Crossing the level of employee's performance: HPWS,affective commitment,human capital,and employee job performance in professional service organizations

Extant research on high-performance work systems (HPWS) has primarily examined the effects of HPWS on firm-level performance from a macro perspective and mostly in manufacturing settings. This study extends this literature by integrating social exchange theory and human capital theory perspectives to examine how shop-level HPWS affect employee individual performance in the service context, especially focusing on the small-scale professional service organizations. Data collected from multiple sources included 97 hair salon shop owners and 284 hairdressers as well as objective job performance measured in terms of each hairdresser's average monthly service sales. Results from cross-level analysis indicated that the relationship between shop-level HPWS and employee job performance was mediated by employee affective commitment and their human capital. These findings shed new light on the mechanisms through which HPWS impact employee outcomes and serve to bridge between macro and micro perspectives of human resource management.     

Latent social distancing: Identification,causes and consequences

It is not directly observable how effectively a society practices social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposes a novel and robust methodology to identify latent social distancing at the country level. We extend the Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered-Deceased (SEIRD) model with a time-varying, country-specific distancing term, and derive the Model-Inferred DIStancing index (MIDIS) for 120 countries using readily available epidemiological data. The index is not sensitive to measurement errors in epidemiological data and to the values assigned to model parameters. The evolution of MIDIS shows that countries exhibit diverse patterns of distancing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic—a persistent increase, a trendless fluctuation, and an inverted U are among these patterns. We then implement regression analyses using MIDIS and obtain the following results: First, MIDIS is strongly correlated with available mobility statistics, at least for high income countries. Second, MIDIS is also strongly associated with (i) the stringency of lockdown measures (governmental response), (ii) the cumulative number of deceased persons (behavioral response), and (iii) the time that passed since the first confirmed case (temporal response). Third, there is statistically significant regional variation in MIDIS, and more developed societies achieve higher distancing levels. Finally, MIDIS is used to explain output losses experienced during the pandemic, and it is shown that there is a robust positive relationship between the two, with sizable economic effects.     

Citizenship ambivalence: Its nature,causes and consequences

Early research on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) indicated that such actions were beneficial to organizations and employees. In contrast, more recent work has suggested that there are also some negative consequences associated with these behaviors as well. However, research has yet to examine how employees who recognize both positive and negative aspects of OCB navigate this reality. To better understand this phenomenon, we define a new construct, citizenship ambivalence, which occurs when employees feel torn as to whether they should engage in or refrain from engaging in a specific act of OCB. We discuss the likely sources of citizenship ambivalence and employee responses to citizenship ambivalence, focusing particular attention on how citizenship ambivalence relates to the quantity of OCB performed, the quality of OCB performed, and citizenship fatigue. After discussing the causes and consequences of citizenship ambivalence, we conclude with a discussion of the implications for human resource management and directions for future research.     

Empowering leadership: leading people to be present through affective organizational commitment?*

Abstract

This study tested a mediation model in which empowering leadership was negatively related to three withdrawal behaviors: lateness, absenteeism, and turnover intention, with affective organizational commitment as a mediator. With 294 full‐time US employees, results from structural equation modeling indicated that empowering leader behaviors at one time were positively related to estimates of affective organizational commitment at a second time, which in turn was negatively related to absenteeism and turnover intention at a final time. Additionally, no significant direct effect was found between empowering leadership and withdrawal behaviors, further supporting the mediation model. However, neither empowering leadership nor affective commitment influenced followers' lateness. Empowering leadership, which provides employees with autonomy and developmental support, may have a favorable effect on employees' decisions to attend and stay in the organization, as well as their affective reaction to the organization in the form of psychological commitment. This study extended prior research models by examining a full range of withdrawal behaviors in relation to empowering leadership and showed that commitment may explain why empowering leader behaviors can affect employees' retention decisions.     

Contribution to social exchange in public organizations: examining how support,trust, satisfaction,commitment and work outcomes are related

The intent of the research was to examine the relationships between support, trust, satisfaction, commitment and work outcomes. The framework of social exchange theory was used as a guide. The research described in this study replicates in the public sector (N = 704) and previous findings obtained in a study conducted in the private sector. Consistent with the study in private sector, support is related to intention to leave and helping behavior to trust and satisfaction. Results are discussed.     

Antecedents of affective and normative commitment of organisational volunteers

Abstract

We investigated a number of established and emergent antecedents of affective and normative commitment of volunteers involved with a large Australian non-profit (NP) service delivery organisation. Self-report survey data were gathered from 921 volunteers. Using multiple regression analysis, we found affective commitment was positively predicted by role scope, personal importance, organisational support, esteem-based need satisfaction and value-based need satisfaction and negatively predicted by role ambiguity. We found that normative commitment was positively predicted by socialisation experiences and congruence of organisational mission and values with personal values. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are further discussed. Of particular note is the value of extending organisational commitment mindsets to the value-laden and idiosyncratic NP sector and its volunteers. This includes the operationalisation of constructs not traditionally included in the examination of paid staff commitment, including perceptions of personal importance and need satisfaction, to inform volunteer management practice.     

The consequences of dual and unilateral commitment to the organisation and union

This article examines the pattern and consequences of commitment to organisation and union amongst union members in a UK National Health Service Trust. Those who perceived the industrial relations climate as positive were more likely to be dually committed to both organisation and union. As anticipated, union commitment predicted union citizenship behaviours and intent to quit the union. However, organisational commitment predicted intent to quit the organisation but not organisational citizenship behaviour, which was predicted by union commitment. Findings suggest that those with a unilateral commitment to the union are more likely than the dually committed to engage in citizenship behaviours aimed at helping fellow members and colleagues, perhaps because they feel unconstrained by any strong loyalty to the organisation.     

Within-person variation in affective commitment to teams: Where it comes from and why it matters

Teamwork is crucial to organizational success and commitment to teams is an important predictor of team-related behaviors. However, theorists and researchers have typically assumed that commitment levels are generally stable within-persons, increasing or decreasing as a result of substantial organizational changes. This position is at odds with the evidence of systematic and regular intraindividual fluctuations in personal attributes and workplace behaviors. We draw upon affective events theory to present a model explaining how certain events and dispositions produce vacillations in affective reactions which, in turn, are likely to create within-person variation in affective commitment to teams (WPVC_teams). We further propose that WPVC_teams enhances prediction and explanation of intraindividual fluctuations in work behavior and, interindividually, moderates the relationship between level of commitment and behavior.     

Organizational commitment in MNC subsidiary top managers: antecedents and consequences

This article studies, first, how affective and continuance commitments affect MNC subsidiary top managers' intent to leave either their current post or the firm itself, and second, which variables influence these managers' affective and continuance commitments. The analysis uses a sample of MNC subsidiary top managers in Spain, and the results confirm that these managers' intent to leave the subsidiary and the multinational is determined by affective and continuance commitments in its two dimensions (high-sacrifice and low-alternatives), and that these commitments, in turn, are determined by the managers' personal cultural values and company bonding variables.     

Non-regular professionals' dual commitment in South Korea: antecedents and consequences

There is a growing concern with whether nonregular professionals are concurrently committed to both the organization and their profession and whether such commitments are beneficial to that organization. This article seeks to investigate the relationship between organizational justice variables and the dual commitment of nonregular professionals via perceived organizational support (POS) and the subsequent effect of the dual commitment on organizational citizen behavior. Hypotheses are developed and then tested through structural equation modeling with data collected from a total of 1143 part-time instructors at South Korean universities. The findings of this study reveal that the perceptions held by nonregular professionals of organizational justice constructs concurrently influence organizational commitment and professional commitment via POS and that both commitments are positively associated with altruistic behavior. The findings advance our understanding of the dual commitment of nonregular professionals and provide universities with managerial implications as to how to manage effectively part-time instructors. Limitations, directions for future research, and conclusions are presented.     

Exploring sources and outcomes of trust and commitment to nonprofit organizations: The case of Amnesty International Portugal

The interactions between customers and organizations have been regarded as a core aspect in cocreating and developing new products and practices. The current study explores these interactions in the context of citizens and nonprofit organizations. The study comprises two parts: (a) a qualitative approach using interviews and the analysis of social networks to better understand the organization's social media marketing practices and corresponding outcomes and (b) a quantitative approach to analyze antecedents and outcomes of trust and being committed to participate in a nonprofit organization such as Amnesty International. From the qualitative approach, the findings highlight that Amnesty International uses social media (Facebook) to share information, and citizens tend to consider sharing posts, but they do not express new ideas or interact with the organization. These findings contribute to structure the model analyzed in the second stage of the research. Regarding the qualitative approach, the results show that organizational credibility is the most significant driver of trust followed by communicative ability. Affectively commitment to participation and relationship perception act as outcomes of overall commitment.     

Financial participation and recruitment and retention: causes and consequences

Using a sample of over 5000 establishments in Germany, we analyze the antecedents and effects of profit sharing (PS) and employee share ownership (ESO) with respect to the ability of firms to meet their recruitment and retention objectives and to achieve employment growth. We draw on both economic and behavioral perspectives to argue that firms that adopt PS and ESO plans do so in order to attract and retain employees. Using logistic regression and a propensity score matching technique, we find that firms that face higher recruitment problems, and those that have greater employment growth objectives, are more likely to use ESO and PS. Unlike ESO, PS enhances firm-level employment growth. However, neither ESO nor PS help firms to fully resolve recruitment and retention problems.     

Working for a higher purpose: A theoretical framework for commitment to organization-sponsored causes

We explicate the theoretical foundations of employee commitment to organization-sponsored causes—voluntary, socially responsible practices or programs espoused by an organization—as targets of employee commitment. Although scholarly interest in organization-sponsored causes is increasing, little is understood about the mechanisms for employee involvement in organization-sponsored causes, since the motives and context for participation may differ significantly from participation in such causes outside of work. We propose that commitment to organization-sponsored causes can be conceptualized in terms of affective and normative mindsets and suggest that these mindsets, both separately and in combination, influence employees' behavioral support for the cause. We also draw upon the theory of planned behavior to suggest that employee perceptions regarding how an organization supports employee participation in the cause may influence their behavioral support for the cause. Finally, we describe the interrelationships among commitment to the organization-sponsored cause, employees' behavioral support for the organization-sponsored cause, and organizational commitment.     

Personality,self-efficacy and job resources and their associations with employee engagement,affective commitment and turnover intentions

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the extent to which personality characteristics influence employees’ psychological connection to their work beyond that predicted by job context factors. More specifically, using Job Demands-Resources theory, we examined the influence of HEXACO personality facets, self-efficacy, and job resources on engagement, affective commitment and turnover intention. We used structural equation modelling on data collected from 623 participants working in a variety of organizational settings to test a proposed and a re-specified model. The results showed that both job resources and individual differences factors had direct and indirect effects on engagement, affective commitment and turnover intention. The personality facet liveliness was positively associated with engagement; sentimentality was positively associated with affective commitment; and social boldness, diligence and sentimentality were positively associated with self-efficacy. The model explained 69% of the variance in engagement, 60% of the variance in affective commitment and 33% of the variance in turnover intention. Despite the stronger influence of job resources, the results suggest that both individual factors and job context factors influence employees’ psychological attachment to their work. Practical implications in terms of selection, engagement and organizational development interventions, and further research opportunities are identified.     

Irregular workloads with MRP systems: Some causes and consequences

Material Requirements Planning (MRP) systems have been widely applied in industry to better manage multiproduct, multistage production environments. Although many applications have been quite successful, much is still left to the planner's intuition as to how to assure that master schedules, component lot sizes, and priorities realistically conform to the capacity limits at individual work centers. Capacity issues may indeed be the soft spot in MRP logic.This paper explores some possible causes of irregular workload patterns when using an MRP system. Better insight on which factors cause temporary bottlenecks could help managers better assess the vulnerability of their plants to this problem. It might also suggest ways of dampening peaks and valleys. The problem setting is a multistage environment; several products are made from various subassemblies and parts. Each shop order is routed through one or more capacitated work centers. An order is delayed either by temporary capacity shortages or the unavailability of components. Of course, the second delay can be caused by capacity problems previously encountered by the shop orders of its components.Seven experimental factors are tested with a large-scale simulator, and five performance measures are analyzed. The factors are the number of levels in the bill of material, the average load on the shop, the average lot size, the choice of priority rule, demand variability, the use of a gateway department, and the degree of equipment specialization. We have one measure of customer service, two for inventory, and two for workload. The workload measures are unconventional, since our interest is when workload variability occurs and how it affects inventory and customer service.The simulator has been developed over the course of eight years, and since this study has been further enhanced to handle many more factors. The simulator was validated recently with real data at two manufacturing plants. It is quite general, in that the bills of material, shop configuration, routings, worker efficiencies, and operating rules can be changed as desired.An initial screening experiment was performed, whereupon the average load and priority rules were not statistically significant at even the .05 level. A full factorial analysis with two replications was then conducted on the five remaining factors. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical tests have been performed.The results confirm that workload variability can have a detrimental impact on customer service and inventory. The following structural changes to the manufacturing system can be beneficial, but tend to be more difficult to achieve. More BOM levels improve customer service, but increase inventory and capacity bottlenecks. Resource flexibility is a powerful tool to reduce workload variability. Capacity slack averaging much over 10% is wasteful, having no benefits for inventory and customer service. In general, revising the routing patterns only, such as creating more dominant paths, will not give big payoffs. The following procedural changes are easier to implement. Master schedules which smooth aggregate resources are an excellent device to reduce workload variability. Even with a smooth MPS, debilitating workload variability can still occur due to the design of the BOM, lot size, and leadtime offset parameters. Selecting a priority rule does not seem to be of overriding importance compared to master scheduling and component lot sizing. These findings must be considered within the context of the range of plant environments encompassed by this study.     

Perceptions of HR practices,person–organisation fit,and affective commitment: The moderating role of career stage

In a three‐wave survey study among 487 Dutch university employees, we examined how and when employees' perceptions of high‐performance work practices (HPWP) affect employee affective commitment. We proposed that perceived person–organisation (PO) fit mediates this relationship and that the relationships among perceptions of HPWP, perceived PO fit, and affective commitment differ across career stages. Our results confirm that perceptions of HPWP enhance PO fit perceptions and, in turn, strengthen affective commitment. Moreover, the relationship between perceptions of HPWP and perceived PO fit is only significant among employees in the advancement stage of their careers; however, direct comparison across different career stages reveals no significant differences in the HPWP–PO fit relationship. Furthermore, career stage partly moderates the relationship between PO fit and affective commitment, which is only significant among employees in the maintenance career stage. These findings have important implications for the literature on strategic Human Resource Management and PO fit.     

Employees' concerns about change and commitment to change among Italian organizations: the moderating role of innovative work behavior

Despite being regarded as a critical psychological process influencing the effectiveness of change initiatives, concerns about change have not received empirical attention in the organizational change literature. The present study addresses this issue by examining the relationships among employees' concerns about change (conceptualized as including concerns about the contents and benefits of change, and concerns about mastering the change), commitment to change and innovative work behavior. First, in a hospital undergoing a major administrative change (N = 435), concerns about change were generally found to be negatively related to affective and normative commitment to change and positively related to continuance commitment to change. These results were replicated in a chemical and pharmaceutical company undergoing a technological change (N = 113), except that concerns about change were unrelated to normative commitment to change. In addition, employees' innovative work behavior moderated the relationship of concerns about change to affective commitment to change such that the relationship was negative when innovative behavior was low but nonsignificant when innovative behavior was high. This study provides scholars and practitioners with a theoretically and empirically grounded framework for assessing employees' concerns about change, and moves research a step forward into identifying the behaviors that organizations should support to counteract this psychological threat.     

Implementing Change in Public Organizations: The relationship between leadership and affective commitment to change in a public sector context

We propose and test a theoretical framework concerning the relationship between transformational leadership behaviour and affective commitment to change in a public sector context. We apply change management theory to explain how direct supervisors contribute to processes of organizational change, thereby increasing affective commitment to change among employees. While the change leadership literature emphasizes the role of executive managers during change, we conclude that the transformational leadership behaviour of direct supervisors is an important contribution to the successful implementation of change. Furthermore, the results show how the specific context of public organizations determines the transformational leadership behaviour of direct supervisors.     

How organizational support impacts affective commitment and turnover among Italian nurses: a multilevel mediation model

This study examines multilevel relationships between perceived organizational support (POS), affective commitment and voluntary turnover among nurses. We explored the mediation role of affective commitment between POS and turnover behavior at both individual and work-unit levels. This cross-level study involved 945 Italian nurses from 60 work units. We hypothesized and showed that collective affective commitment fully mediated the impact of climate for POS on individual and collective turnover among nurses. This study helps explain the variance in turnover among nurses in healthcare organizations by analyzing the influence of unit-level climate on individual behavior. Results stress that social environments within wards are important in explaining the processes by which nurses decide to quit their work unit.