Employee reactions to voice and choice in the workplace: the influence of culture

The present study investigated the effect of culture on a much-prescribed management practice, that of employee participation in decision making. A survey was conducted among employees from two countries culturally distinct in the dimensions of power distance and individualism, namely Canada and the Philippines. Given eight decision-making scenarios that varied in terms of whether voice and/or choice was given to the employee and in terms of the importance of the outcomes, the respondents were asked about their perceptions of fairness of the procedures and outcomes, satisfaction with the procedures and outcomes, and preference for the decision-making procedures. Results show a highly significant country decision-making mode outcome importance interaction effect, but not in the directions expected. Overall, the Philippine sample registered more positive reactions to participation in decision making, although the Philippines' higher rank in power distance and lower rank in individualism than Canada seem to indicate otherwise. The results, together with a previous study conducted in high power distance-low individualism Mexico, forcefully suggest that employee participation in decision making may be successfully transferred.     

Pay‐Level Satisfaction and Employee Outcomes: The Moderating Effect of Employee‐Involvement Climate

The present study examined employee‐involvement climate (i.e., information‐sharing and decision‐making climate) as a moderator of the relationship between pay‐level satisfaction and employee outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction, affective commitment, and turnover intention). Survey data were collected from 22,662 Belgian employees, representing 134 organizations. The hypotheses derived from distributive justice theory and from research on the meaning of pay received partial support. Multilevel analyses revealed that a decision‐making climate buffered the negative effects of low pay‐level satisfaction, and that an information‐sharing climate exacerbated the negative effects of low pay‐level satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of this differential moderating effect are discussed.     

All for one and one for all: A mechanism through which broad‐based employee stock ownership and employee‐perceived involvement practice create a productive workforce

Drawing on social identity theory, this research frames a multimediational model that delineates how broad‐based employee stock ownership (BESO) and employee‐perceived involvement practice in tandem yield a productive workforce at the organization level. In our theoretical model, we propose that social cohesion and voluntary turnover are collective attitudinal and behavioral outcomes resulting from the shared perception of we‐ness that employees experience through both participatory practices. Our path analysis of a multisource, time‐lagged dataset from 176 large U.S. companies revealed the sequential mediating roles of social cohesion and voluntary turnover between these organizational practices and labor productivity. Our theoretical claims and empirical evidence will contribute to a systematic understanding of how and why BESO and employee involvement leverage greater organizational productivity from employees.     

Employee ownership and firm performance: a meta‐analysis

Employee ownership has been an area of significant practitioner and academic interest for the past four decades. Yet, empirical results on the relationship between employee ownership and firm performance remain mixed. To aggregate findings and provide potential direction for future theoretical development, we conducted a meta‐analysis of 102 samples representing 56,984 firms. Employee ownership has a small, but positive and statistically significant relation to firm performance ( = 0.04). The effect is generally positive for studies with different sampling designs (samples assessing change in performance pre‐employee–post‐employee ownership adoption or samples on firms with employee ownership), different performance operationalisation (efficiency or growth) and firm type (publicly held or privately held). Suggesting benefits of employee ownership in a variety of contexts, we found no differences in effects on performance in publicly held versus privately held firms, stock or stock option‐based ownership plans or differences in effects across different firm sizes (i.e. number of employees). We do find that the effect of employee ownership on performance has increased in studies over time and that studies with samples from outside the USA report stronger effects than those within. We also find little to no evidence of publication bias.     

My Strengths Count!

This article builds on the argument that research on the link between HRM and performance benefits from investigating how HR practices are envisioned by managers (in terms of underlying philosophies), and how they are perceived by employees (in terms of psychological climates). Our study focuses on the effects of a strengths‐based HR philosophy assuming that employee performance can be maximized through leveraging individual strengths. This philosophy relates to a strengths‐based psychological climate, that is, employee perceptions of the opportunities they get to identify, develop, and use their strengths. We hypothesized that a strengths‐based psychological climate positively influences employees’ positive affect, which in turn enhances their in‐role and extra‐role performance. In our study, 442 respondents working in 39 departments of eight Dutch and Belgian organizations gave ratings on the strength‐based psychological climate of their organization, and indicated their level of work‐related positive affect, in‐role performance, and extra‐role performance. Results of multilevel hierarchical regression analyses supported our hypotheses by indicating that strengths‐based psychological climate was positively linked to in‐role and extra‐role performance, and that this link was mediated by positive affect. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Employee ownership and affective organizational commitment: employees’ perceptions of fairness and their preference for company shares over cash

Interest in profit-sharing and employee ownership is growing among both practitioners and researchers. This study examines the relationship between the preferences and perceptions of employees regarding an ongoing share ownership plan on the one hand, and the employees’ affective organizational commitment on the other. After controlling for various personal and work-environment characteristics and for size of the financial contribution it was found that preference for ownership and the perceived fairness of the employee ownership plan were significant predictors of affective commitment. These findings support the notion that employee ownership may have intrinsic motivating effects on employees by way of a mediating mechanism, whereby the effects of ownership on organizational commitment depend on how employees evaluate and perceive formal ownership plans.     

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.     

拒绝“内卷”:团队人际关系、工作需求创新对和谐型激情的作用机制

职场内卷现象受到多方关注,如何让员工持续热爱工作成为现实的命题。本文以自我决定理论及工作特征理论为依据,考察团队人际关系、员工团队心理安全感及工作需求创新对员工和谐型激情的作用机制。研究发现:高质量领导成员交换关系和团队成员交换关系能使员工产生团队心理安全感,团队心理安全感分别在领导成员交换关系及团队成员交换关系与和谐型激情之间起中介作用,工作需求创新调节了中介效应。因此,组织若欲令员工热爱工作,团队的“安全感”和工作的“新鲜感”同样重要,应着力在团队人际关系建设和工作设计方面提升员工的积极感知体验。研究结论对组织员工管理实践具有一定指导意义。     

How does growth need strength influence employee outcomes? The roles of hope,leadership, and cultural value

Abstract

Strong growth need is essential if an employee is to be motivated to complete complex and challenging jobs. It is important for organizations to attract employees with high growth need strength and help them achieve positive outcomes. However, limited research has been conducted to examine the mechanism underlying growth need strength’s positive effect on employee outcomes. Based on hope theory, we hypothesized that hope mediates the effect of growth need strength on job performance and affective commitment by transforming employees’ general desire for personal growth into goal-related cognitive thinking, comprising both ‘will’ and ‘ways’. We further hypothesized the moderating effect of transformational leadership, and the joint moderating effect of transformational leadership and individual power distance on the relationship between growth need strength and hope. We tested our hypotheses with data from a sample of 265 subordinate–supervisor dyads from China. Data analysis results supported the mediating role of hope. We found that growth need strength has a stronger effect on hope when transformational leadership is higher, and this effect is the strongest when both transformational leadership and individual power distance are simultaneously higher. The implications of these findings for human resource management research and practice are discussed.     

Psychological ownership and stewardship behavior: The moderating role of agency culture

This study investigates whether employees’ psychological ownership results in stewardship behavior and whether this relationship is affected by an employee’s perception of the organization’s agency culture. A survey of the financial managers of 129 firms in Germany generally confirms these expectations. In addition, and surprisingly, our findings suggest a negligible effect of an agency culture on the relationship between psychological ownership and stewardship behavior when managers perceive high psychological ownership. Thereby, our study enriches the literature on the consequences of psychological ownership by providing insights into the boundary conditions of such outcomes at the manager level.     

So,What Am I Supposed to Do? A Multilevel Examination of Role Clarity

Although prior research generally holds that role clarity is affected by both individual characteristics and organizational contexts, current conceptual or empirical models do not reflect the multilevel nature of these antecedents. A more complete understanding of how role clarity emanates from different organizational levels is necessary to help prevent poor job performance and other harmful consequences of ambiguous role expectations. To address this, I begin this research by investigating the effects of internal work locus of control, general self‐efficacy, and leader–member exchange on role clarity. With respect to the cross‐level effects, I focus on the roles of a manager's control style and the organization's strategy‐making pattern. Analyses of a multi‐industry, multilevel dataset collected from 724 employees and 124 managers in 25 organizations in Finland suggest that all of the individual‐level independent variables and a deliberate strategy‐making pattern improve role clarity. However, a deliberate strategy‐making pattern negatively moderates the relationship between general self‐efficacy and role clarity. Finally, even though an outcome‐based control system causes role ambiguity among employees in most functional areas, it may be an effective driver of role clarity among employees in sales jobs.     

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.     

Cultural values and definitions of career success

This paper examines how national culture relates to the ways that individuals define career success. Data are drawn from interviews with 269 professional services employees in 15 countries. Interviews are content coded and linked with country‐level Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness measures of cultural values. We test our hypotheses using a multilevel multinomial logit model. The results demonstrate that the ways in which employees define career success vary across countries, due in part to differences in cultural values after controlling for gender, occupation, job level, and national economic development. We find that employees from countries high in future orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation are more likely to define career success in terms of interpersonal outcomes, and those from countries high in collectivism (institutional and in‐group), humane orientation, and gender egalitarianism are more likely to prefer intrapersonal outcomes. We find that employees from countries that are high in assertiveness, uncertainty avoidance, and performance orientation are more likely to define career success in terms of achievement‐oriented outcomes. Finally, we find that employees from countries high in power distance report career success definitions in terms of safety and security outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of cultural differences in careers across countries.     

Entitlement to Work‐Life Balance Support: Employee/Manager Perceptual Discrepancies and Their Effect on Outcomes

We broaden contemporary understandings of the relationship between HR practices that support work‐life balance and organizational as well as individual outcomes, through a focus on perceptual discrepancies of entitlement. To theorize this notion, we adopt the self‐perception accuracy model and extend it by investigating whether any employee/management discrepancies in perceptions of entitlement mediate the relationship between HR practices supporting work‐life balance and outcomes. We use data from 20 European countries and apply a multilevel statistical methodology. Our results did not reveal significant mediation effects, but the perceptions of managers, not of employees, are related to HR practices that support work‐life balance. Furthermore, employees tend to have higher expectations of entitlement than does management. Finally, the more aligned management and employee perceptions of entitlement, the higher the positive organizational and individual outcomes over and above contextual idiosyncrasies. Findings denote that, in achieving positive outcomes for employees and organizations, managing perceptions regarding organizational support for work‐life balance is more important than actual support practices. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Strategic human resource management,firm performance,and employee relations climate in China

We examined strategic human resource management (SHRM) and human resource practices in the People's Republic of China to assess the impact of these practices on firm performance and the employee relations climate. We also tested whether firm ownership moderates the above relationships. Empirical results from a sample of Chinese firms from various industries and regions showed that the levels of adoption of SHRM and HR practices were lower in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) than in foreign‐invested enterprises (FIEs) and privately owned enterprises (POEs). Both SHRM and HR practices were found to have direct and positive effects on financial performance, operational performance, and the employee relations climate. However, the moderating effect of ownership type was significant for financial performance only. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The impact of psychological ownership on employee retention in mergers and acquisitions

Research has demonstrated that turnover rates among employees and executives in the acquired firm are much higher during an M&A event. Recent empirical and review articles on M&A have also shown that employee retention/turnover can best be understood by looking at psychological attributes and perceptions of M&As, thus drawing significant attention to the psychological and ‘human’ side voids to theoretically exploit and enhance understanding of people-related problems in M&A endeavors. In this article, we develop a moderated mediation model and propose that acquired firm employees' psychological ownership is positively related to acquired firm employees' retention through the direct and mediating effects of employees' commitment and involvement in M&A. We also propose that the effect of acquired firm employees' psychological ownership on employees' commitment and involvement and, ultimately, acquired firm employees' retention is moderated by loss of acquired firm autonomy. We also discuss implications for theory and practice, as well as future research directions of such an employees' psychological ownership perspective on retention effects.     

I am therefore I own: Implications of organization-based identity for employee stock ownership

Most research on employee stock plan participation investigates the effects of such forms of ownership on employee attitudes, leaving our understanding of the individual differences that contribute to employee ownership largely unknown. Drawing from the consumer behavior literature, our study explores the effect of organization-based identity on the decision to participate in an employee stock purchase plan. The study was conducted in a newly public firm where we examine the effect of organization-based identity on the purchase decision in two time periods. The first point in time was the initial public offering (IPO), when the employee has little information on how the firm's stock will perform in the market. The second point in time was the first quarter following the IPO, when employees have market data to help them with decision-making. Results indicate that, as predicted, organization-based identity is associated with participation in an employee stock purchase plan, at both points in time, above and beyond the influence of several economic and psychological predictors reported in prior studies.     

Too much of a good thing: The interactive effects of cultural values and core job characteristics on hindrance stressors and employee performance outcomes

This study contributes to research on core job characteristics by examining when employees may perceive enriched jobs as a hindrance stressor and in turn may experience lower performance at work. Utilizing time-lagged data collected from a sample of 386 employee–coworker dyads and drawing on cognitive appraisal theory of stress and coping, we explore the mediating role of hindrance stressors on the relationship between core job characteristics and key employee performance outcomes (i.e., creativity, counterproductive work behaviors, in-role performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors) and the moderating roles of cultural values (i.e., power distance and uncertainty avoidance) in influencing this mediation. The results supported the hypotheses, providing evidence that the experience of hindrance stressors mediates the relationship between core job characteristics and job performance outcomes when employees score high on power distance and uncertainty avoidance cultural values, and not when their scores on these cultural values were low. Practical implications and future research are discussed.     

Employee positive moods as a mediator linking transformational leadership and employee work outcomes

Past leadership research has demonstrated that transformational leadership has a positive effect on employee task performance and helping coworker behavior. However, among the research on the mediating mechanisms linking transformational leadership and employee work outcomes, little has been done empirically to examine the mediating effect of employee positive moods. This study extends previous research by examining the mediating role played by employee positive moods. Data were collected longitudinally from 282 employees and their immediate supervisors in 10 insurance companies in Taiwan. Results showed that transformational leadership both directly influenced employee task performance and helping coworker behavior and had an indirect effect through employee positive moods.     

Psychological ownership and organizational optimism amid China's corporate transformation: effects of an employee ownership scheme and a management-dominated board

Ownership reform was introduced to Chinese state-owned enterprises in the early 1990s, to allow employees to own a share of their enterprises and to bring changes to the underlying structure of governance. However, effectiveness of this reform has yet to be ascertained. This study examines the effects of the new employee stock ownership scheme and board compositions on the attitudes employees hold towards their jobs and organizations, as well as their perceptions of ownership. We developed a theoretical model on how participation in a stock ownership scheme (an employee's characteristic) and the composition of the board of governance (a firm characteristic) may be linked to job satisfaction and, in turn, to outcome variables such as psychological ownership and organizational optimism. This model was tested on 510 employees randomly sampled from ten stock-holding enterprises in urban Shanghai. Results indicate that participation in a stock ownership scheme has a positive effect on attitudes towards ownership, but that a board dominated by senior managers leads to gloomy perception of a firm's future. These effects were partially mediated by the satisfaction that employees felt in their jobs. The implications of these findings for management practices in China are discussed.