Sister Cities Flourish

Building sister city relation, also known as friendship city, is a common channel for cities in different countries to keep a closertie and communication. According to the statistics from China International Friendship Cities Association, up to the end of 2007, 1087 provinces and states and 314 cities from 120 countries in the world have found their sister cities in China. Among them, Japan has the largest amount of Chicapital history.     

工作压力双路径视角下国防研发人员主动性行为形成机理：职场精神力的调节效应

研发人员主动性行为是实现国防科技企业创新与高质量发展的重要竞争力来源，但有关工作压力背景下主动性行为的形成机理仍缺乏实证探索。以双元工作压力理论为基础，探讨了挑战性压力与阻碍性压力对国防研发人员主动性行为的作用机制，重点考察了工作繁荣与情绪耗竭的中介作用以及职场精神力的调节效应。针对8家国防科技企业及科研院所的630名研发人员开展实证研究，分析结果表明：挑战性压力和阻碍性压力分别对主动性行为起正向与负向作用；工作繁荣和情绪耗竭分别在挑战性压力、阻碍性压力与主动性行为间起部分中介作用；职场精神力正向调节挑战性压力与工作繁荣的关系，负向调节阻碍性压力与情绪耗竭的关系；职场精神力不仅调节了挑战性压力通过工作繁荣影响主动性行为的间接效应，还调节了阻碍性压力通过情绪耗竭影响主动性行为的间接效应。     

Finding the fit: Why compliance and ethics programs should seek to match individual and corporate values

Job seekers would like guidance on how to find a job with a firm whose values reinforce their own, a place that would be a good personal fit. At the same time, because of legal compliance requirements, it is crucial that employers find employees that fit the company’s value system so that the company can maintain an effective ethics and compliance program. This article looks at the legal, regulatory structure in both the U.S. and E.U. with an emphasis on reflexive corporate governance. It also reports the findings of a survey of E.U. and U.S. executives with a reputation for nurturing ethical business culture to discover what virtues and factors are most important and, thus, something a job seeker might look for in finding a strong, ethical company. Finally, the article raises the cognitive issues of the importance for job seekers to examine their own psychological biases so they are evaluating a position based on what really fits their values.     

Inside the mediation room - efficiency,voice and equity in workplace mediation

Existing research into workplace mediation in the UK has tended to focus on managerial perceptions. Consequently, there has been a unitarist emphasis on the business case for mediation, revolving around its alleged superior efficiency properties compared to conventional rights-based procedures. This paper develops the research agenda in two respects: first, it foregrounds the experiences of participants in mediation through 25 interviews with individuals drawn from a variety of contexts. Second, it extends the analysis beyond the efficiency of mediation to consider issues of voice and equity. In doing so it explores the role played by mediation within the negotiation and re-negotiation of workplace relations and also the way in which it shapes, and is shaped by, power and control. In the cases examined in the paper, mediation not only facilitated employee voice, but allowed subordinates to challenge the authority of supervisors and line managers. However, the influence of mediation on the balance of workplace power relations outside the mediation room was much more limited.     

Will AI ever sit at the C-suite table? The future of senior leadership

As the sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) systems develop and AI becomes a key element of organizational strategy across a wide spectrum of industries, new demands are being placed on senior leaders. To understand the growing challenges leaders will face in the age of AI, we conducted interviews with 33 senior leaders in several countries across a wide range of industries. Our research highlights key capabilities and skills that leaders will require. Underlying these capabilities is a mindset oriented toward continuous learning and self-development, which will enable ongoing and rapid adaptation to change. Our findings identified the following key capabilities: digital know-how, data-driven focus, networking, ethics, and agility. To successfully navigate the coming era, senior leaders will need to focus on reskilling the workforce, recruiting and retaining highly skilled talent, building an intrapreneurial culture, and managing unprecedented changes in technologies and the nature of work.     

Workplace romance across different industries with a focus on hospitality and leisure

Workplace romance is not a new phenomenon; yet, not many studies have investigated this matter in organizational behavior research. Leisure and hospitality industry holds the highest rate of workplace romance (57%) among different industries. In this study, following the theory of love, we have defined workplace romance as a romantic relationship among organization employees that is hypothesized to be determined by interpersonal solidarity, interpersonal attraction, physical attraction, motivation, perceived value, and attitude towards workplace romance. Using a sample of 603 employees from 13 industry categories, the proposed hypotheses were tested by employing both variance- and covariance-based structural equation modeling. Furthermore, the moderation impacts of organizational factors of injustice perception, culture and policies, organization size, and autonomy, as well as individual factors of previous experience, gender, and marital status along with the industry factor were tested. The results supported all the hypotheses except the hypothesis concerning the impact of attitude towards workplace romance. Findings also provide some interesting differences among moderating variables.     

Workplace ostracism and proactive customer service performance: A conservation of resources perspective

This study tests the impact of workplace ostracism on hospitality employees’ proactive customer service performance (PCSP). Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, we investigate the effects of two sequential mediators (i.e. job tension and customer orientation) and the moderating effect of need for affiliation. Using a time-lagged research design and the data from 16 hotels in China, we find that workplace ostracism positively influences job tension; job tension decreases customer orientation, which in turn undermines employees’ PCSP. Moreover, we find that need for affiliation exacerbates the effect of workplace ostracism on job tension such that the effect is stronger when employees’ need for affiliation is high rather than low. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications subsequently.     

Uncovering the relationship between workaholism and workplace destructive and constructive deviance: an exploratory study

Given the significant social and economic costs and/or benefits associated with workplace deviance, researchers have been interested in examining the antecedents of deviant behaviour. Similarly, as the incidence of workaholism has increased, there has been a need to further understand the positive and negative consequences of workaholism in an organizational context. This exploratory study examined the relationship of three workaholism components with measures of workplace destructive and constructive deviance. Data were collected from 142 male and female employees working in six companies in Brazil using anonymously completed questionnaires. The results suggest that the workaholism components were significantly related to two measures of deviance. This provides partial support for the hypothesized relationship. Future research directions and practical implications are discussed.     

Shedding gender stigmas: Work-life balance equity in the 21 century

The gender stigma of work-life balance (WLB) policies as concessions for mothers and female caregivers originated with the push by the Women's Movement for gender workplace equity in the late 20^th century. Unfortunately, this perception continues in the 21^st century and retains the additional stigma of employee participation in these policies—regardless of gender—as a detrimental career move. Thus, home and work responsibilities for professionals of all genders who desire more occupational flexibility remain unreconciled. Despite this dominant national and international outlook, this article encourages new century organizations and professionals to reject the traditional perception of occupational inequity through gender-colored glasses and instead contemplate the benefits of WLB policies void of gender stigmas. Specifically, organizations could re-create workplace culture with stigma-free WLB policies through administrative leaders’ embracement of and participation in such policies, which may pave the way for establishing occupational equity. Through workplace culture re-creation, organizations may then offer employees—regardless of gender, marital status, or company position—flexible work options to assist them in leading happy, healthy, and more productive lives.