Offshoring Professional Services: Institutions and Professional Control

We examine the reasons why one might expect it to be more difficult to offshore professional work than manufacturing work in a globalized world. We then provide data on the variations in a specific case — the offshoring of diagnostic radiology from the USA, UK and Singapore. We show that existing theories on the ‘offshorability’ of jobs have not captured how national institutions and occupational regulations continue to define professional work. We then review the question of supply from India's perspective and report that both macro‐institutional and organizational contexts make it complicated for Indian doctors to supply much of this service.     

‘From boom to where?’: the impact of crisis on work and employment in Indian BPO

This article locates Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) within the global supply chains of business services delivery and an international division of service labour. It acknowledges the BPO market's essential dependence on demand from lead firms in the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on a conceptual synthesis of the Global Commodity Chain, Global Value Chain and Global Production Network frameworks, the article examines the impact of 2008's financial crisis on employment, work organisation and the experience of work in Indian BPO. Employer/industry sources and employee interviews reveal reconfigured local labour market dynamics, tightened work discipline, an extensification of working time, work intensification and unprecedented growth in job insecurity. Such changed characteristics suggest a watershed that raises questions concerning the sustainability of models of BPO work constructed in pre‐crisis years.     

Labour Adjustment Implications of Service Offshoring: Evidence from Canada

About one‐fifth of Canadian employees are in jobs that are vulnerable to service offshoring. Despite this figure, both theory and our empirical evidence (based on a variety of methodologies and datasets) suggest that the offshoring of business services is not likely to lead to large adverse employment effects. We also conclude that existing active labour market adjustment policies (e.g. increased labour market information, job search, mobility and training) developed for other adjustment pressures such as technological change and free‐trade in goods are just as appropriate (perhaps even more so) to deal with the consequences of service offshoring.     

The Impact of Employees' and Managers' Training on the Performance of Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment in the UK Service Sector

We investigate the relationship between employees' and managers' training and firm performance using a policy intervention that randomly assigned training support to small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises in the UK accommodation and food service sector. Because the number of firms self‐selected into training exceeded available places, training was randomly assigned to some firms, resulting in a randomized natural experimental design that allowed us to identify the average effect of training on treated firms. Our empirical results suggest that employees' training had a stronger positive impact on firms' labour productivity and profitability than that of managers'.     

Leeway for the Loyal: A Model of Employee Discretion

This article examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist's perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade‐off between the positive effects of discretion on potential output per employee and the negative effects of greater leeway on work effort. In empirical analysis using matched employer–employee data, it is shown that discretion is strongly affected by the level of employee commitment. In addition, discretion is generally greater in high‐skilled jobs, although not without exceptions, and lower where employees are under‐skilled. Homeworking and flexitime policies raise employee discretion. The impact of teamworking is mixed. In about half of cases team members do not jointly decide about work matters, and the net effect of teams on task discretion in these cases is negative. In other cases, where team members do decide matters jointly, the impact is found to be neutral according to employees' perceptions, or positive according to managers' perceptions. There are also significant and substantial unobserved establishment‐level factors which affect task discretion.     

Offshoring and firm innovation: The moderating role of top management team attributes

This study attempts to increase the understanding of how offshoring influences the introduction of new products and services. Focusing on the offshoring of those business functions that provide direct knowledge inputs for innovation (i.e., production, R&D, and engineering), we propose that offshoring has an inverted U‐shaped influence on firm innovativeness. Additionally, we provide an upper echelon contingency perspective by considering the moderating role of two top management team (TMT) attributes (i.e., informational diversity and shared vision). Using a cross‐industry sample with lagged data, we find that offshoring has an inverted U‐shaped influence on firm innovativeness and that this relationship is steeper in firms with high TMT informational diversity and in firms with low TMT shared vision. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employees' Innovative Behavior in Social Context: A Closer Examination of the Role of Organizational Care

A substantial body of research has examined the antecedents of innovation in organizational settings, but our current understanding of how social aspects of the work environment influence the innovative behavior of employees remains underdeveloped. One of these social aspects connected to the theme of “doing well by doing good” concerns organizational care, with scholars examining how actions centered on promoting employee well‐being may result in pro‐organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study is to present a conceptual analysis of the intricate relationship between organizational care and employees' innovative behavior by detailing key mediating mechanisms and conditional factors. This research will combine insights from multiple theories and literatures, most notably self‐determination theory, social exchange theory, and the literatures on organizational care, work motivation, and innovation. The proposed multilevel model clarifies how organizational care affects the creative, complex, and mundane elements of employees' innovative behavior through its effect on the motivational constructs of intrinsic motivation, identified motivation, and introjected obligation feelings, respectively. Moreover, the model highlights the potential dark sides of organizational care that managers must consider when designing and implementing caring policies and practices. Specifically, it clarifies how the effect of organizational care on employees' innovative behavior may depend on their subjective perceptions of care intrusiveness and care insincerity. As such, this study responds to calls for rich and nuanced conceptual research in the innovation field, especially concerning the role of employees' social work environment in motivating their innovative behavior. Important theoretical and practical implications of this conceptual analysis will be discussed, and valuable directions for future research will be outlined.     

Thematic Thinking and Individual Performance in Research and Development

Individuals differ in their preference for processing information on the basis of taxonomic, feature‐based similarity, or thematic, relation‐based similarity. These differences, which have been investigated in a recently emerging research stream in cognitive psychology, affect innovative behavior and thus constitute an important antecedent of individual performance in research and development (R&D) that has been overlooked so far in the literature on innovation management. To fill this research gap, survey and test data from the employees of a multinational information technology services firm are used to examine the relationship between thematic thinking and R&D professionals' individual performance. A moderated mediation model is applied to investigate the proposed relationships of thematic thinking and individual‐level performance indicators. Results show a positive relationship between thematic thinking and innovativeness, as well as individual job performance. While the results do not support the postulated moderation of the innovativeness–job performance relationship by employees' political skill, they show that the relationship between thematic thinking and job performance is fully mediated by R&D professionals' innovativeness. The present study is thus the first to reveal a positive relationship between thematic thinking and innovative performance.     

The Relationship of Individual Capabilities and Environmental Support with Different Facets of Designers' Innovative Behavior

Theoretical perspectives on employee creativity have tended to focus on an individual's capability to generate original and potentially useful ideas, whereas definitions of innovation also include the process of putting those new ideas into practice. This field study therefore set out to test how theoretically distinct types of individual knowledge and skills are related to different aspects of employees' innovative behavior in terms of both their new idea generation and idea implementation. Using a sample of design engineers (n = 169) in a multinational engineering company, measures were taken of different aspects of innovative work behavior (patent submission, real‐time idea submission, idea implementation) and a range of individual capabilities (creativity‐relevant skills, job expertise, operational skills, contextual knowledge, and motivation) and environmental features (job control, departmental support for innovation). Analyses showed that creativity‐relevant skills were positively related to indices of idea generation but not to idea implementation. Instead, employees' job expertise, operational skills, and motivation to innovate demonstrated a stronger role in idea implementation. In terms of environmental factors, job control showed no positive relationship with innovative work behavior while departmental support for innovation was related to employees' idea generation but not idea implementation. The theoretical perspective that correlates of idea generation differ in certain aspects to those for idea implementation are confirmed by the study. Practical implications for organizations wishing to improve their innovativeness are discussed in terms of tailored training, development, motivational, and environmental interventions designed to improve the capabilities of individuals to engage in all parts of the innovation process.     

The effects of perceived corporate brand personality on individuals' exploration and exploitation orientations: the moderating role of self-brand connection

Our knowledge is limited regarding the psychological antecedents of individuals' exploration and exploitation in general and regarding the identity-related antecedents in particular. The corporate brand of the organisation we work for is an important element of our collective identity, and the way we perceive the corporate brand personality of our organisation affects how we define ourselves. In this paper, using data from 417 individuals working in sales-related jobs and taking the behavioural strategy perspective, we examine the effects of perceived corporate brand personality on the individuals' identities and, therefore, strategic tendencies. More specifically, we find that the responsibility and activity dimensions of the corporate brand make the corresponding aspects of employees' identities more salient and affect their orientations towards exploration and exploitation. We also investigate the moderator role of the self-brand connection. This paper has contributions and implications, especially for the literature on exploration–exploitation at the individual level.     

What Do Unions Do to Work Design? Computer Use,Union Presence,and Tayloristic Jobs in Britain

The task framework has focused on employee survey data to analyze how computer use changes the content of jobs. In this article, we add another factor of work design, namely trade union presence. Using data from the UK Skills and Employment Surveys for the period 1997–2012, we find that union presence is associated with more Tayloristic jobs involving less autonomy, lower relevance of problem solving, and more control. In line with theory, the union effect moves in the opposite direction to the effect of computer use. The article has two important general implications. First, the Tayloristic/holistic distinction is an instructive dichotomy to evaluate changes in work design. Second, the presence of unions may induce managers to design jobs in Tayloristic ways in order to curb union bargaining power.     

Amazon Mechanical Turk and the commodification of labour

Crowd employment platforms enable firms to source labour and expertise by leveraging Internet technology. Rather than offshoring jobs to low‐cost geographies, functions once performed by internal employees can be outsourced to an undefined pool of digital labour using a virtual network. This enables firms to shift costs and offload risk as they access a flexible, scalable workforce that sits outside the traditional boundaries of labour laws and regulations. The micro‐tasks of ‘clickwork’ are tedious, repetitive and poorly paid, with remuneration often well below minimum wage. This article will present an analysis of one of the most popular crowdsourcing sites—Mechanical Turk—to illuminate how Amazon's platform enables an array of companies to access digital labour at low cost and without any of the associated social protection or moral obligation.     

Uncovering the hidden costs of offshoring: The interplay of complexity,organizational design,and experience

This study investigates estimation errors due to hidden costs—the costs of implementation that are neglected in strategic decision‐making processes—in the context of services offshoring. Based on data from the Offshoring Research Network, we find that decision makers are more likely to make cost‐estimation errors given increasing configuration and task complexity in captive offshoring and offshore outsourcing, respectively. Moreover, we show that experience and a strong orientation toward organizational design in the offshoring strategy reduce the cost‐estimation errors that follow from complexity. Our findings contribute to research on the effectiveness of sourcing and global strategies by stressing the importance of organizational design and experience in dealing with increasing complexity. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of the cessation of blogs within the UK police blogosphere

This article investigates the concept of influence within a group of police work‐bloggers. During the period studied (2007–2013), three influential police bloggers, well‐known within the small and tightly knit UK police blogosphere, abruptly ended their blogging activity. Their cessation stimulated others to reconsider their own blogging and led to several bloggers ceasing to blog for fear of being outed and disciplined or because they had been warned by superiors. This can be seen as part of a wider phenomenon as increasing blog surveillance has resulted in a reduction of work‐related blogs. The study shows that work‐blogging cessation is influenced by the activities or perceived activities of bloggers' peers and that, while internal factors were influential in the creation of new work‐blogs, external factors—in particular, fear of consequences for their career—were the predominant influences on their cessation.     

Organizational‐Level Gender Dissimilarity and Employee Commitment

This study explores the extent to which gender dissimilarity in the workplace affects employees' commitment to their organization, using data from the British (1998) Workplace Employee Relations Survey. The results showed that the effects of organizational‐level gender dissimilarity on organizational commitment were more complex than has commonly been assumed in the literature. The relationship between organizational‐level gender dissimilarity and employee commitment was U‐shaped for women whereas it was not significant for men. The relationship was moderated by the respondents' status as measured by their level of pay. For men, the relationship between gender dissimilarity and commitment was negative for high‐paid individuals but not for low‐paid ones, while for women the U‐shaped relationship was weaker for high‐paid individuals than for low‐paid individuals.     

Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity

Research summary : In this study, we build on the micro‐foundations perspective and investigate how individual characteristics contribute to the development of firm absorptive capacity. In particular, we assess how individual learning goal orientation affects firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Furthermore, we study how individuals' civic virtue acts as a micro‐level social integration mechanism that moderates the effect from firm realized absorptive capacity to potential absorptive capacity. Using the multilevel structural equation modeling technique and data from 871 core‐knowledge employees nested in 139 high‐technology firms, we find support to our major hypotheses. Together, this study finds support for the micro‐foundations' perspective and generates novel insights on how individual‐level factors could be linked with firm‐level heterogeneity in absorptive capacity. Managerial summary : We study how employees' characteristics contribute to a firm's absorptive capacity, that is, the ability of a firm to identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from the environment. Because firms have increasingly tapped into external resources to foster innovation over the past two decades, absorptive capacity is crucial to firm learning and success. Using data from 871 core‐knowledge employees in 139 high‐technology firms, we find that individual employees' learning goal orientation, the tendency to seek improvements in employees' competence and to understand or master new things advances the development of a firm's potential and realized absorptive capacity. More important, individual employees' civic virtue, the discretionary involvement in company issues, serves as a social integration mechanism that reduces the gap between firm potential and realized absorptive capacity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The rise of IT services clusters in India: A case of growth by replication

The Indian IT services sector has grown from small beginnings at the bottom of value creation to a major player in the global information and communications technology (ICT) industry. It commands a 55% share in the global market for IT services. India's IT sector value proposition in terms of low cost with large supply of high quality talent is compelling. As a result, India has become the premier choice not only for outsourcing IT services by the developed-world's multinational corporations (MNCs) but also for locating their own Global In-house Centers (GICs), which simultaneously compete and partner with local firms. This gave rise to six additional clusters beyond the earliest, largest and robust cluster, Bangalore. The paper provides a review of relevant literature; develops a conceptual framework for evaluation of clusters; and presents data and analysis with respect to relative size, growth, specialization, MNC presence and connectivity to local firms through expatriates and returning Indians, ,innovation; and discusses adequacy of ICT infrastructure for future growth. Although there are clear signs that the Indian IT sector has been moving towards a regime of providing high-end value added services, the sector's value proposition – lower cost combined with a large supply of high quality talent – remains the single most compelling reason for the rise and growth of multiple export clusters. Thus the sector's growth appears to be a case of growth by replication rather than innovation. The paper concludes that the Indian IT sector's value proposition in terms of lower cost combined with large supply of high quality talent remains the single most compelling reason for the rise and growth of multiple IT services export clusters. While the old adage, “people follow jobs” still holds for large part of the labor force, there is little doubt that the sprawling IT services clusters in India - with more to come from Tier II and Tier III cities – indicate, in fact, that “jobs follow talent." Both local firms and the MNCs, through their GICs, are pushing the boundaries of location farther and farther to continue to leverage cost advantage and available pools of talent.     

What we will do versus what we can do: The relative effects of unit‐level NPD motivation and capability

Although a firm's innovation performance has been commonly attributed to its innovative capability, in a study of 102 Chinese automobile assemblers, we find that employees' collective motivation for new product development (NPD) is more important than NPD capability in determining firms' innovation performance. This finding suggests that researchers need to simultaneously consider both unit‐level capability and unit‐level motivation in studying the mechanisms that drive innovation. Furthermore, our results indicate that a firm's strategic orientation focusing on NPD affects its employees' collective NPD motivation and NPD capability through relevant, mediating HRM practices. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Occupational Stereotypes and Gender‐Specific Job Satisfaction

Using representative data containing information on job satisfaction and workers’ gender‐specific prejudices, we investigate the relationship between stereotyping and job satisfaction. We show that women in stereotypically male jobs are significantly less satisfied with their work climate and job content than in stereotypically female jobs but more satisfied with their income in those same jobs. Our findings indicate that women trade off their higher income satisfaction against the negative consequences of stereotyping. As long as we take into account that stereotypically male jobs are physically more demanding than stereotypically female jobs, men are generally more satisfied with stereotypically male jobs.     

The impact of team‐member exchange,differentiation, team commitment,and knowledge sharing on R&D project team performance

This paper integrates team‐member exchange (TMX), affective commitment, and knowledge sharing to examine how work unit TMX influences employees' R&D project team commitment and intention to share knowledge, and how team knowledge‐sharing intention and TMX differentiation influences team performance. The results support the relationships between work unit TMX and employees' intention to share knowledge and team commitment. In addition, the results show that work unit TMX increases intention to share knowledge through increasing group members' team commitment. At the group level, the results support the relationships between team knowledge‐sharing intention and team performance. The results also show that TMX differentiation moderates the relationship between work unit TMX and team performance. That is, greater work unit TMX is more likely to achieve higher team performance in a team with low TMX differentiation as opposed to a team with high TMX differentiation. Implications for theory building, future research, and R&D management are discussed.