Online privacy and security practices of the 100 largest US nonprofit organizations

• Although online consumer privacy has been an important issue in the commercial realm for more than a decade, nonprofit organizations (NPOs, or nonprofits, for short) have just begun to address the topic recently. No published scholarly research has examined the online information practices of the largest NPOs with regard to privacy and security issues. The absence of data leaves one unable to empirically gauge the extent of NPO compliance with the Federal Trade Commissions (FTCs) suggested information practices. Such an investigation would be useful not only to US nonprofits but also non‐US nonprofits that are reaching US donors via their web sites.
• This study examines the online information practices of The Nonprofit Times 100 web sites and compares their practices to that of their commercial counterparts. The NPO web sites were found to collect just as much, and in some cases even more, personally identifying information as the commercial sites. The NPO web sites were more likely to display a privacy disclosure and privacy seal. Of critical concern, and not assessed in the commercial samples, is that nearly all of the NPO sites post personally identifying information (of individuals who are not employees).
• The current study provides benchmarks useful for assessing security issues pertaining to the collection, use, and even posting of personal information for NPO web sites. It also proposes actions for improving online security and privacy with the hope of encouraging more discussion of these important issues within the NPO community.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Selection in the Workplace: Whose Rights Prevail?

The selection process involves a very difficult balancing act for employers who have to weigh the rights and concerns of applicants, current employees, the organization itself, and society as a whole. Each of these perspectives brings with it its own set of concerns and issues that need to be considered in the broader hiring arena. Applicants assert the right to be treated fairly while being evaluated for a position; current employees assert the right to productive coworkers who will not harm them on the job, organizations assert the right to hire qualified employees while remaining cognizant of the legal issues that surround the hiring process; and society as a whole asserts the right to a process that benefits the greater good. But, with each of these groups pursuing these rights, an important question arises as to whose rights prevail when there is a conflict. This paper, through the use of a true scenario, explores the difficult balancing act between rights and concerns of applicants, current employees, organizations, and society as a whole and discusses whose rights should take priority when they conflict.     

HR practices for enhancing sustainable employability: implementation,use, and outcomes

Abstract

With the aging of the workforce, organizations need to maintain or improve the sustainable employability of their workforce throughout their working life. This raises the question which HR practices increase workers’ sustainable employability at work. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which organizations implement HR practices for enhancing sustainable employability in terms of workers’ health, motivation, and skills and knowledge from the employer’s perspective. In total, 312 owners/directors or HR managers (response rate 13%) filled out the questionnaire. The findings showed that most organizations implemented a range of HR practices to improve the health, motivation, and skills and knowledge of their employees. Perceived effectiveness of these practices were dependent on the number of HR practices that were implemented, employees’ use of and participation in designing these practices. Implementation of HR practices was also related to higher satisfaction with the current employability of employees, and to increased productivity of the organization. Implications for practice and examples of HR practices to enhance sustainable employability are given.     

High-involvement information sharing practices: an international perspective

The type of information shared within organizations is a key aspect of strategic human resources management. In this exploratory study, we expand our understanding of high-performance work systems (HPWSs) by examining the information sharing practices of firms operating in different countries to assess the extent that high-involvement-oriented information sharing in organizations is influenced by home-country economic structures and national cultural factors. We assess firm-level data from a 12-country sample to evaluate the use of formal information sharing practices for non-managerial employees. The results of our analysis support the contention that information sharing practices varies by country, and that cultural similarities based on geographical region exist within the three information content areas of business strategy, financial performance, and organization of work. Specifically, we found significant variance in information sharing practices of firms based in different countries but homogeneity of practices among geographical neighbors. There is a modest positive relationship between sharing business strategy information and perceived firm performance that is significantly stronger in North America compared to other regions. These results have important implications for the ongoing theoretical development of mechanisms underlying the use of HPWS practices in an international context.     

HRM implementation by multiple HRM actors: a social exchange perspective

Abstract

In this study, we understand HRM implementation as a social process that depends on the social exchange relationships between line managers and both HRM professionals and employees. As such, we offer a fresh approach to understanding HRM implementation by concentrating on the social exchange among HRM actors. We do so by investigating to what extent these exchange relationships influence HRM implementation, as reflected in employees’ perceptions of the presence of HRM practices and their affective commitment. We collected multilevel data from two sources (line managers and employees) and in two phases in a Dutch engineering firm, and obtained fully matched manager – employee information from 75 employees and 20 line managers. Our results show that employees perceive a larger number of HRM practices when they have a good relationship with their line managers and when their line managers are motivated to implement HRM practices. Line managers, in turn, reciprocate perceived support from the HRM department with greater motivation to implement these practices. We conclude that because HRM actors engage in social interactions, HRM practices will be implemented at the organizational level because employees perceive the presence of HRM practices and then reciprocate this with affective commitment.     

Formal and Informal Practices of Knowledge Sharing Between Project Teams and Enacted Cultural Characteristics

This article investigates the process of knowledge sharing between project teams and uses a case study approach. This is especially relevant, as organizations face both the needs for separating work into projects and integrating knowledge created in projects into the organization. The results provided by the analysis technique of GABEK^® indicate that, although projects create boundaries, employees and project team leaders use formal mechanisms and develop informal practices for knowledge sharing between project teams. Furthermore, the article identifies organizational cultural characteristics enacted in these practices that can stimulate the discussion in “knowledge culture research” regarding the relationship of organizational cultural characteristics and (specific) knowledge processes.     

Accommodating Religious Expression in the Workplace

Religious expression in the workplace has been gaining more prominence and attention with the increasing diversity of the population. Employers are legally required to reasonably accommodate the religious practices and beliefs of their employees. This article will examine the most common types of religious expression in the workplace and will discuss the extent of the legal obligation of an employer to accommodate those expressions.     

The status of workers and platforms in the sharing economy

We consider whether workers who provide their services through online platforms, such as Handy and Uber, should be classified as independent contractors or employees. Using a formal economic model, we show how being too strict or too liberal in classifying workers as independent contractors (relative to the actual degree of control workers have) can be detrimental, not just to firms and welfare, but sometimes to the workers themselves. We also use the model to explore the extent to which an intermediate classification of workers between employees and independent contractors may lead to better outcomes. The intermediate classification is meant to apply to firms that retain control of some actions while their workers control others, as is the case for many online platforms.     

The mediating effect of information availability between organization design variables and environmental practices in the Canadian hotel industry

This study examines whether providing employees with information about environmental impacts, industry practices, technologies, regulations and benchmarking of environmental practices mediates the influence of organization design variables on environmental impact reduction. The study finds that both organization design variables (discretionary slack, coordination mechanisms and performance evaluation) and information availability have a direct influence on environmental impact reduction practices in the Canadian hotel industry. However, information availability partially mediates the influence of organization design variables, indicating that effecting changes in organization design alone may be less effective in generating proactive environmental practices without providing employees with information and benchmarking of industry environmental practices. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The link between the management of employees and patient mortality in acute hospitals

The relationship between human resource management practices and organizational performance (including quality of care in health-care organizations) is an important topic in the organizational sciences but little research has been conducted examining this relationship in hospital settings. Human resource (HR) directors from sixty-one acute hospitals in England (Hospital Trusts) completed questionnaires or interviews exploring HR practices and procedures. The interviews probed for information about the extensiveness and sophistication of appraisal for employees, the extent and sophistication of training for employees and the percentage of staff working in teams. Data on patient mortality were also gathered. The findings revealed strong associations between HR practices and patient mortality generally. The extent and sophistication of appraisal in the hospitals was particularly strongly related, but there were links too with the sophistication of training for staff, and also with the percentages of staff working in teams.     

Alternative diversity management: Organizational practices fostering ethnic equality at work

Taking a critical, performative stance, this study aims to advance our understanding of diversity management enhancing ethnic equality at work. Relying on a multiple-case study, we inductively identify organizational practices that foster the valuing of multiple competencies and the ability to express multiple identities, two key organizational markers of ethnic equality advanced in the gender and diversity literature. Our analysis indicates that ethnic equality is fostered by practices that broaden dominant norms on competencies and cultural identities, and avoid reducing ethnic minority employees to mere representatives of a stigmatized social group. In contrast to ‘classical’ diversity management practices which focus on individuals’ cognitive biases toward out-group members, these practices redefine what is ‘standard’ in the employment relationship, hereby structurally countering ethnic inequality within organizational boundaries.     

Actions speak louder than words: how employees mind the implementation gap

Abstract

Integral to employees’ working lives are the HR policies and more importantly, the practices that follow those and their implementation, which employees experience directly. To date, research on HR implementation considers how HRM is ‘done to’ employees by management and therefore ignores the agency of individuals to shape how HRM is ‘done to them’. Taking the perspective of employees, in a qualitative study of female lawyers, this paper examines employees’ roles in shaping HR implementation, addressing a lack of understanding about the role of ‘others’ in the process. Drawing on the concept of social power, the article focuses on the implementation of agile working practices within UK-based law firms. It finds that despite lacking legitimate position power to influence processes, employees draw on a variety of other power sources (e.g. referent, information, coercive) and tactics (e.g. leveraging membership of professional networks) in order to influence their working environment with respect to HR policy and practice, particularly in response to perceived implementation gaps. The current study underlines that employees may be integral to bridging the gap between policy and practice and therefore to ensuring the link between HRM and organisational performance. It also proposes that behavioural responses to HR practices should be considered in future theorising of the HRM-performance relationship.     

Employees as Active Consumers of HRM: Linking Employees’ HRM Competences with Their Perceptions of HRM Service Value

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.     

Engaging workers in resource-poor environments: the case of social enterprise in Vietnam

Abstract

How do social enterprises acquire and retain employees in resource-poor environments? This paper presents findings from a study examining human resource management (HRM) practices in transitional economy social enterprises, where research on HRM remains underexplored. Drawing on social exchange theory and employing a multiple-case study design, we examine the ways in which four well-established social enterprises in Vietnam use high-involvement work practices (HIWPs) to acquire, retain and support the performance of workers. The findings suggest that HIWPs increase the social exchange value of social enterprise employment but raise questions about business sustainability. We identify evidence of a unique bundle of HIWPs, which comprise four dimensions of the original model: information, knowledge, power, and rewards, and one new dimension, namely family-building practices.     

Food contamination incidents: what do consumers seek online? Who cares?

• Consumers can play an active role in managing their health during food contamination incidents. With the popularity of the internet, consumers may seek online information to minimize health risks associated with the incidents. This study examines information demand and supply for consumers' online‐information seeking by investigating the search queries commonly used by consumers during the incidents and returned first page search results. We use a stage of change model to frame our hypotheses about information demand and stakeholder and agenda setting theories to frame our hypotheses about information supply. Results show that consumers' information seeking may progress through stages of precontemplation (seeking no special information), contemplation (seeking information related to the facts of the incidents), preparation and action (seeking information related to safety precautions and practices), and maintenance and termination (seeking no special information). Mainstream news media play the most important role in providing online information related to the facts of the incidents during the contemplation stage of consumers' information seeking. Online citizen journalism is the major online source for information related to safety precautions and practices during the preparation and action stage of information seeking. A diversity of other stakeholders also provide online information related to the incidents but are not primary information sources for consumers. We suggest that stakeholders, especially those who are responsible for providing accurate and timely information to consumers such as government agencies, establish online marketing strategies to make their information more accessible by consumers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

     

Organizational scandal on social media: Workers whistleblowing on YouTube and Facebook

The paper explores the emergence of organizational scandals on social media, and how the communicative dynamics of such scandals evolve as a social drama. I propose that when whistleblowers utilize information technologies to expose evidence of organizational misconduct, they, and their audiences, engage in meta- organizational discourse: The reflexive – immediate and durational – interactions through which organizational stakeholders instigate organizational scandals on social media, negotiate the normative boundaries of whistleblowing, and (de)legitimize the act of disclosing managerial transgressions online. I examine an organizational scandal embedded in the recent wave of workers’ unionization struggles in Israel in which whistleblowers performed the role of investigative journalists by posting a video on YouTube exposing a senior manager trying to dissuade workers from joining the union. Following that, on workers’ unionization Facebook pages, union supporters and opponents vigorously deliberated the intentions and consequences of publicly shaming their manager and damaging the reputation of their company. Analyzing workers’ discourse suggests that participants from both sides experienced the scandal as something that affected all company employees. They acknowledged the high visibility of their social drama and recognized the potential impact of whistleblowing online across organizational spatial and temporal boundaries.     

Flexible work practices and human resource management: a comparison of South African and foreign owned companies

This study compares the use of flexible work practices in wholly owned South African (SA) companies with that in foreign-owned companies. Data were obtained from questionnaire results of a study conducted by Horwitz and Franklin (1996) of flexible work practices in SA organizations. The questionnaire was used as part of a collaborative research project involving three countries (Brosnan et al ., 1996). It was found that SA-owned companies use certain flexible work practices to a lesser extent than foreign-owned companies. This was found to be the case particularly in the use of numerical forms of flexibility, such as sub-contractors/consultants and the use of temporary employees. Use of subcontractors/consultants and temporary staff agencies was found to be the greatest in partially foreign-owned companies. A larger proportion of foreign-owned companies have lower labour costs than do SA-owned companies. This has, however, not been as a result of the greater use of flexible work practices. Foreign-owned companies make more joint decisions with unions than do SA-owned companies when changing work practices.     

Betwixt and Between: The Dilemma of Employee References

Concerns have arisen over employers' collection and sharing of information about employees, especially employment references. As a result of the dramatic growth in the number of lawsuits brought by employees, many employers have seriously curtailed the information they release concerning current and former employees. However, even the refusal to release information carries a legal risk. Employers who do not obtain information concerning applicants can be liable for negligent hiring, and those who knowingly withhold negative information regarding their former employees may be liable for negligent referral. This paper explores these expanding liabilities and suggests strategies to allow employers to manage the risk of communicating employee references.     

The differences of firm resources and the adoption of teleworking

This paper studies the differences of firm resources between teleworking firms and non-teleworking firms. The results indicate that teleworking firms use more information and communication technologies, invest more resources in R&D, have a larger percentage of knowledge workers and salespeople in the workforce, and have a larger geographical market. The employees have greater access to the Internet and electronic communication, are more trained in the use of information and communication technologies, and are more involved in their job design and planning. Regarding the business organisation, teleworking firms use more human resource flexible practices and variable compensation, outsource more activities, and manage employees by objectives.     

Exploring the link between organizational values and human resource certification

We contribute to the discussion of human resource (HR) certification by identifying organizational values as a key antecedent to (1) an organization's use of HR certification and (2) whether organizational members choose to pursue HR certification. Building on research which has looked at the influence of organizational values on the behavior and attitudes of the organization and its employees, we propose that key organizational values will influence the extent to which an organization and its members value HR certification. Specifically, we explore the relationship between the organizational values of innovation, people orientation, and stability and the extent to which an organization uses HR certification for selection purposes. In addition, we propose that these key organizational values will also influence whether the organization's members pursue HR certification. Exploring the link between key organizational values and HR certification is critical to our understanding of an organization's HR practices and the behavior of its employees. By taking a more organization focused perspective, we highlight the top-down effects of organizational values on the value of HR certification and call for additional research on the antecedents of the value of HR certification.