medical middle managers are potentially more able to broker knowledge within their peer group. However, some of lower status intraprofessionally, like nurses, may lack legitimacy and opportunity to do so. Meanwhile, higher-status medical middle managers may lack motivation to engage in knowledge brokering with peers outside their specialism. We suggest that inter- and intraprofessional power and status has important implications for HR practices to support knowledge brokering by hybrid middle managers. Should HR practices fail to support ability, motivation, and opportunity for knowledge brokering across and within professions, then a "broken" rather than "broker" chain may result. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study explored how managers' fairness perceptions of performance evaluation systems differ across countries and relate to their job satisfaction. Lack-of-group bias and transparency were the constructs used to assess fairness perceptions. The data sample consisted of 903 Asian managers from the subsidiaries of a leading multinational corporation (MNC) strategically expanding its retail markets in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand. Results showed that the fairness perceptions of lack-of-group bias and transparency concerning the common performance evaluation system varied within these Asian countries. Furthermore, those fairness perceptions were significantly related to job satisfaction among Asian managers overall, as well as in each of the five geographical subgroups with the exception of Hong Kong, where the perception of a lack-of-group bias was only marginally related to job satisfaction. These findings offer theoretical implications regarding organizational justice, cross-national management, and performance evaluation, as well as practical implications for leveraging organizational justice perceptions of performance evaluation systems for the effectiveness of MNCs. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Organizational research suggests that ambidexterity is attainable if top managers cultivate collective behavioral routines that enable them to synthesize large amounts of information and decision alternatives, and manage conflict and ambiguity. However, the type of information and knowledge sources that enable top managers to meet the knowledge demands of ambidexterity remains poorly understood. Toward that end, we argue that the extensiveness of top managers' social networks inside and outside the firm, on an integrative basis, can offer the dual knowledge benefits conducive to ambidexterity. Because ambidexterity entails the firm's departure from existing products, technologies, and practices, we further argue that the contribution of extensive networks to ambidexterity is conditional upon the collective volition of top managers to parlay extensive network opportunities into innovative pursuits. From a study of CEOs and top management teams in SMEs operating in technology-based industries, we find support for both a network extensiveness effect and the moderating role of a proactive commitment to innovation in shaping this effect. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
We develop and test a mediation model linking job insecurity to affective commitment and psychosomatic complaints via two distinct theoretical mechanisms: fairness and energy depletion. Analyses were based on 6,268 Belgian bank employees facing organizational change. Results from structural equation modeling showed that fairness and exhaustion partially mediated the association of job insecurity with affective commitment and psychosomatic complaints, respectively. Multiple group analysis showed that the relation between job insecurity and fairness gradually decreased across the three change stages, and that the exhaustion process was most prominent amid the change. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This work studies sales managers' perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices, and the mediating and moderating processes through which these practices are linked with affective commitment. Specifically, we tested whether work engagement mediated the relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and affective commitment using a sample of 117 sales managers from one large retail store. Furthermore, we tested whether managers' savoring strategies would moderate the positive relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and work engagement, and if the strength of the hypothesized indirect effects were conditional on the use of savoring strategies. Results showed that the relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and affective commitment was mediated by work engagement. In addition, savoring strategies were found to moderate the relationship between perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and work engagement, so that the highest levels of work engagement were found in individuals who reported high perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices and high use of savoring strategies. Finally, results support a conditional indirect effect of performance-oriented HR practices on predicting affective commitment via work engagement when levels of savoring strategies were moderate to high, but not when their use was low. Altogether, these results demonstrated that work engagement and savoring strategies represent key elements in explaining how perceptions of performance-oriented HR practices are associated with affective commitment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
With companies investing vast sums of money on sponsoring high-profile sports events, it is surprising that very little research exists to examine the possible impact that this has on the sponsors' employees. This two-wave panel study explores the indirect role that Olympic sponsorship and employee support for this sponsorship has on increases in organizational identification and discretionary effort—via, that is, pride and employee assessments of their employer's corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials. The current study surveyed 241 employees (from three countries) in two phases across a 12-month period in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics. Olympic sponsorship support was found to be positively associated with organizational pride and CSR perceptions, which both predict increases in organizational identification and discretionary effort (controlling for earlier baseline levels of these outcomes). In addition, there is also evidence of an indirect positive effect (through CSR perceptions and pride) of Olympic sponsorship support on increases in organizational identification and discretionary effort. The implications of these findings for decision makers considering sponsoring major sporting events are discussed; the findings provide interesting insights that can help HR functions to understand the consequences of sports sponsorship and processes involved that explain positive employee responses. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
We suggest that a firm's benefits can relate to important organizational outcomes that have strategic implications. We propose a number of mechanisms that could relate benefits to strategic outcomes, including the notion that benefits can help attract and retain the type of employees who are most likely to perform in ways consistent with the firms' strategies. We illustrate this with the case of supplemental retirement benefits in an actual setting, the long-haul trucking industry. We report positive organization-level relationships associated with the management choice of offering these benefits. Our results show that firms offering supplemental retirement plans engage in significantly safer driving practices, as measured by the proxy of driver insurance costs, as hypothesized. These findings show that benefits can be related to outcomes that have strategic implications for the firm. By showing that retirement plans may be of value to organizations, we help to bridge the academic-practitioner divide and provide motivation and guidance for additional work on this important but underresearched topic. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Women international assignees have historically been successful, but they make up a relatively low proportion of organizationally assigned expatriates. By appreciating the factors that encourage women to undertake internationally mobile careers, organizations can widen their talent pool. Using a triangulated, qualitative research approach set within two case study firms in the oil and gas exploration and production industry, this article identifies contrasting views between female assignees and their organizations with respect to the purpose of expatriation and the factors women take into consideration in their decision to undertake it. This research is based on analysis of organizational policy; a survey of 71 women expatriates and in-depth, semistructured interviews with 26 female assignees (selected from the survey returns using stratified sampling); and interviews with 14 human resource professionals responsible for international mobility policy design and implementation. Career, family, and financial precondition effects are identified. From these, a model is proposed to link stated organizational assignment purpose with women's participation rationales, and recommendations for practice to increase expatriate gender diversity are set out. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Drawing on a multilevel study of commissioning, employers, and care staff, this article explores the role of time in the management of domiciliary care work for older adults in England and the consequences for the employment conditions of care staff. An index of fragmented time practices among 52 independent-sector domiciliary care providers reveals widespread tendencies to use zero-hours contracts and limit paid hours to face-to-face contact time, leaving travel time and other work-related activities unpaid. Care staff interviews reveal how fragmented time creates insecurities and demands high work engagement. Time management practices are shown to derive directly from strict time-based local authority commissioning. Subcontractors, both independent small firms and those belonging to national chains, can at best adopt human resource (HR) policies that are partial routes to failure, as evident in widespread recruitment and retention problems. Informal HR practices to accommodate working-time preferences help to retain individual staff, but adjustments are often marginal, adversely affect other staff and fail to expand the recruitment pool for social care. Labor shortages are likely to persist as long as workers are required to adapt to a regime of fragmented time and to work more hours than are paid, even at pay rates close to the national minimum wage. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Researchers have argued that creativity is intrinsically motivated, and that rewarding creativity can stifle creativity. Using a sample of 310 employees reporting to 50 different supervisors, we instead show that rewarding creativity influences the relationship between creativity and performance by changing the nature of expressed creativity. We do this by examining novelty and usefulness as separate dimensions. High perceived reward enhances the relationship between novelty and performance while diminishing the relationship between usefulness and performance. The moderating effect of reward for creativity on the relationship between creativity and performance was not observed when we operationalized creativity as an integrated, unidimensional construct. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Human resource management systems may serve as an antecedent that enables firms to develop a context for ambidexterity—an ability to pursue contradictory processes (exploitation versus exploration) within the same firm. The aim of this article is to examine the impact of motivation-enhancing HR practices on the productivity, motivation, and performance of commercial bank employees to promote and attain contextual ambidexterity within the organization. The theoretical model presented in this article shows how ex-ante incentives (incentives based on past performance) and ex-post incentives (incentives based on future performance) affect productivity, motivation, and performance of employees. The results are tested empirically by analyzing real quarterly data of commercial bank employees in Israel. The main results show that workers with relatively high abilities might take advantage of both ex-ante and ex-post incentives. In contrast, workers with relatively low ability are unable to take advantage of both incentive schemes. Our findings indicate that motivation-enhancing HR practices such as financial incentives significantly influence the productivity and performance of employees. Our study contributes to the ambidexterity literature by examining how motivation-enhancing human resource (HR) practices such as incentive schemes make employees feel the sense of stretch that is essential in building an ambidextrous organization. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
A pragmatic "holy grail" of organizational aspirations, ambidexterity is increasingly gaining the attention of executives and scholars alike, presenting them with a frame of thought and a functional strategic attitude that befits the perplexing nature of contemporary business contexts. Aiming to cover one of the most noticeable gaps in knowledge on the subject, this exploratory research studies the evolutionary process of a divisional multi-business-unit organization to an ambidextrous one. We thus identify the determinants of a successful evolution and propose an executive-oriented comprehensive model towards divisionalized ambidexterity. In this context, we answer critical questions relating to the relative weight of innovation within multiunit business ambidexterity, the requisite means and aims of the structural and contextual determinants of success, and the role of top management. We conclude that there is a strategic need for balance between internal and external congruence; and that multiunit integration must be such as to achieve an internal solidification of systems and processes, as well as external adaptability and market flexibility; all within an incessantly changing and unpredictable business environment. The value of the research to human resource management knowledge lies in its focus on multiunit business ambidextrous evolution; and in its consequential scientifically founded practical elucidations of executive worth. Equally importantly, though, the findings transcend theoretical constrictions to provide an in-context business perspective through a comprehensive system that considers also strategic and environmental realities. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Multilevel modeling is important for human resource management (HRM) research in that it often analyzes and interprets hierarchal data residing at more than one level of analysis. However, HRM research in general lags behind other disciplines, such as education, health, marketing, and psychology in the use of a multilevel analytical strategy. This article integrates the most recent literature into the theoretical and applied basics of multilevel modeling applicable to HRM research. A range of multilevel modeling issues have been discussed and they include statistical logic underpinning multilevel modeling, level conceptualization of variables, data aggregation, hypothesis tests, reporting mediation paths, and cross-level interactions. An empirical example concerning complex cross-level mediated moderation is presented that will suffice to illustrate the principles and the procedures for implementing a multilevel analytical strategy in HRM research. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
The work reentry period following the birth of a first child is a time of uncertainty for a professional woman. During reentry, a new mother is often questioning who she is and how effective she can be as a mother and working professional. In this study, we conceptualize reentry as a period of resocialization as we explore the first-time mother's changing self-concept during this time. Specifically, we develop a model that explores the identity and efficacy uncertainties that women experience during resocialization. This model draws attention to the influence organizational context has on the degree of uncertainty women experience and to the adjustment tactics women engage to manage their identity and efficacy uncertainty. We discuss the implications these findings have for both socialization research and work-life theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This is a study centered on the impact of the specific set of HRM practices on organizational performance (OP) within an emerging-market setting. It seeks to explore which HR practices are most closely associated with better OP within the financial services industry in Jordan based on a survey of managers and the annual reports of the companies encompassed by the study. It was found that the only HR practice seen to consistently impact on OP was training; in other words, we did not encounter any recognizable "bundle" of HR practices that optimized OP across the sector. We argue that this reflects the weaker and more partially coupled nature of institutions in many emerging markets, which makes it difficult to generate the type of complementarities associated between regulation and practice in mature markets. It also reflects the limited transferability of perceived best practice models in the context of emerging-market settings. Although belied by objective firm performance data, many respondents believed that it was not only training but also the extensive usage of extrinsic incentives (pay and promotion) that would translate into superior results. This highlights the limitations of relying on managerial reported performance data in exploring the consequences of specific HR practices. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
In the United States, the labor force continues to age. As age increases, so does the likeliness of needing disability accommodation. Prior research indicates that people with disabilities often do not request needed accommodations when they assess that others at work would perceive a request as normatively inappropriate. Little, however, is currently known about the impact of age on these assessments. In this study, we integrate prior research on age, disability, social identity, and climate to propose and then test a model of the relationship between requesters' age and their normative assessments using survey data from 242 people who became hearing impaired prior to entering the workforce. As hypothesized, requester age was negatively associated with normative appropriateness assessment favorability. Moreover, this negative influence was stronger in for-profit organizational contexts and in workgroup contexts in which the requester lacked a coworker with a disability. Having a coworker with a similar disability also partially mediated the moderating effect of organization type on the association between age and normative appropriateness assessment favorability. Implications for research and practice are discussed. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
When the government and companies invest in childcare, both do it with good intentions. While politicians have the intention of enhancing fertility and well-being of families, employers expect positive responses from working parents based on the norm of reciprocity. Since industrialized countries increase public family support year by year, the question arises as to whether this may trigger unanticipated consequences. If both the state and companies invest in substitutive services, they might unintentionally spark competition. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine whether public childcare may "crowd out" the reciprocity effects of corporate childcare on working parents. In Switzerland, state family policies vary among the 26 cantons, so we are able to compare cantons with a high and low number of cantonal childcare services. Using survey data taken from 414 working parents living in different Swiss cantons, we examined whether public childcare affects organizational-related responses of working parents. First, our results support the expected level of reciprocity: working parents in companies with their own childcare services show higher organizational commitment than parents in companies without this support. Second, we find evidence for a crowding-out effect: in family-supportive cantons with numerous public childcare services, working parents' commitment to companies with their own childcare services is lower than in less family-friendly cantons. This finding reignites an old economic debate on the crowding out of voluntary private investments due to governmental policies. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
We study the resilience of the "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" in times of financial crisis by analyzing their long-term financial performance. Apart from implementing methods that tackle the statistical problems of stock returns, we use a conditional model to measure financial performance in periods of market growth (bull markets) and market downturn (bear markets). We find that best places to work are indeed resilient in times of crisis since neither their financial performance nor their systematic risk are affected during bear markets: top companies continue to outperform the market during periods of crisis, and the performance of lower-ranked great workplaces does not deteriorate. Moreover, we find that previous studies were overestimating performance, and only great workplaces on the top half of the rankings exhibit positive excessive returns. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Although staffing can be a critical determinant of whether small businesses succeed or fail, there has been less research in this area than might be expected, given the large numbers of such firms. While there has been some research on specific recruiting and selection practices, there has been little attention to the strategic aspects of staffing. We investigated relationships between strategic approaches to staffing and small-firm performance using lagged survey data from 139 founders and owners of small firms. Results indicate that recruiting approaches imitating the practices (processes) of larger businesses are positively related to a perceptual measure of firm performance. Selection approaches stressing a growth orientation are also positively related to firm performance. Finally, founders' and owners' perceptions of the strategic importance of human resources moderate the relationship of firm performance with imitative recruiting practices as well as with growth-oriented selection practices. An important contribution of this article is that contextual knowledge facilitates our understanding of the performance implications of staffing practices in small firms. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
We studied the problem of rating-level bias and rating accuracy among retail managers of a Fortune 500 retailer. Hypotheses were tested regarding the relationship among managers' Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality characteristics, their competence in performance management, and their levels of bias and accuracy in appraisals made in situations differing on levels of rater accountability. Associate store managers (N = 125) rated subordinates, peers and managers under conditions of high and low rater accountability. We found support for the stability of rating-level bias across rating situations. Raters' levels of agreeableness and assertiveness were related to mean rating levels across situations, and U-shaped relationships were found in predicting one measure of rating accuracy such that high and low levels of these two traits were related to greater rating inaccuracy. Conscientiousness scores were significantly (and negatively) correlated with highly accountable mean ratings of subordinates. Performance management competence was related to rating-level bias in both high- and low-accountability conditions and contributed incremental validity in the prediction of rating level and rating accuracy. Our results indicate that the most lenient raters are more agreeable, less assertive, and less competent in performance management. These raters may also be less accurate. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
In an experimental study and a field study, we studied whether high-commitment human resource management (HC-HRM) is more effective when employees can make sense of HRM (attribute HRM to management). In the experimental study (n = 354), employees' HC-HRM perceptions were evoked by a management case, and their attributions were manipulated with an information pattern based on the three dimensions of the covariation principle of the attribution theory: distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus. As expected, the results showed that the effect of HC-HRM on affective organizational commitment was stronger when employees understood HRM as was intended by management. This experimental finding was confirmed in a cross-level field study (n = 639 employees within 42 organizations): the relationship between HC-HRM, on one hand, and affective organizational commitment and innovative behavior, on the other hand, was stronger under the condition that employees could make sense of HRM. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study examines the effects of the perceived congruity of recruitment advertisements and organizational image on organizational attractiveness. Based on Mandler's schema congruity theory (1982) and on recruitment research, we developed hypotheses and tested them on a sample of 1,091 individuals. The results show that recruitment advertisements that conform to the organization's image show a higher degree of attractiveness to applicants, particularly because these advertisements have higher resulting credibility than advertisements with low congruity. Furthermore, applicants' level of familiarity with the organization moderates the relationship between congruity and organizational attractiveness, as congruent recruitment advertisements lead to more positive effects for well-known organizations. This suggests that highly recognizable organizations should use congruent advertisements to unleash the full potential of their recruitment efforts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Whereas prior research has focused on structural, demographic, and human capital factors to predict who gets laid off, the current study examines affective organizational commitment as an additional attribute related to an employee's layoff chances. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between affective organizational commitment and an individual's layoff chances, as well as whether this relationship differs between high and low performers. Event history analysis is conducted using survey data with matched personnel records from 3,057 employees across 563 Australian bank branches. After controlling for numerous predictors of layoffs, the results demonstrate that affective organizational commitment decreases the likelihood of an employee being laid off. Further, the effects of affective organizational commitment on an individual's layoff chances are greater for lower performers than higher performers. We discuss the implications of these findings for researchers and practitioners. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
The present study generalizes previous pay dispersion research to the Chinese context by examining the cross-level relationship between workgroup salary dispersion and employee turnover intention contingent on individual differences. Field survey data including annual objective salary and self-reported attitudes among 370 Chinese employees in 51 organizational workgroups supported our cultural predictions by showing that the relationship between workgroup salary dispersion and turnover intention was positive only among employees with higher rather than lower levels of Chinese traditionality and among those with lower rather than higher salary levels. Furthermore, the results of mediated moderation analyses suggest that a dual-deprivation path model can explain the above relationships. We discuss the theoretical, cultural, and practical implications of these findings for organizations. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Scholars have suggested that we need a better understanding about the drivers and performance implications of managers' ambidexterity. By building a human resource management perspective on managers' ambidexterity, this article not only examines organizational and functional tenure as important antecedents, but also provides novel insights into the contextual conditions under which the ambidextrous behavior of managers contributes to individual performance. Based on survey research among managers of two large firms, our results indicate that while organizational tenure contributes to managers' ambidextrous behavior, functional tenure actually limits such complex behavior. Our study also reveals how managers' performance results from the interaction between their ambidextrous behavior and the uncertainty as well as the interdependence of their work context. Results indicate that managers' ambidexterity contributes to individual performance in more uncertain and interdependent work contexts. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
This study seeks to advance previous research by linking top management team (TMT) processes to organizational ambidexterity, and highlights the importance of environmental dynamism as a boundary condition on the effectiveness of TMTs in promoting balance between exploratory and exploitative learning. The findings from multiple respondents (245 TMT members, including the CEO of the SBUs, and 883 employees) in 101 small-sized strategic business units (SBUs) with a defined product line indicate that TMT behavioral integration helps build ambidexterity, but that the influence of TMT behavioral integration on ambidexterity is stronger when the task environment is characterized by a high level of dynamism. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the conditions under which behaviorally integrated TMTs are able to pursue an ambidextrous orientation in relatively small-sized units. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Drawing on the knowledge-based view of the firm, this article provides the first empirical study that explicitly investigates the relationship between different categories of international assignees and knowledge transfer in multinational corporations (MNCs). Specifically, we examine (1) the extent to which expatriate presence in different functional areas is related to knowledge transfer from and to headquarters in these functions and (2) the extent to which different categories of international assignees (expatriates vs. inpatriates) contribute to knowledge transfer from and to headquarters. We base our investigation on a large-scale survey, encompassing data from more than 800 subsidiaries of MNCs in 13 countries. By disaggregating the role of knowledge transfer across management functions, directions of knowledge transfer, and type of international assignees, we find that (1) expatriate presence generally increases function-specific knowledge transfer from and, to a lesser extent, to headquarters; and that (2) the relevance of expatriates and former inpatriates varies for knowledge flows between headquarters and subsidiaries. Additionally, we discuss implications for research and practice, in particular regarding different management functions and different forms of international assignments, and provide suggestions for future research. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Human resource practitioners and academics have increasingly realized the importance of corporate governance for firm human resource activities. This study investigates how one important form of corporate governance, namely, ownership within large, publicly traded firms, is associated with a firm's use of commitment human resource practices (CHRPs), specifically, the use of incentive compensation, profit sharing, and participative decision making. Our findings indicate that the types of large investor, namely, family and institutional, are differentially associated with the likelihood of the firm using these CHRPs. Specifically, family owners with their long-term investment horizon, as well as their stakeholder orientation, increase the likelihood of the firm using these practices. In contrast, large institutional owners with their shorter-term investment horizon, as well as their investor orientation, decrease the likelihood of the firm using these practices. Furthermore, among institutional investors, transient institutional investors are negatively associated with these practices, while dedicated institutional investors are not associated with these practices. Taken together, our results regarding the positive association of family ownership and this subset of CHRPs and the negative association of transient institutional investors and this set of practices, have important implications for human resource professionals who not only need to understand how ownership affects HR practices but also how to articulate the value of these investments in order to attract investors. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Two pioneering books published in 1984 arguably launched the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM). The first is Strategic Human Resource Management by Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna; the second is Managing Human Assets by Beer, Spector, Lawrence, Mills, and Walton. This article provides a 30th anniversary review of the two books, partly to honor their pioneering contributions but also to use them as a lens for examining how the field has subsequently evolved and developed. Two recently published SHRM books are used as a benchmark for this analysis. The review identifies areas of SHRM constancy and change, major theoretical and empirical innovations, and newly developed research questions and directions, largely in an American context. Diagrammatic models of SHRM are synthesized and compared from the four books; also, nine specific dimensions of evolution in the field are highlighted with discussion of advances and shortcomings. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Professor Bruce Kaufman's look back at two seminal books published at the beginning of the strategic HRM field and examination of two recent books to trace the evolution of the field identifies some issues, but ones with which the field has dealt for a number of years. His choice of our book HRM and Performance provided the wrong target, and consequently his analysis seemed to miss the mark. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
I agree with Bruce Kaufman's evaluation of the HRM field and the danger to its relevance if change does not take place in the field's almost exclusive use of normal science, lack of focus on organizational change and development and indifference to the development of useful and usable knowledge. I use the development of the Harvard Business School's first-ever required course in HRM and Managing Human Assets, the book that grew from the course, to illustrate why and how the strategic HRM perspective of the book emerged. I go on to argue that we do not need more proof that HRM practices are associated with financial performance. The best CEOs already believe this, though they need knowledge and practices that will enable them to develop a positive sustainable HRM system. HRM research, both normal and action science, must answer the question of how a "great" HRM system—practices, leadership, organization design, culture, and change processes—might be developed over time (its takes years) and how great companies can avoid the liquidation of intangible assets in the face of pressures for short-term performance. I describe my own work to illustrate the future direction HRM should take methodologically and conceptually. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Strategic human resource management (SHRM) is the choice, alignment, and integration of an organization's HRM system so its human capital resources most effectively contribute to strategic business objectives. Kaufman's review (this issue) of four books in the field revealed key differences in two areas: the intended audience (academics and general managers versus researchers only) and orientation (the use of field observer and participant observation methods versus ivory tower scientism). Overemphasis on the latter produces research that is relevant only to academics and that is not used in organizations. I argue, as have others, that in addition to rigor, a successful scientific discipline must prove itself relevant to the society in which it is embedded. Hence, the objectives of SHRM should be twofold: to influence academic thinking and conceptualizing, but also to alter the way managers set priorities and make decisions. To do that, researchers have to work directly with managers. The challenge is to create models that reflect a broader view of performance as well as more complete taxonomies of internal and external factors that help shape business and HR strategies. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Thirty years on from the seminal works on human resource management (HRM) by Beer et al., we examine how the subject has developed. We offer a normative review, based on that model and critique the assumption that the business of HRM is solely to improve returns to owners and shareholders. We identify the importance of a wider view of stakeholders to practitioners and how academic studies on the periphery of HRM are beginning to adopt such a view. We argue that the HRM studies so far have given us much valuable learning but that the subject has now reached a point where we need to take a wider, more contextual, more multilayered approach founded on the long-term needs of all relevant stakeholders. The original Beer et al. model remains a valuable guide to the next 30 years of HRM. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
The organizational inducement model proposed in this study seeks to examine the mediating role of perceived insider status (PIS) and the moderating role of vertical collectivism on the relationship between organizational inducements and employees' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Among a sample of Chinese employees, the authors find that the organizational inducements of perceived supervisor support and participation led to higher levels of PIS, which in turn enhanced OCB. Furthermore, vertical collectivism moderated the relationship between PIS and OCB, such that their relationship grew stronger when collectivism was high. These findings have notable implications for theory and practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
There is no consensus as to what constructs should be considered to be psychological climate. Further, there is no clear taxonomy of psychological climate, although the climate literature suggests that psychological climate perceptions should form higher-order (i.e., abstract, broad) dimensions. Two meta-analyses have been conducted to evaluate higher-order frameworks, but neither study tested the psychometric structure of their hypothesized models. The current meta-analysis estimated the intercorrelations and criterion-related validity of 23 psychological climate constructs in order to test the theoretical frameworks proposed by prior meta-analyses. Confirmatory factor analyses supplemented by a method analogous to item-to-scale correlations indicated little empirical support for the a priori frameworks. Results suggest that that psychological climate may be parsimoniously represented by two dimensions. Task climate was most strongly indicated by supervisor goal setting, innovation, and organizational responsiveness. Relational climate was most strongly indicated by work group warmth and social rewards. A path analysis was estimated to test whether job satisfaction partially mediated the association between psychological climate and the outcomes of job performance, turnover intentions, and psychological well-being. Results provide guidance to researchers and practitioners interested in measuring perceptions of the work environment. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
We examine the relationship between agent (CEO) risk bearing and the quality of executive risk-taking outcomes, by examining the contingency effect of CEO perceived firm efficacy. In doing so, we extend the behavioral agency model (BAM) beyond predictions of risk magnitude to examining how CEO risk-taking outcomes differ qualitatively in response to risk bearing. We argue that CEO risk bearing (due to stock options or cash compensation) will positively influence performance outcomes in the presence of higher perceived firm efficacy. However, this positive influence reverses when efficacy is lower. We demonstrate the utility of firm efficacy in exploring the effect of agent risk bearing on performance outcomes and provide the insight that the CEO pay-performance relationship is influenced by the CEO's perception of firm efficacy. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
Although speculation of the curvilinear relations between job insecurity and job-related behaviors is theoretically appealing, the empirical evidence has been sparse. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the literature on job insecurity and work withdrawal behaviors by reexamining their curvilinear relation, and the effects of achievement orientation and propensity for risk aversion on this U-shaped relationship. Using samples with both secure and insecure job situations, we hypothesized that job insecurity could have both positive and negative effects on work withdrawal simultaneously; however, one of these effects could dominate the other at different levels of job insecurity. That is, a U shape would best describe such a relationship, since a moderate level of job insecurity would result in the lowest level of work withdrawal. Furthermore, we hypothesized that achievement orientation and propensity for risk aversion moderates this relationship in such a way that the curvilinear relationship is weaker (flattened curve) when the individual's achievement orientation is high, and that the curvilinear relationship is stronger (steep curve) when the individual's propensity for risk aversion is high. Results show that these hypotheses were supported; implications and limitations of the study are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>
The present study examines the direct and moderating effects of an international career orientation in the relationship between frequency and duration of international business traveling and work-to-life conflict and enrichment. In addition, the effort-reward imbalance that potentially features in the international business traveler's job was examined in relation to work-to-life conflict and enrichment. The study was conducted among 232 Finnish people in jobs requiring international business travel. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis shows that travel of considerable duration and a pronounced effort-reward imbalance had direct links to work-to-life conflict. In contrast, low effort-reward imbalance and a strong international career orientation had direct links to work-to-life enrichment. In addition, having a strong orientation to an international career decreases work-to-life conflict when a job requires very frequent traveling, but the moderation effect was not found in relation to duration of traveling. Our findings indicate that interventions aimed at reducing work-to-life conflict and increasing work-to-life enrichment among international business travelers should focus on fostering a balance between efforts and rewards at work. The extent of employees' internationalism should also be considered when recruiting people into jobs involving international business travel. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.]]>


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Free Resource Site for Math TeachersMore Related Discussions
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Hoping to see some great stuff to use in my classroom this year.
I love the TeacherZone math site. I'm a middle school math teacher teaching 90% of the time without a textbook using a promethean board and technology so this is great!
Good 2 -3 minute videos on every conceept skill you can imagine.
Thank you for the resource. I am always looking for additional ways to demonstrate methods.
Thanks so much for sharing!
What a great resource tool you've introduced me to. The short lesson videos are essential! Thank you so much for sharing this helpful information...I will be sure to utilize it. All math teachers should review this resource, especially at the middle school grade level.
I just joined today and am so glad I did! I did not know about this website and just checked it out. Fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing this.
www.123math.ca has 4 programs to teach the 4 operations. The additon program is free, has over 270 pages per operation of instructions for teachers, 28 audio files, flash card designs, email address if questions with the program, the Addition Program is free download - a Grade 3 student whose mother thought she was math challenged forever, started the program in March, finished the 4 operations in August, went from the bottom 3 of her Grade 3 class to the top 3 of her Grade 4 class and now in her final year of univeristy, experienced few problems with math after she mastered her basic facts.
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New Zealand-based infrastructure and
utilities investment group Infratil has lifted its stake in Glasgow Prestwick
International Airport in Scotland to 77.3% from 67%.
Infratil says in a statement that it
paid £6.025 million ($10.5 million) for the 2.2 million additional shares and
2.2 million warrants to acquire 2.2 million more shares at £1.52 each.
The company acquired the shares from
Scottish investment company Omniport, which was part of a consortium involving
Infratil that bought the airport in January 2001.
Infratil chairman Kevin O'Connor
says Glasgow Prestwick airport has shown strong growth since the consortium
purchased it nearly three years ago, when just over 900,000 passengers were
handled annually. In the 12 months to November the airport handled 1.8 million
passengers, while for the six months to 30 September its earnings before interest,
depreciation and tax were £3.02 million.
"When we first acquired our
shareholding in Glasgow Prestwick International Airport we were seeking to broaden
Infratil's portfolio of assets and, in particular, were seeking exposure to the
high-growth UK regional airport sector," says O'Connor.
"This sector remains a key focus for
Infratil. An effective way of increasing exposure to this sector is to increase
the level of investment in an asset already well known to us."
International Airport serving New Zealand's capital city.


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The Rainbow Colored Deer Games
Release History
|Monkey Mofo
|Isayonline Services
|North America
|06th February 2014
|App Store
Game Overview
Monkey Mofo is a puzzle game developed by Lucky Red Fish and released on Android, iOS, Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita, Wii U.
A easy to learn action puzzler :similar to the classic Lemmings:, Monkeys that are pretty stupid have to be directed over around an obstacle course and safely guided to the goal avoiding minions, trumpets , spinners and bombs - just to name a very few - will assure that this won't be an easy task.You will face :over 200 fast-paced and varied levels:. To reach each levels goal these super cute Monkeys, you will be provided with various power ups and including speed-ups, stops and many more.
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(CHATSWORTH, CA) -- Simultaneous VHS & DVD release - Street Date Feb-4-03. DVSX Presents Cream Filling Internal Cumshot Cuties Directed by Zakk Wylde Produced by Astoria Productions Starring: Ashley Long, Brittney Skye, Hanna, Sharon Wild, Lucie, Pavla, Misty, Katy. Have you reserved your copy?
What could be a better way to finish off a hot fuck than to cum inside? On February 4th, DVSX delivers Cream Filling. This title features 8 hot chicks and their favorite dish: sweet love-cream in their warm, soft, cum-hungry pussies. Watch out! Things can get explosive as the jizz meets the juice. For an extra treat, check out the same-day-release DVD, which includes a bonus sex scene for your viewing pleasure.
Toll Free: 866.444.DVSX
Office: 818.341.3939
Fax: 818.341.3993
A letter from the desk of Jennifer Main
Dear press:
Where's the cream filling? We've got your cream filling right here. DVSX is proud to announce our Brand Spanking New Internal Cum Shot line appropriately entitled "Cream Filling" Directed by "Zakk Wylde" Produced by "Astoria Productions."
Cum on inside, the sex is awesome! Careful, it's hot gooey and gets all over the place; it's what we call "The good stuff!" This video brings a whole new meaning to the term "swallow." the cream gets pumped into these willing sex dolls just about anywhere these studs can stick their utensils. Cream Filling has what we like to call "The Cum Spot." Just watch as these girls spit that creamy white goodness right out of their hot little boxes again and again!
Just think hot oozing cum dripping from the tight warm pussy of each of our hot starlets! Our Internal Cumshot Cutie all-star line up offers you the luscious Hanna, Ashley Long, Brittney Skye, Sharon Wild, Lucie, Pavla, Misty, and Katy! We give you 8 honeys, 6 scenes, and 2 hours to give you that extra wanking time you want. But can you get through the whole movie without cumming? We doubt it!
Playfully yours,
Jennifer Main
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