HR systems and leadership attachment affecting idea generation and implementation: An experiment and two-source multi-level study

This paper focuses on the direct and interactive influence of leadership attachment styles (secure, anxious, and avoidant) and commitment HR system on two distinct stages of the individual innovation process—idea generation and implementation. We test our hypotheses in two studies. An experimental study of undergraduate students establishes a positive effect of secure attachment on idea implementation. The interplay between commitment HR system and avoidant attachment marginally predict idea generation; commitment HR system and neither secure nor anxious attachment predict implementation. A multisource multi-level field study in three EU-based private firms replicates the direct role of commitment HR system in stimulating idea implementation (but not generation) and suggests that secure attachment fosters both generation and implementation, whereas anxious attachment hinders both. Moderation analyses support only a marginal interaction between commitment HR system and secure attachment in fostering idea generation. We discuss theoretical, practical, and future research implications.     

How high-commitment HRM relates to PC violation and outcomes: The mediating role of supervisor support and PC fulfilment at individual and organizational levels

Psychological contract (PC) constitutes a theoretical framework for; explaining labor relationships, and it has been considered as a; mediation step between structural variables and processes and work and; organizational outcomes. Whereas PC (un)fulfillment; showed consistent relationships with variables such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance, or absenteeism, the effects of PC; violation (emotional answers that develop after perceptions of PC; breach) have been less investigated. In addition, structural antecedents; of PC constructs had included Human Resources (HR) practices. This paper aims to extend; research on PC and its role as a mediator between HR practices and work; outcomes, both at individual and organizational levels. Specifically, we; examined the impact of human resource practices on employee performance; and sickness absences through a sequence of supervisor support, PC; fulfillment and PC violation. In a sample of 4648 employees from 214; companies of seven different countries, our results indicate that high-commitment; human resource practices were significantly and negatively; related to PC violation through supervisor support and positively to PC; fulfillment; in turn, PC violation was negatively related to employee; performance and positively to sick leave. These relationships at the; individual level were partially replicated at the organizational level, developing partial homologous models and showing that shared perceptions; about HR practices lead to shared perceptions on PC affecting collective; outcomes. Therefore, the findings shed new light on PC theory, regarding; the mediating role of PC constructs and negative emotions in the; relationships between HR practices and support from supervisors and performance at individual and organizational levels.     

From Intended to Actual and Beyond: A Cross‐Disciplinary View of (Human Resource Management) Implementation

Despite increasing interest in human resource management (HRM) implementation as an explanation for the association between HRM and firm performance, considerable confusion remains about what implementation means. In order to develop conceptual definitions of HRM implementation and implementation effectiveness, this study builds on three different literatures outside the HRM field (strategy, innovation, and change management), which have addressed this topic extensively. As a result, implementation is characterized as a dynamic process, involving the interaction among multiple actors, starting with the adoption of a new practice and ending with its routinization. This is distinguished from implementation effectiveness as an outcome of that process. The study helps to achieve construct clarity, hence providing a more solid basis for future research and allowing for a better consolidation of findings. The authors also develop an agenda for further research by reviewing a number of theoretical and methodological approaches that have been used in implementation research across fields, including HRM. Overall, the study aims to establish implementation research as a highly relevant academic and practical quest not only in HRM, but also in other management literatures.     

Human Resource Management as a Field of Research*

Drawing on Snow and Thomas's (Journal of Management Studies, 31 (1994), pp. 457–480) matrix, we empirically explore the state of the art in human resource management (HRM) research. The data were obtained through a questionnaire directed to HRM scholars all over the world, in which they were asked about their particular theoretical and methodological approaches. The evidence obtained shows clearly that HRM scholars are progressively abandoning the universalistic perspective and completing their models with contingent and contextual variables. Trying to classify the different contributions proposed and discuss their integration, HRM is described as a field of research with three dimensions: subfunctional, strategic and international. The paper concludes that to provide reliable explanations and valid responses to professional problems, HRM research must advance simultaneously in these three dimensions. As follows from our analysis, there are certain HR issues that still need to be addressed: (1) the strategic use of HR practices, (2) their international applicability, (3) global HR strategies and (4) the synergic integration of HR activities. Nevertheless, to advance our knowledge in these issues, it seems necessary to integrate previous research in subfunctional, strategic and international aspects of HRM.     

The role of international human resource in leading a company from a domestic to a global corporate culture

One of the biggest challenges facing HR is to help a company move from a domestic corporate orientation to working in a global business environment. Using the international human resource department as an example of where this transformation must occur first, the global paradigm shift is explored from the theoretical (international human resource management models) and practical (global HR competencies) perspectives. The discussion is supplemented with a cross-cultural HR development plan necessary to accomplish this cultural transformation.     

Ethics and human resource management and development in a global context: case study of an Indian multinational

A firm's orientation to ethics is influenced largely by its national and organizational culture. Research shows that a growing number of Indian firms place a distinct emphasis on long-term orientation to business strategy with a social mission, underpinned by firm commitment to core organizational values, employee development and welfare. Through a case study of a large Indian multinational conglomerate, this article provides preliminary evidence of how some emerging economy firms are successfully mixing and matching indigenous business and people management strategies with the Western emphasis on meritocracy and professionalism to compete in the contemporary global economy. It further shows how the human resource development (HRD) discipline can play a pro-active role in embedding ethics and values throughout the organizational and HR architecture. The HRD professionals in the case study firm also face several structural and cultural challenges in discharging their ethics-driven HR mandate, such as management's ethnocentric attitude to global staffing and clash of work cultures.     

Do Human Resource Practices Enhance Organizational Commitment in SMEs with Low Employee Satisfaction?

This paper considers a large matched employee–employer data set to estimate a model of organizational commitment. In particular, it focuses on the role of firm size and management formality to explain organizational commitment in British small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) with high and low levels of employee satisfaction. It is shown that size ‘in itself’ can explain differences in organizational commitment, and that organizational commitment tends to be higher in organizations with high employee satisfaction compared with organizations of similar size with low employee satisfaction. Crucially, the results suggest that formal human resource (HR) practices can be used as important tools to increase commitment and thus, potentially, effort and performance within underperforming SMEs with low employee satisfaction. However, formal HR practices commonly used by large firms may be unnecessary in SMEs which benefit from high employee satisfaction and positive employment relations within a context of informality.     

Unsold Versus Unbought Commitment: Minimum Total Commitment Contracts with Nonzero Setup Costs

We study a minimum total commitment (MTC) contract embedded in a finite‐horizon periodic‐review inventory system. Under this contract, the buyer commits to purchase a minimum quantity of a single product from the supplier over the entire planning horizon. We consider nonstationary demand and per‐unit cost, discount factor, and nonzero setup cost. Because the formulations used in existing literature are unable to handle our setting, we develop a new formulation based on a state transformation technique using unsold commitment instead of unbought commitment as state variable. We first revisit the zero setup cost case and show that the optimal ordering policy is an unsold‐commitment‐dependent base‐stock policy. We also provide a simpler proof of the optimality of the dual base‐stock policy. We then study the nonzero setup cost case and prove a new result, that the optimal solution is an unsold‐commitment‐dependent (s, S) policy. We further propose two heuristic policies, which numerical tests show to perform very well. We also discuss two extensions to show the generality of our method's effectiveness. Finally, we use our results to examine the effect of different contract terms such as duration, lead time, and commitment on buyer's cost. We also compare total supply chain profits under periodic commitment, MTC, and no commitment.     

Self‐Control and the Theory of Consumption

To study the behavior of agents who are susceptible to temptation in infinite horizon consumption problems under uncertainty, we define and characterize dynamic self‐control (DSC) preferences. DSC preferences are recursive and separable. In economies with DSC agents, equilibria exist but may be inefficient; in such equilibria, steady state consumption is independent of initial endowments and increases in self‐control. Increasing the preference for commitment while keeping self‐control constant increases the equity premium. Removing nonbinding constraints changes equilibrium allocations and prices. Debt contracts can be sustained even if the only feasible punishment for default is the termination of the contract.     

Organizational interventions: A research-based framework for the evaluation of both process and effects

Abstract

Organizational interventions are often recommended when organizations want to improve employee psychological health and well-being. Research, however, has revealed inconsistent results and reviewers have called for research on why interventions either bring about desired change or fail to do so. Answering the “how” and “why” of intervention outcomes requires a close examination of the elements that hinder or facilitate desired outcomes, thus moving beyond evaluation of only the overall effects. In this paper, we present an evaluation framework based on recent intervention research and process-oriented organization theory. The framework offers suggestions for which elements to include when evaluating organizational interventions. Within the framework, elements crucial to intervention evaluation are grouped into four overarching categories that we argue are crucial to evaluation over the five phases of an intervention programme. These categories are: the organizational “actors”; the mental models of those actors; the context of the intervention; and intervention design and process. Evaluation during the process as well as of the overall effects, as recommended by this framework, should throw light on what works for whom, why, how and under which circumstances.     

Heteroskedasticity‐Robust Standard Errors for Fixed Effects Panel Data Regression

The conventional heteroskedasticity‐robust (HR) variance matrix estimator for cross‐sectional regression (with or without a degrees‐of‐freedom adjustment), applied to the fixed‐effects estimator for panel data with serially uncorrelated errors, is inconsistent if the number of time periods T is fixed (and greater than 2) as the number of entities n increases. We provide a bias‐adjusted HR estimator that is ‐consistent under any sequences (n, T) in which n and/or T increase to ∞. This estimator can be extended to handle serial correlation of fixed order.     

Utilizing job resources: Qualitative evidence of the roles of job control and social support in problem solving

Abstract

In resource-based models of job design, job resources, such as control and social support, are thought to help workers to solve problems. Few studies have examined this assumption. We analyzed 80 qualitative diary entries (N=29) and interviews (N=37) concerned with the in-role requirements of medical technology designers in the UK for problem solving. Four themes linked to using the resources of job control and social support for problem solving emerged. These were: (1) eliciting social support to solve problems; (2) exercising job control to solve problems; (3) co-dependence between eliciting social support and exercising job control to solve problems; and (4) using job resources to regulate affect. The results were largely supportive of the assumptions underpinning resource-based models of job design. They also indicated that the explanatory power of resource-based models of job design may be enhanced by considering interdependencies between various factors: how different job resources are used, workers' motivation to use resources, workers' knowledge of how to use resources and the use of resources from across organizational boundaries. The study provides qualitative support for the assumption that social support and job control are used to cope with demands.     

Bargaining and Cooperation in Strategic Form Games

In this paper we view bargaining and cooperation as an interaction superimposed on a game in strategic form. A multistage bargaining procedure for N players, the “proposer commitment” procedure, is presented. It is inspired by Nash's two‐player variable‐threat model; a key feature is the commitment to “threats.” We establish links to classical cooperative game theory solutions, such as the Shapley value in the transferable utility case. However, we show that even in standard pure exchange economies, the traditional coalitional function may not be adequate when utilities are not transferable. (JEL: C70, C71, C78, D70)     

Estimation of Deprivation Level Functions using a Numerical Rating Scale

Evaluating and quantifying human suffering in humanitarian operations offers an innovative and potentially powerful way to assess the performance of humanitarian logistics (HL) and help build optimization models. Previous studies have suggested deprivation cost as a metric and have estimated deprivation cost functions for water using willingness‐to‐pay. Our study proposes deprivation levels, defined as the degree of human suffering caused by lack of access to a good or service, and estimates deprivation level functions using a numerical rating scale. Analyzing data collected from respondents with and without disaster experience, we find that individuals in the latter category estimate deprivation differently from the beneficiaries of disaster relief. Our study demonstrates that deprivation levels can be expressed as logistic growth functions with a typical S‐shape, and that these can be integrated into HL optimization models to better account for human suffering.     

Collaboration-based HR systems and innovative work behaviors: The role of information exchange and HR system strength

Integrating strategic human resource (HR) management research with the componential theory of creativity, we investigate the influence of a strategically anchored set of HR practices on employees’ idea generation, promotion, and realization (i.e., innovative work behaviors (IWBs). Specifically, we argue that perceived collaboration-based HR systems rated by employees facilitate IWBs through promoting information exchange. We take a multilevel approach and further propose that the strength of a collaboration-based HR system at the unit-level (i.e., shared employee perceptions) moderates the relationship between employee perceptions of such systems and information exchange. We propose that this relation will be stronger in units with greater levels of collaboration-based HR system strength. We test our model by collecting data at two different time points from 204 employees in 50 departments working at seven manufacturing organizations in Turkey. Results from multilevel and structural equation modeling support all hypotheses and point to the theoretical importance of taking into account idiosyncratic and collective perceptions of HR systems simultaneously. Practical implications that follow from our results suggest intentionally designing, implementing, and regularly communicating collaboration-based HR practices to facilitate IWBs.     

投资型人力资源管理系统与企业绩效的关系研究

本文根据对中国116家企业的人力资源实践状况的调查结果,分析了人力资源管理实践与企业绩效之间的关系.本文通过因素分析.揭示了投资型人力资源管理系统的内容结构,同时基于人力资源实践的组合,划分了高低水平人力资源实践组别并对其进行了比较.接着本文进行了相关分析和回归分析,分析投资型人力资源管理系统、人力资源战略整合与企业绩效之间的关系.研究发现,企业绩效不仅与部分人力资本投资活动存在积极的联系.而且与人力资源管理系统和企业战略的整合程度有关.论文的研究结果增加了我们在高绩效工作系统方面的知识.为当前我国企业的人力资源管理实践提供了重要的启发.     

Labour Market Flexibility,Human Resource Management and Corporate Performance

Labour market flexibility is often portrayed as a key to the competitive success of the UK and US economies. We surveyed several hundred firms in the UK, and using the resulting data (on over 200 manufacturing firms) this paper investigates the relationships between firms’ use of flexible work practices, human resource systems and industrial relations on the one hand, and corporate performance on the other hand. The results suggest that ‘low‐road’ practices – short‐term contracts, a lack of employer commitment to job security, low levels of training and low levels of human resource sophistication – are negatively correlated with corporate performance. In contrast, it is found that ‘high‐road’ work practices –‘high commitment’ organizations or ‘transformed’ workplaces – are positively correlated with good corporate performance. It is also found that human resource management practices are more likely to contribute to competitive success where they are introduced as a comprehensive package, or ‘bundle’ of practices. Significant interaction effects between human resource systems, trade unions and flexible work practices add further support to the bundling hypothesis.     

Labor Market Intermediaries and the New Paradigm for Human Resources

Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) are entities that stand between the individual worker and the organization that needs work done. They include well-known operations such as executive search firms that act as brokers to fill jobs and temp agencies that lease labor to clients but also less familiar entities such as professional employer organizations (PEOs) that take on the legal obligations of employment for clients. LMI's mediate between individual workers and the organizations that need work done, shaping how workers are matched to organizations, how tasks are performed, and how conflicts are resolved [Autor, D.H. (2009). Studies of labor market intermediation: Introduction. In D. Autor (Ed.), Studies of labor market intermediation (pp. 1–26). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press]. They essentially disintermediate aspects of management that had been performed by employers. The growth and increasing prominence of LMI's is important for all research associated with the workplace because we can no longer do a study of “workers” in an organization and assume that they are all employees: Some may be temps under contract to an agency, some may be “employed” by a PEO, some may work for vendors. The reason that matters is because LMI's appear to alter attitudes and behaviors on all sides. For example, they change the bilateral, employee–employer relationship into a three-way “triangular” relationship. They may well create “dual allegiance” issues, where individuals feel ties to the search firm that placed them in their current job and their employer or the agency that employs them and the client on whose behalf they are currently working. Most fundamentally, they challenge the existing paradigms we have used to understand the workplace: Does “attraction–selection–attrition” have any relevance, for example, when employers hire temps placed by agencies into permanent jobs? What does career development mean when the person with the most influence over your next job is a search consultant? There is already an extensive literature on LMIs, but it is spread across disciplines and fields and mainly examines the labor market outcomes associated with the use of LMIs. The literature lacks a management voice. We know relatively little about the effects of LMIs on workplace attitudes and behaviors, the central focus of organizational behavior; about how LMIs and the associated rise of outside hiring change how we should think about topics such as recruiting and selection, a central concern of personnel psychology; we know even less about how LMIs change the way firms think about competencies and boundaries of the firm, central topics in strategy, when the firm's workforce is actually employed by another organization or when it can be reshuffled very quickly. We develop a taxonomy of LMIs and use it to classify the burgeoning but disjointed literature on LMIs across the social sciences. We classify LMIs in terms of three main attributes of human resource (HR) practices that they perform: Information Providers, Matchmakers, and Administrators. We describe first how LMI activities differ from HR management practices performed by employers in the traditional relationship. Second, we outline the existing research about how LMIs affect employment outcomes, such as access to employment, wages, work-related attitudes and behaviors, working conditions, and skill development. Finally, we highlight the implications of LMIs for management research, especially new, understudied research questions that need to be addressed.