People management: developing and testing a measurement scale

Abstract

The central concept in this study is people management, referring to line managers’ implementation of HR practices and their leadership behaviour oriented at supporting the employees they supervise at work. In this study we conceptualize people management and develop a multidimensional scale to measure it from the perspectives of both employees and line managers. Using a Study 1/Study 2 design, including two-wave multilevel data from employees and line managers of a financial service provider, and cross-sectional data from teachers, educational support staff, and supervisors, we demonstrate the scale’s reliability and multidimensionality across samples and over time. We provide evidence of the convergent validity by showing that employees’ and line managers’ perceptions of people management are significantly related, and that people management is significantly related to transformational and transactional leadership. Also, we demonstrate that people management adds explained variance above and beyond transformational and transactional leadership in predicting team performance. We demonstrate criterion-related validity through people management’s relationship with job satisfaction, commitment, and work engagement. We discuss the implications of our measure for theory and research on people management, its antecedents, and its effects.     

Line managers and the management of workplace conflict: evidence from Ireland

In an effort to improve understanding of the role played by line managers in firms, this article examines the role of line managers and supervisors in the management of workplace conflict in firms in the Republic of Ireland. The article finds that while line managers are commonly seen as playing a significant role, they are also seen to do so often without organisational supports in areas such as training and performance monitoring and are seen often to lack the confidence to act independently. Line and supervisory ‘engagement’ in conflict management is found to be positively associated with a series of organisational outcomes, including relative labour productivity, relative absence rates and the capacity to handle change compared with other firms in the same industry. Line and supervisory management engagement in conflict management is found in turn to be associated with the use of commitment‐oriented HR practices and with the adoption by firms of a proactive approach to conflict resolution.     

Recruitment and retention in front‐line services: the case of childcare

This article highlights how problems of recruitment and retention in front‐line services create a particular challenge to traditional HRM models and solutions. Private day nurseries make an interesting example of the challenges facing managers in the service sector as the combination of a feminised workforce, a price‐sensitive service, public–private competition and state regulation create particular difficulties. We report on a study of 33 day nurseries involving interviews with managers and employees over an eight‐month period. Our findings show that childcare providers have to cope with recruitment and retention problems associated with high‐end interactive service provision compounded by gender segregation and small business characteristics. Our analysis of employer and employee perspectives examines labour market issues affecting recruitment, and categorises the reasons for staff turnover into internal ‘push’ factors, external ‘pull’ factors, outside factors and functional turnover.     

Strategic Decision Making for the Triple Bottom Line

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a mandate for strategic managers and is often an important element of a differentiation strategy, but there is little research on how managers can make socially responsible decisions within the context of competitive strategy. In this study we explain how data envelopment analysis (DEA) results can be used to determine the trade‐offs inherent in managing the triple bottom line of profits, people and the planet. Once the trade‐offs are well understood, managers can implement sustainable competitive strategies that incorporate socially responsible decisions. Using public data from the electric power generation industry, we demonstrate how DEA can be utilized to determine the trade‐offs between efficiency, costs and pollution reduction, allowing managers to make and champion socially responsible decisions. We discuss the general applicability of our method for making strategic decisions incorporating the triple bottom line. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Promotional message strategies for disability charities' employment services

One hundred and eight managers responsible for employee recruitment completed mail questionnaires designed to assess their affective, cognitive and conative reactions to two promotional messages for a disability charity's employment (job‐finding) service. The first message contained a mainly altruistic appeal; the second emphasised the financial and other practical benefits of employing a disabled person. Overall the sample reacted more favourably to the latter communication. Heads of department and general managers found the altruistic message to be significantly less appealing than did personnel or human resources managers. Responses were significantly influenced by a recruiting manager's personal experiences of disabled individuals; by the state of the labour market; and by perceptions (possibly unfounded) that non‐disabled employees within a firm would feel uncomfortable if they were made to work alongside a disabled person. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Making Good Things Last Longer: The Role of Savoring on the Relationship Between HRM and Positive Employee Outcomes

This work studies sales managers’ perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices, and the mediating and moderating processes through which these practices are linked with affective commitment. Specifically, we tested whether work engagement mediated the relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and affective commitment using a sample of 117 sales managers from one large retail store. Furthermore, we tested whether managers’ savoring strategies would moderate the positive relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and work engagement, and if the strength of the hypothesized indirect effects were conditional on the use of savoring strategies. Results showed that the relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and affective commitment was mediated by work engagement. In addition, savoring strategies were found to moderate the relationship between perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and work engagement, so that the highest levels of work engagement were found in individuals who reported high perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices and high use of savoring strategies. Finally, results support a conditional indirect effect of performance‐oriented HR practices on predicting affective commitment via work engagement when levels of savoring strategies were moderate to high, but not when their use was low. Altogether, these results demonstrated that work engagement and savoring strategies represent key elements in explaining how perceptions of performance‐oriented HR practices are associated with affective commitment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Short interval forecasting of emergency phone call (911) work loads

There has been an increasing emphasis over the last 5 to 10 years to improve productivity in the Service Sector of the U.S. economy. Much of the improvement obtained by these managers has come about through better scheduling of the work force in these organizations. Effective scheduling of this personnel requires good estimates of demand, which may exhibit substantial variations between days for certain times of the year. The Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) Communications area is one such organization that exhibits varying workloads and is interested in improving staff scheduling of dispatch operators.This article explores the use of six different forecasting techniques for predicting daily emergency call workloads for the IPD's communications area. Historical call volume data are used to estimate the model parameters. A hold-out sample of five months compares forecasts and actual daily call levels. The forecast system utilizes a rolling horizon approach, where daily forecasts are made for the coming month from the end of the prior month. The forecast origin is then advanced to the end of the month, where the current month's actual call data are added to the historical database, new parameters are estimated, and then the next month's daily estimates are generated. Error measures of residual standard deviation, mean absolute percent error, and bias are used to measure performance. Statistical analyses are conducted to evaluate if significant differences in performance are present among the six models.The research presented in this article indicates that there are clearly significant differences in performance for the six models analyzed. These models were tailored to the specific structure and this work suggests that the short interval forecasting problems faced by many service organizations has several structural differences compared to the typical manufacturing firm in a made-to-stock environment. The results also suggests two other points. First, simple modeling approaches can perform well in complex environments that are present in many service organizations. Second, special tailoring of the forecasting model is necessary for many service firms. Historical data patterns for these organizations tend to be more complex than just trend and seasonal elements, which are normally tracked in smoothing models. These are important conclusions for both managers of operating systems and staff analysts supporting these operating systems. The design of an appropriate forecasting system to support effective staff planning must consider the nature, scope, and complexity of these environments.     

Approaches to career success: An exploration of surreptitious career‐success strategies

Theorists have forwarded a vast range of career‐success determinants, including sociodemographic, social capital, personality, and other behavioral factors. We suggest that existing studies have overconcentrated on the overt behavioral determinants of career success to the detriment of the covert, clandestine, and concealed. Our analysis of two detailed qualitative case studies involving 112 indepth interviews with executives, managers, supervisors, and front‐line staff in a large financial services organization and a medium‐sized fashionable restaurant group uncovered five main strategies of surreptitious career success.These strategies are obligation creation and exploitation, personal‐status enhancement, information acquisition and control, similarity exploitation, and proactive vertical alignment. Our findings indicate that just over 79% of those interviewed (88 of 112) referred to, at some point in their careers, premeditated strategies to enhance their careers that they concealed from coworkers. Consequently, we argue that surreptitious actions are central to employee career‐focused activities and fundamental to a more complete understanding of the complexities of career‐oriented employee behavior. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Antecedents and Employee Outcomes of Line Managers' Perceptions of Enabling HR Practices

To learn more about the role of line managers in the implementation of HR practices, we propose and test a model of line managers' perceptions of enabling HR practices on the one hand and employee outcomes on the other. In a field study of 89 line managers and 631 employees, we observed that the relationship between line managers' perceptions of enabling HR practices and employees' intrinsic motivation, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention was mediated by employees' perceived supervisor support. Line managers' perceptions of enabling HR practices, in turn, were predicted by line managers' perceived quality of the HR training they received. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Rationality and Its Symbols: Signalling Effects and Subjectification in Management Consulting*

In service sectors such as management consulting, it is very difficult to measure the impact or success of a service even after it has been delivered. In these markets of goods between experience and credence, symbolic value is helpful and necessary to complement quality perceptions. The leading management consulting firms, in particular, do not only deliver data‐driven analyses but also represent and symbolize the rational approach to business issues. This article looks at the role of personnel selection in the context of quality symbolization. It argues that the predominant tool for personnel selection in the consulting sector, the case study, accounts for both a signalling effect of rationality to the business environment and a subjectification of consulting staff to the consulting culture and rationality beliefs. The case is made that, rather than leading to a valid selection of high‐performance personnel, the process of personnel selection has latent effects, which nonetheless contribute to the consulting industry's success.     

The effects of re‐branding large UK charities on staff knowledge,attitudes and behaviour

• Despite the costs of charity re‐branding, there is little research in the public domain of its effect on staff. This study addresses that gap in knowledge by evaluating the effects of re‐branding large UK charities on staff knowledge, attitudes and behaviour.
• A quantitative survey of 465 charity staff was carried out in 10 large UK charities. The study shows that knowledge has benefited most from re‐branding although unevenly across different levels of seniority. Length of service has no effect on levels of knowledge but level of support was positively correlated.
• The impact of re‐branding on attitudes proved positive with staff at all levels feeling more motivated, involved and valued as a consequence. However, the study also demonstrates that not all staff feel engaged with the re‐branding process for the organisation to capitalise fully on enhanced staff performance.
• Behaviour was less affected by re‐branding with the exception of a very positive impact on staff retention. The report discusses the practical implications for charity managers.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Line managers and HRM: A managerial discretion perspective

Line managers play a central role in HRM practices, but research and theory on how their role is enacted remains underdeveloped. This paper presents a case study of a large U.K.‐based fashion retailer and uses managerial discretion theory to develop a novel understanding of line managers' contribution to the implementation of HRM practices. We describe three distinct ways in which line managers engage with HRM policies and procedures, and propose that line managers make an important contribution to the effective implementation of HRM systems through exerting their cognitive and political abilities to bring about decisions that are well suited to their local situations. Moreover, we find that HR specialists design and manage HRM policies and procedures to afford different levels of managerial discretion in different areas of HRM.     

Mixed signals in HRM: the HRM role of hospital line managers1

Recently, Haggerty and Wright suggested that HR could be reconceptualised as signals sent to employees rather than practices. We examine this novel approach and consider how it fits in the practice. In hospitals, ward managers are intermediaries in relation to signals that are passed between upper managers and their staff. We discuss to what extent ward managers have the analytical and functional skills required to interpret and convey complex signals to the staff under their jurisdiction. We draw conclusions about the role of ward managers in the HR function of hospitals. There are theoretical and practical implications for the role of line managers more generally, beyond the hospital context.     

The Unimportance of Labels: The Diffusion of the Personnel/HRM Function

The important debate on the relationship between personnel specialists and line managers is the theme of this article. It argues, on empirical evidence, that the development of the relationship has not been to the detriment of personnel managers but has secured mutual benefits for both themselves and their line counterparts.     

Sense‐giving in health care: the relationship between the HR roles of line managers and employee commitment

In this article, we examine line manager prioritisation of HR roles and the consequences for employee commitment in a health‐care setting. Our analysis is based on a quantitative, multi‐actor study (509 employees and 67 line managers) in four Dutch hospitals. Using sense‐giving as a theoretical lens, we demonstrate that, in addition to the effects of high commitment HRM, prioritising the Employee Champion role alone and the Employee Champion and Strategic Partner roles in combination is associated with higher employee commitment. We argue that through performing roles that are evocative of deep‐seated values, such as excellent patient care and concern for others, line managers can have a positive effect on staff attitudes. In a sector often beleaguered by staff turnover, exhaustion and burnout, we offer an important, empirically based framework that has the potential to improve employee commitment and, from there, enhance performance.     

Desired goals and actual outcomes of e‐HRM

Much discussion exists in the academic literature about the potential goals of e‐HRM, but few scholars have looked at whether these goals are actually realised and what factors have an impact on this. This study examined the goals stated by organisations for the introduction of e‐HRM, whether these goals were actually achieved, and the factors affecting this through ten case studies in a range of UK organisations. The results demonstrated that e‐HRM is introduced in order to improve efficiency, service delivery, standardisation and organisational image, to empower managers and transform HR into a more strategic function. Efficiency, service delivery and standardisation goals were commonly realised. Some evidence of a transformational impact of e‐HRM was found, as the HR staff had more time and information to support the organisation in achieving its business strategy. However, no evidence was found of an actual increased involvement of HR in business decision making.     

Line Managers’ Rationales for Professionals’ Reduced‐Load Work in Embracing and Ambivalent Organizations

This study examines line managers’ rationales regarding reduced‐load work (RLW), an emerging talent management practice allowing professionals to reduce their workload and take a pay cut, while actively remaining on a career path. Unlike flextime and telework, RLW addresses professionals’ core problems of rising work hours and workloads. Interviews with 42 managers in 20 North American employers suggested that managers were more likely to support RLW for employees whom they saw as (1) high‐performers, (2) flexible in their use of RLW, and (3) doing conducive jobs. Interviews with 20 HR experts and 24 senior executives revealed four dimensions of organizational support, two cultural (senior management support and discourse on career penalties) and two structural (adaptation of HR systems and organizational diffusion). In embracing organizations there was a higher frequency of more supportive managers than there was in ambivalent organizations. Managers’ rationales were connected to their organizational contexts, albeit loosely, suggesting managerial implementation agency. The same rationales were more likely to be used in supportive ways in embracing contexts and in less supportive ways in ambivalent contexts. This study suggests that managerial and organizational support for flexible talent management practices dovetail in nuanced and important ways. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Research‐Practice Gap in Human Resource Management: A Cross‐Cultural Study

In this study, we examine the cross‐cultural differences in human resource (HR) managers’ beliefs in effective HR practices by surveying HR practitioners in Finland (N = 86), South Korea (N = 147), and Spain (N = 196). Similar to previous studies from the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia, there are large discrepancies between HR practitioner beliefs and research findings, particularly in the area of staffing. In addition, we find that interpersonal‐oriented aspects of HR practices tend to be more culturally bound than technical‐oriented aspects of HR practices. We interpret the differences using Hofstede's cultural dimensions (Power Distance, Individualism versus Collectivism, Masculinity versus Femininity, Long‐Term Orientation versus Short‐Term Orientation, and Uncertainty Avoidance). We discuss the overall nature of the science‐practice gap in HR management, and the implications for evidence‐based management. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The decentralisation of employment relations in the British public sector

The aim of this article is to investigate differences between the British public and private sectors in terms of the decentralisation of employment relations. Drawing on data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, the article arrives at three main conclusions. First, the analysis reveals that while local‐level managers in both sectors have similar levels of responsibility for employment relations issues, those in the public sector are, on the whole, significantly less likely to be able to exercise authority. Second, the results indicate some marked variations in practice within the public sector, with managers in education having the greatest level of authority. Finally, the article explores the extent to which differences in local‐level authority between the public and private sectors can be explained by higher‐level collective bargaining, and the presence of higher‐level personnel specialists. These factors have only a partial influence, and do not fully explain why local‐level employee relations managers in some areas (notably health) are less able to exercise authority than their counterparts in the private sector.     

Line managers' support for older workers

Line managers make a difference when it comes to older workers continuing to participate in the labour market. Depending on their coaching abilities, and their willingness to use these abilities, line managers can offer social support to those older workers that they supervise. This willingness is to an extent dependent on the opportunities for action that the organization provides to line managers. Contrary to earlier research, our study based on a survey of 160 front line managers, failed to find evidence that the social support that line managers provide is influenced by negative stereotypical attitudes about the lack of flexibility and the performance of older workers. This study adds new insights into the determinants of line managers' activities and underlines the essential role that front-line managers play in human resource practices for older workers.