Pay level satisfaction and employee outcomes: the moderating effect of autonomy and support climates

The present study examined autonomy climate (AC) and support climate (SC) as moderators of the relationship between pay level satisfaction (PLS) and employee outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, affective commitment and intention to stay). Survey data were collected from 5801 Belgian employees, representing 148 units. The hypotheses derived from distributive justice theory and from research on the meaning of money received partial support. Multilevel analyses revealed that AC buffered the negative effects of low PLS on all three outcomes, and that SC exacerbated the negative effects of low PLS on intention to stay. Theoretical and practical implications of this differential moderating effect are discussed.     

Identification and Occupational Stress: A Stress‐Buffering Perspective

Occupational stress research has consistently demonstrated many negative effects of work stressors on employee adjustment (i.e., job‐related attitudes and health). Considerable literature also describes potential moderators of this relationship. While research has revealed that different workplace identifications can have significant positive effects on employee adjustment, it has neglected to investigate their potential stress‐buffering effects. Based on identity theories, it was predicted that stress‐buffering effects of different types of identifications (distal versus proximal) would be revealed when the identification type and employee adjustment outcome type (distal versus proximal) were congruent. Predictions were tested with an employee sample from five human service nonprofit organizations (N = 337). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that main and moderated effects relating to identification supported the notion that occupational stress would be reduced when there was congruence of distal and proximal identifications and distal and proximal outcome types. However, stress‐buffering effects were also found for high identifiers and low identifiers that were not in line with hypotheses posing questions for the definitions of distal and proximal identifications. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Psychological Ownership: How Having Control Matters

The study builds a cross‐level work process control‐based model of psychological ownership in a Chinese context. We operationalize individual‐level control as participative decision‐making and unit‐level control as the self‐managing team climate. We further theorize how the value orientation of employees to power differentials moderates the mediating effects of psychological ownership on the relationship between the two levels of control and employee outcomes. We found that the positive effects of control experiences on some outcomes are mediated by psychological ownership. Additionally, power distance moderates the mediating role of psychological ownership. Our results suggest that, in order to cultivate the positive effects of perceived control on employee contributions, managers should pay attention to employees high in power distance since these individuals are reluctant to exercise control. Training or encouraging these individuals to participate in decision making may help them cultivate the positive feelings of psychological ownership.     

Self‐managed work teams: An efficiency‐rationale for pay compression

This paper uncovers a novel mechanism through which pay dispersion can have a negative effect on firm performance, even in the absence of equity or fairness considerations. We use a stylized model of a self‐managed work team to show that, when team‐work involves heterogeneous tasks, the provision of incentives to exert effort conflicts with the provision of incentives to share information relevant for decision‐making. Pay dispersion deteriorates information sharing as it induces workers to conceal “bad news” to maintain their coworkers motivation. The practical implications of our theory are that team empowerment should go hand in hand with pay compression and that empowerment should be avoided when team production involves strongly heterogeneous tasks.     

Co‐Worker Exclusion and Employee Outcomes: An Investigation of the Moderating Roles of Perceived Organizational and Social Support

When does social support alleviate or exacerbate the effects of being excluded by colleagues in the workplace? This study integrates belongingness and social support theories to predict and demonstrate the differential effects of work‐related support (i.e., perceived organizational support; POS) and non‐work‐related support (i.e., family and social support; FSS) on employee reactions to co‐worker exclusion. Consistent with our predictions, we found that employees reporting high levels of co‐worker exclusion and high levels of perceived organizational support demonstrate higher levels of performance and increased levels of self‐worth than those reporting low levels of POS. Alternatively, support from family or friends intensified the negative relationship between co‐worker exclusion and self‐esteem and the positive relationship between co‐worker exclusion and job‐induced tension. Unexpectedly, FSS did not influence the supervisor‐rated task performance of excluded workers, nor did POS mitigate the relationship between co‐worker exclusion and job‐induced tension. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.     

Incentive Pay and Firm Performance: Moderating Roles of Procedural Justice Climate and Environmental Turbulence

In connection with the literature on strategic reward and agency theory, this study investigates the effects of incentive pay on employee outcomes and firm performance. We identify employee outcomes, such as commitment and competence, as mediating processes that explain the effects of incentive pay on firm performance. We further propose procedural justice climate and environmental turbulence as boundary conditions that determine the strength of the effects of incentive pay on employee outcomes. The research model is tested using multisource data collected at three time points over a five‐year period from 227 Korean companies. Our analysis confirmed that incentive pay enhanced employee commitment and competence, which, in turn, improved the operational and financial performances of firms. The effect of incentive pay on employee commitment was negative for firms with a low procedural justice climate, but positive for firms operated under a highly turbulent environment. By contrast, the effect of incentive pay on employee competence was positive only for firms operated under a stable environment. This study enriches the literature by presenting and validating plausible underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions under which strategic performance–contingent incentive pay affects firm performance. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Content vs. Process in the HRM‐Performance Relationship: An Empirical Examination

This study investigates the impact of a human resource management (HRM) system, which integrates both content and process of human resource (HR) practices, on organizational performance, through collective employee reactions. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,250 Greek employees working in 133 public‐ and private‐sector organizations, which operate in the present context of severe financial and economic crises. The findings of the structural equation modeling suggest that content and process are two inseparable faces of an HRM system that help to reveal a comprehensive picture of the HRM–organizational performance relationship. Based on the findings that collective employee reactions mediate the HRM content (i.e., organizational performance relationship) and HRM process moderates the HRM content (i.e., employee reactions relationship), the study has several theoretical and practice implications. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Illuminating the ‘Face’ of Justice: A Meta‐Analytic Examination of Leadership and Organizational Justice

A significant body of research has described effective leader behaviours and has connected these behaviours to positive employee outcomes. However, this research has yet to be systematically integrated with organizational justice research to describe how leader behaviours inform justice perceptions. Therefore, we conduct a meta‐analysis (k = 166, N = 46,034) to investigate how three types of leader behaviours (task, relational, and change) inform four dimensions of organizational justice (procedural, distributive, interpersonal, and informational) referenced to the leader and to the organization. Further, we examine the joint impact of leader behaviours and justice perceptions on social exchange quality (i.e., leader–member exchange), task performance, and job satisfaction. Our results suggest that leader behaviours differentially inform leader‐ and organization‐focused justice perceptions, and the joint effect of leader behaviours and justice perceptions offer more nuanced explanations for outcomes.     

Discretionary and transactional human resource practices and employee outcomes: The role of perceived organizational support

Utilizing perceived organizational support (POS) as the mechanism linking HR practices to employee behaviors in the workplace, we examine a broad set of HR practices in order to understand the relative importance of each HR practice (i.e., those that explain incremental variance over other practices) in influencing employee behaviors. We differentiate between discretionary and transactional HR practices to test the discretionary investment requisite of POS theory. The results show that of the eight discretionary practices, only participation and decision making directly influenced the extra‐role behaviors that employees exhibit, and only training and development directly impacted the customer‐oriented behaviors. Furthermore, one of the transactional HR practices was found to have a direct effect on organizational citizenship behavior. Our findings indicate that the performance management process, promotional opportunities, participation, and involvement in decision making affect how employees behave toward the customer and the extra‐role behaviors they exhibit. Furthermore, this occurs through the view employees develop of the organization as a place to work. That is, these four HR practices demonstrate to employees that they are valued, and, in turn, this feeling of being appreciated impacts their commitment to delivering high‐quality service to the customer and going beyond their job responsibilities. Implications for research and practice are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Workforce diversity in manufacturing companies and organizational performance: the role of status-relatedness and internal processes

This study investigates workforce diversity at the organization level, which has been relatively overlooked. We focus on status-related processes that complement the ambiguities involving social categorization and information processing perspectives. We further identify the theoretically meaningful mediators (i.e. innovative climate, employee competence and employee satisfaction) of the diversity–performance relationship at the organization level. We empirically validate our hypothesis using time-lagged, multi-source data collected from 256 Korean manufacturing companies at 2 time points over a 2-year period. Results indicate that hierarchical position diversity is negatively related to employee competence and satisfaction, which in turn negatively affects operational performance. Education diversity positively affects innovative climate, employee competence and employee satisfaction, thus increasing the innovation and operational efficiency of an organization. This study elaborates the distinct implications of diversity dimensions with different levels of status-relatedness, and offers empirical contributions that highlight the mediating mechanisms through which diversity enhances different forms of organizational performance.     

Mutual Gains? Health‐Related HRM,Collective Well‐Being and Organizational Performance

Research on the effects of HR management on employees’ psychological well‐being has yielded inconclusive results. Moreover, prior works remain unclear on whether human resource practices specifically aimed at enhancing employee well‐being also benefit organizational performance. Building on signaling theory and conservation of resources theory, our study investigates the relationship between health‐related human resource management (HHRM), employees’ collective well‐being (in terms of collective emotional exhaustion and collective engagement) and organizational performance. Results from a multi‐source field study of top management team members, HR representatives, and 15,952 employees in 88 organizations reveal a positive indirect relationship between HHRM and employees’ collective well‐being, which is mediated by employees’ positive stress mindset. In addition, we find this positive indirect association to depend on the level of transformational leadership climate in organizations. Finally, our findings also show a positive indirect relationship between HHRM and company performance, mediated by employees’ positive stress mindset and collective engagement.     

Does contingent pay encourage positive employee attitudes and intensify work?

This article explores the relationships between three dimensions of contingent pay – performance‐related pay, profit‐related pay and employee share‐ownership – and positive employee attitudes (job satisfaction, employee commitment and trust in management). The article also examines a conflicting argument that contingent pay may intensify work, and this can detract from its positive impact on employee attitudes. Of the three contingent pay dimensions, only performance‐related pay had direct positive relationships with all three employee attitudes. Profit‐related pay and employee share‐ownership had a mix of negative and no significant direct relationships with employee attitudes, but profit‐related pay showed U‐shaped curvilinear relationships with all three employee attitudes. The results also indicated that performance‐related pay is associated with work intensification, and this offsets some of its positive impact on employee attitudes.     

Perceived supervisor support climate,perceived investment in employee development climate,and business‐unit performance

Perceived supervisor support (PSS) has been found to predict employee in‐role and extra‐role performance at the individual level of analysis. With respect to the unit level of analysis, the research on the predictive role of PSS remains limited. In particular, calls have been made for research on the role of leadership in facilitating perceived HR practices at the business‐unit level and on the role of line managers as implementers of such systems. In response to such calls, this study investigated the associations between PSS climate, perceived investment in employee development (PIED) climate, and business‐unit performance among 75 gas stations located in Norway. The results showed that the PSS climate was positively related to both the PIED climate and the business‐unit performance. This study contributes to research on PSS by extending the prior findings at the individual level to the unit level of analysis. Also, the study contributes to the research on perceived HR practices by demonstrating the facilitative role of the PSS climate. Finally, the study contributes to the research on shared perceptions of HR practices generally and the concept of the “strength” of the HRM system in particular. Implications for practice and future research are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Thriving of employees with disabilities: The roles of job self‐efficacy,inclusion, and team‐learning climate

With the growing global emphasis on welfare‐to‐work policies, an increasing number of people with disabilities (PWD) have entered the workforce. However, studies on PWD have focused primarily on company practices to accommodate PWD, with a limited understanding of factors affecting psychological integration of PWD into the workplace. This scarcity in research makes it difficult for managers to utilize the full work potential of PWD. To fill this research gap, the current study focuses on the job self‐efficacy of PWD and investigates how employee disability interacts with inclusion and team‐learning climate to affect job self‐efficacy, and in turn thriving at work. Using a sample of 485 employees in 114 teams, surveys found job self‐efficacy was a key intervening mechanism linking employee disability to thriving at work. These results suggest high workplace inclusion can buffer potential negative effects of disability at the individual level, strengthened further by a high team‐learning climate. The data supported a three‐way cross‐level interaction effect of disability, inclusion, and team‐learning climate on the thriving of employees with disabilities, through job self‐efficacy. Our results demonstrate the importance of inclusion and team‐learning climate to foster employee thriving in a diverse workforce.     

The ‘reach’ of employee participation in decision‐making: exploring the Aristotelian roots of workplace democracy

This article examines the ‘reach’, or the distribution, of employee participation in decision‐making (PDM) within organisations. It makes a unique contribution to the wider employee voice literature by asking what types of employees have a ‘say’ in strategic decision‐making and, in similar vein, what types of employees are denied participation, and why. In order to answer this under‐investigated research question, the article presents an Aristotelian analysis of the concept of citizenship in the ‘best regime’. In the light of this analysis, the article concludes that some groups of employees are excluded from PDM on the basis of a perceived lack of ‘excellence’.     

How do leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate shape employee exhaustion and engagement? Toward a cascading-effects model

Although researchers and practitioners increasingly focus on health promotion in organizations, research has been mainly fragmented and fails to integrate different organizational levels in terms of their effects on employee health. Drawing on organizational climate and social identity research, we present a cascading model of organizational health climate and demonstrate how and when leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate are linked to employee well-being. We tested our model in two multisource studies (N_{Study 1} = 65 leaders and 291 employees; N_{Study 2} = 401 leader–employee dyads). Results showed that leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate were positively related to their health mindsets (i.e., their health awareness). These in turn were positively associated with their health-promoting leadership behavior, which ultimately went along with better employee well-being. Additionally, in Study 1, the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets was moderated by their organizational identification. High leader identification strengthened the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets. These findings have important implications for theory and practice as they show how the dynamics of an organizational health climate can unfold in organizations and how it is related to employee well-being via the novel concept of health-promoting leadership.     

Leader‐member exchangeand job satisfacton: Cross‐industry comparisons and predicted employee turnover

The present research analyzes quality of leader‐member exchange (LMX) and job satisfaction and predicts employee turnover rates in the food manufacturing, restaurant, and banking industries resulting from low‐quality LMX and job dissatisfaction. It confirms the reliability and construct validity of the well‐known LMX scale and Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) in cross‐industry comparisons. It also identifies the shape of the hypothesized relationships among the three industries. Comparisons indicate that in the service sector, quality of LMX is significantly higher than in manufacturing, that the level of job satisfaction is higher in manufacturing than in service, and that satisfaction with supervision has a significant impact on job satisfaction.     

Evaluating Form and Functionality of Pay‐for‐Performance Plans: The Relative Incentive and Sorting Effects of Merit Pay,Bonuses, and Long‐Term Incentives

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.     

The impact of employee‐share‐ownership schemes on performance in unionised and non‐unionised workplaces

Conventional wisdom suggests that higher performance is observed when employee‐share‐ownership (ESO) schemes coexist with employee participation arrangements. However, the evidence is inconclusive and it has been suggested that performance benefits occur in ESO workplaces only when employees are actually involved in the decision‐making process. Drawing on the cross‐section data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, the article shows that higher productivity is observed in those workplaces where unions coexist with ESO schemes. This result highlights the relevance of unions to High Performance Work Systems.     

Otra Empanada en la Parilla: Examining the Role of Culture and Information Sharing in Chile and Australia

One of the biggest assets of a firm is its information base. Included in this information base is a knowledge of prior errors and failures. Extant research suggests that while the propensity to share “bad news” (i.e. a prior error) is dependent on the cost of sharing, the perceived value of that cost may be culturally dependent. One area of interest that has received substantial attention in the prior literature has been cross‐cultural differences in negative information sharing in general, as well as the particular context in which the individual's superior is either present or absent during the information‐sharing process. Our study examines the role of the two cultural values (individualism/collectivism and to a lesser extent power distance) in explaining national differences in information sharing. By focusing on a sample from Chile and Australia, we were able to remove the regional cultural dimension of face, which has been inherent in prior studies that used Greater China as the representative of a collectivist society. Results from our quasi experiment show that when a supervisor is present during information sharing, collectivist Chilean decision‐makers are more willing to share negative information with their colleagues than their counterpart and individualist Australian decision‐makers. Our results also show that when a supervisor is absent, both Australian and Chilean decision‐makers are willing to share more negative information but the increase in the Australian propensity is significantly greater than that of the Chileans.