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.     

Exploring Strategy Implementation Consistency Over Time: The Moderating Effects of Industry Velocity and Firm Performance

In this paper we empirically investigate the temporal development of a firm’s strategy implementation consistency (SIC), i.e. the alignment between firms’ resource allocation decisions (RAD) and their articulated corporate concept (Noda and Bower, 1996; Burgelman and Grove, 1996; Love et al., 2002; Mintzberg, 1978). Doing so, we test whether (1) SIC is more likely to increase or decline over time, (2) whether firms competing in (low) high-velocity environments in fact show different temporal patterns in SIC, and (3) whether overperforming firms succeed in conserving their level of SIC. For our analysis we draw on 6238 RAD of 20 publicly listed firms with European origin over a period of 4–6 years. Applying maximum likelihood ordered logit estimation, our results indicate that the likelihood of an alignment of RAD and a firm’s corporate concept decreases over time. In line with scholars’ perception of high-velocity environments, we find that the firms in our sample competing under such conditions show no clear trend in SIC. These firms tend to “zig-zag” over time – swaying off and pulling back to their strategic course independent of the timing of the announcement of a corporate concept. We also find that overperforming firms are unsuccessful in preserving their SIC at the same level over time. Based on the empirical findings the paper discusses implications for theory and derives suggestions for corporate level managers on how to balance SIC and strategic flexibility.     

Organizational Form and Strategic Alignment in a Local Authority: A Preliminary Exploration using Fuzzy Clustering

Configurational theories assume that organizational form has important implications for the degree of alignment between top and middle management on strategic priorities. Taken in combination, the structure, process and environment of an organization are thought to have a deep pervasive influence on top management’s attempts to achieve the coordination and control required to attain organizational goals. The preliminary analysis described in this article employs fuzzy c-means clustering to explore the relationship between middle managers’ perceptions of organizational form and strategic alignment within a large local authority. The results illustrate that the clustering of managers’ perceptions of organizational structure, process and environment reflect three organizational archetypes: machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy and professional adhocracy. Statistically significant differences in the degree of strategic alignment between each of these organizational forms are then examined to validate the established clustering. Finally, conclusions are drawn on the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.     

Disaffected Loyalties in a Changing Contractual Environment

In this paper we examine the effects of the changing employee-employer relationship on loyalty – a construct we developed along Hirschman’s model. The impact on perceptions of loyalty during a downsizing is assessed using a design that manipulates HRM policies toward the use of temporary employees, retraining, employee voice, seniority and community coordination. We introduce ideological orientation as a variable that will have direct and indirect affects. Both MBA students and managers (N = 269) participated in the study. All HRM policies and ideological orientations have direct affects; in addition some indirect effects for ideological orientation emerged. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Corporate governance and stakeholder conflict

The stakeholder management literature is dominated by the ‘shareholder value’ and ‘inclusive stakeholder’ views of the corporation. Each views the governance problem in terms of inter-functional conflicts between stakeholder groups, such as between investors and managers or managers and employees, and rests on the assumption of an idealized corporate structure characterized by the separation of ownership from management. Our review of corporate governance and stakeholder conflict shows that such functional-based characterization is too simplistic and fails to account for important intra-functional conflict. Through a comparative review that considers managerial, stakeholder and family systems of governance, we demonstrate that, while the modality of conflict varies by system, substantial intra-functional conflict is endemic to each. We integrate the findings of the agency and comparative stakeholder theories of corporate governance to offer an authority-based framework with three different governance structures that offers complementary insights into stakeholder conflicts. Thus, our study highlights the important, but often neglected, intra-stakeholder type of conflict in various organizations and provides a basis for understanding their various manifestations and consequences under the different systems of governance.     

Does the compensation level of outside director depend on its personal profile? Some evidence from UK

Combining human capital theory and equity theory, we developed and tested a model in which the outside directors’ total cash compensation is related to the outsider’s profile, as well as to the board and firm characteristics. Consistent with our model, characteristics of the outsider’s profile, in terms of his/her role and responsibility, meeting activities and length of service, are relevant. Only the director’s popularity, as a part of his/her human capital, has a significant effect on his/her compensation. Our empirical results confirm the necessity to create a stronger link between the remuneration policies of the outsider directors and their contribution in a board, in terms of human capital. The remuneration policies adopted by firms should be linked to practices on corporate governance useful for helping outsiders contribute confidently to their work of the board and receive ongoing support and information so they can develop their understanding of the total environment within they work. Then, we suggest having recourse to qualifications and professional skills as well as to specific training or board induction programmes defined by firms themselves. Finally, the Combined Code should promote the adoption and spreading of such practices on market.     

Shareholders Should Welcome Knowledge Workers as Directors

The most influential approach of corporate governance, the view of shareholders’ supremacy does not take into consideration that the key task of modern corporations is to generate and transfer firm-specific knowledge. It proposes that, in order to overcome the widespread corporate scandals, the interests of top management and directors should be increasingly aligned to shareholder’ interests by making the board more responsible to shareholders, and monitoring of top management by independent outside directors should be strengthened. Corporate governance reform needs to go in another direction altogether. Firm-specific knowledge investments are, like financial investments, not ex ante contractible, leaving investors open to exploitation by shareholders. Employees therefore refuse to make firm-specific investments. To gain a sustainable competitive advantage, there must be an incentive to undertake such firm-specific investments. Three proposals are advanced to deal with this dilemma: (1) The board should rely more on insiders. (2) The insiders should be elected by those employees of the firm who are making firm-specific knowledge investments. (3) The board should be chaired by a neutral person. These proposals have major advantages: they provide incentives for knowledge investors; they countervail the dominance of executives; they encourage intrinsic work motivation and loyalty to the firm by strengthening distributive and procedural justice, and they ensure diversity on the board while lowering transaction costs. These proposals for reforming the board may help to overcome the crisis corporate governance is in. At the same time, they provide a step in the direction of a more adequate theory of the firm as a basis for corporate governance.     

Hurricane Katrina, the Crisis of Leadership, and Chaos Management: Time for Trying the ‘Surprise Management Theory in Action’

Four years have gone by since the historic Hurricane Katrina hit and drowned the city of New Orleans and caused a massive crisis of, and a global case of grand failure in, governance, leadership, and public management. Advancing on an earlier work published in Public Administration Review (Farazmand 2007), in which a global case of grand failure was established with several lessons drawn for future crisis management, this article argues further for developing and applying a theory of ‘surprise management’ to manage future crises and chaotic situations. Crises are borne out of natural and human made disasters, catastrophes, revolutions, and rapidly changing emergencies. Surprise management is the best approach to managing or coping with crises and crisis driven emergencies.     

Trust and adaptive learning in implicit contracts

Trust is a phenomenon that still is quite rarely investigated in agency theory. According to a common intuitive reasoning, trust should develop over time and it should evolve even in finite implicit-contract relationships. However, if the contracting parties are fully rational, theory cannot explain this. We therefore extend the standard model and develop a model of a finite relationship where the principal promises to pay a voluntary period-by-period bonus if the agent has worked according to the implicit agreement. The agent is boundedly rational and unable to foresee the principal’s future bonus decisions. The principal is, with some probability, honest and pays a promised bonus even in situations where ex-post cheating would be optimal. Based on the agent’s adaptive learning process, we show how trust evolves depending on the principal’s bonus-payment strategy. Depending on different levels of the agent’s bounded rationality, we derive the principal’s optimal pure strategy as part of a unique equilibrium. In an extension we show that the results are robust if the agent has bounded recall. The optimal strategy pattern mirrors a subset of trigger strategies which is exogenous in the standard model. Our findings imply that subjective incentives are more effective with increasing tenure of employees, or, that the optimal level of trust depends on how fast work environments change.     

Up Then Down: Bid‐Price Trends in Revenue Management

In the classic revenue management (RM) problem of selling a fixed quantity of perishable inventories to price‐sensitive non‐strategic consumers over a finite horizon, the optimal pricing decision at any time depends on two important factors: consumer valuation and bid price. The former is determined exogenously by the demand side, while the latter is determined jointly by the inventory level on the supply side and the consumer valuations in the time remaining within the selling horizon. Because of the importance of bid prices in theory and practice of RM, this study aims to enhance the understanding of the intertemporal behavior of bid prices in dynamic RM environments. We provide a probabilistic characterization of the optimal policies from the perspective of bid‐price processes. We show that an optimal bid‐price process has an upward trend over time before the inventory level falls to one and then has a downward trend. This intertemporal up‐then‐down pattern of bid‐price processes is related to two fundamental static properties of the optimal bid prices: (i) At any given time, a lower inventory level yields a higher optimal bid price, which is referred to as the resource scarcity effect; (ii) Given any inventory level, the optimal bid price decreases with time; that is referred to as the resource perishability effect. The demonstrated upward trend implies that the optimal bid‐price process is mainly driven by the resource scarcity effect, while the downward trend implies that the bid‐price process is mainly driven by the resource perishability effect. We also demonstrate how optimal bid price and consumer valuation, as two competing forces, interact over time to drive the optimal‐price process. The results are also extended to the network RM problems.     

Daily perceptions of relationship quality with leaders: implications for follower well-being

ABSTRACT

We examined how a key relationship at work, an employee’s relationship with their leader, affects employee daily well-being. In a study of 129 employees across a variety of industries, we examined how follower perceptions of their daily leader–member exchange (LMX) quality across a workweek influenced their well-being (n?=?468 observations). Results provided general support for our hypotheses. Specifically, we found that on days when employees perceived a higher quality LMX relationship with their leader, they were more likely to report a sense of belongingness, which was then positively associated with daily reports of vigor and negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. Lagged analyses showed that perceptions of LMX quality were also negatively associated with reports of emotional exhaustion the following workday suggesting that these effects may persist over time. Finally, we found that day-to-day variation in reports of LMX quality attenuated the beneficial effects of LMX on relatedness and vigor supporting our hypothesis that uncertainty related to resource availability may contribute to a threat mindset focused on resource conservation rather than engagement. Implications and future research on leadership and employee well-being are discussed.     

中澳企业员工离职与激励认知的跨文化比较研究

将HOFSTEDE提出的国家文化理论运用到人力资源管理中进行实证检验,对中国和澳大利亚两国企业员工的离职和激励行为背后的文化影响进行了分析研究。研究分析显示,相比澳大利亚企业员工,中国企业员工的离职倾向较低;可选择工作机会的主观感知对中国企业员工离职倾向的影响较小;中国企业员工认为职业发展是较重要的激励因素,而澳大利亚企业员工认为工作本身是较为重要的激励因素。研究结果表明,国家文化理论提出的5个文化差异维度中的"权利距离"、"不确定性规避"和"长期取向",在中澳两国企业员工的离职和激励问题上基本得到印证。     

The impact of a workplace terrorist attack on employees' perceptions of leadership: A longitudinal study from pre- to postdisaster

A terrorist attack targeting a workplace represents an organizational crisis that requires the leaders to manage emerging threats. The changing roles and expectations of the leaders are reflected in the employees' perceptions of them over time. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the 2011 Oslo bombing attack affected the targeted employees' perceptions of the leadership behaviors of their immediate superiors or the organizational managers' interest in the health and well-being of their workers. Ministerial employees (n ≈ 180) completed questionnaires on fair, empowering, and supportive leadership, in addition to human resource primacy, on two occasions several years prior to the terrorist attack. Assessments were then repeated one, two, and three years after the attack. Changes in the course of perceived leadership from predisaster to postdisaster were examined using bootstrapped t-tests and latent growth curve models. Furthermore, the general course of perceived leadership was compared with a nonexposed control sample of matched employees. Results showed that employees with high levels of posttraumatic stress perceived their immediate leader to be less supportive. However, overall perceptions of leadership were remarkably stable, which suggests that the effects of critical incidents on perceptions of leadership may be negligible.     

Insider Information: The Ethicality of the High Frequency Trading Industry

This study explores the ethical perceptions of employees in the financial industry. Focusing on the high frequency trading (HFT) industry, it analyses a series of interviews with HFT employees (managers, computer programmers and traders). It shows that regulations and firm rules profoundly affect HFT practices. However, they do not provide employees with answers for their ethical questions. To judge the ethicality of HFT, employees choose reference stakeholder groups and assess the way HFT impacts them. The perception that HFT has a positive effect on stakeholder groups is associated with moral satisfaction, whereas the perception that it has a negative effect is related to emotional detachment, sense of meaninglessness and turnover intent. The high variance in employees’ choices of stakeholder reference groups emphasizes the subjectivity and uncertainty that HFT ethicality entails. Therefore, this study suggests that the financial industry may lack moral leadership. It makes empirical and theoretical contributions to the ‘business ethics as practice’ theory and examines management and regulatory applications.     

组织公正、雇佣关系与员工工作态度——基于广东民营企业的经验研究

分析员工层面雇佣关系的内涵及其在组织公正与员工工作态度关系中所起的中介作用对我国民营企业人力资源管理有重要的现实意义.本文在文献述评的基础上提出了一系列假设,并通过对675位广东民营企业员工问卷的实证分析检验了假设.研究发现,领导一部属交换与员工工作态度的相关性最显著.并在人际公正、信息公正与员工工作态度关系中起完全中介作用;心理契约违背与员工工作态度显著负相关,并在程序公正、分配公正与员工工作态度关系中起部分中介作用.研究表明,民营企业不仅要通过创建公正的分配环境来提高员工的工作态度,而且要善于构建能得到员工认同的雇佣关系,尤其是高质量的员工与直接领导之间的关系,提高员工的工作满意度和组织承诺.     

Human capital practices of Russian enterprises

Abstract

The goal of this study was to explore current human capital (HC) management practices (including training and development, recruitment and selection, compensation, empowerment, diversity, and work/family balance) of Russian enterprises. The data were collected at 270 large, medium and small enterprises in Moscow and four representative regional centers. The study results suggest that Russian firms tended to emphasize current HC needs, not long-term HC development strategies. The firm size had an effect on differences in training, selection and compensation practices, with large firms being more long-term oriented. Correlation between elements of the HC management model provided some preliminary evidence that Russian firms tried to coordinate selection, compensation and training procedures. In addition, firms that empowered their employees were also putting more emphasis on long-term oriented training, selection and compensation practices. Finally, there were signs that diversity was gradually becoming an important issue for Russian enterprises of all sizes. However, compared to diversity, companies' emphasis on helping their employees to deal with the work/family balance issues was much stronger.     

The mediating role of distributive justice perceptions in the relationship between emotion regulation and emotional exhaustion in healthcare workers

This research proposes that the use of emotion regulation strategies by employees in the service professions determines their perceptions of fairness in interactions with clients, which in turn influences their emotional exhaustion. Based on social exchange theory and models of self-control, the investigation tested whether: (1) the type of emotion regulation strategy that employees use to meet the emotional demands of their job role partially influences their perceptions of distributive justice (i.e. that clients respond to their efforts), and (2) these perceptions mediate the relationship between emotion regulation and emotional exhaustion. To test this, a longitudinal field survey study of a sample of primary care workers in Spain (general practitioners and nurses; N?=?233) was conducted. Findings showed that the relationship between emotion regulation and emotional exhaustion was mediated by perceptions of distributive justice. A bootstrapping mediational analysis showed a significant indirect effect of surface acting on emotional exhaustion through distributive justice when inter-individual differences at T1 and when intra-individual changes between T1 and T2 were considered. Deep acting indirect effects were not significant for intra-individual changes. The findings indicate that employees’ perception of distributive justice has implications for understanding the impact of emotion regulation on well-being.     

Mitigating Litigating: An Examination of Psychosocial Impacts of Compensation Processes Associated with the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

During the past four decades, a number of social science scholars have conceptualized technological disasters as a social problem. More specifically, research in this arena has identified individual and collective stress as a secondary trauma of processes intended to provide compensation and economic relief from disasters in general and, more specifically, technological disasters. Based on data from a 2013 household telephone survey of 1,216 residents of coastal Alabama, this article examines the relationship between psychosocial stress and compensation processes related to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We examine involvement with claims, settlement, and litigation activities; vulnerability and exposure to the spill; ties to resources; resource loss and gain; perceptions of risk and recreancy; and intrusive stress and avoidance behaviors as measured by the impact of event scale. Regression analysis reveals that the strongest contributors to intrusive stress were being part of the compensation process, resource loss, concerns about air quality, and income. Although being involved with compensation processes was a significant predictor of avoidance behaviors, the strongest contributors to avoidance behaviors were resource loss, air quality concern, income, being male, minority status, and community attachment. Beliefs that the compensation process was as distressing as the oil spill also significantly contributed to intrusive stress and avoidance behaviors. This research represents a step toward filling a gap in empirical evidence regarding the extent to which protracted compensation processes exacerbate adverse psychosocial impacts of disasters and hinder community recovery.     

Perceived violence climate: A new construct and its relationship to workplace physical violence and verbal aggression,and their potential consequences

Abstract

Workplace accidents and violence are both potential sources of employee injuries that have been dealt with in entirely separate literatures. In this study we adapted the concept of safety climate from the accident/injury literature to violence in developing the concept of perceived violence climate. A scale was developed to assess perceived violence climate, including items about management attention, concern, and policies designed to keep employees safe from violence. Data were collected from a sample of 198 nurses from a US Hospital. Perceived violence climate was found to correlate significantly with both physical violence and verbal aggression experienced by the nurses, injury from violence, and perceptions of workplace danger. Furthermore, regression analyses showed that climate explained additional variance in psychological strain and perceptions of danger over experienced violence. These results have implications for interventions aimed at producing a good perceived violence climate in order to reduce the incidence of violence and aggression within an organization.     

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.