Becoming a Working Mother: Managing Identity and Efficacy Uncertainties During Resocialization

The work reentry period following the birth of a first child is a time of uncertainty for a professional woman. During reentry, a new mother is often questioning who she is and how effective she can be as a mother and working professional. In this study, we conceptualize reentry as a period of resocialization as we explore the first‐time mother's changing self‐concept during this time. Specifically, we develop a model that explores the identity and efficacy uncertainties that women experience during resocialization. This model draws attention to the influence organizational context has on the degree of uncertainty women experience and to the adjustment tactics women engage to manage their identity and efficacy uncertainty. We discuss the implications these findings have for both socialization research and work‐life theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Working to live or living to work? Work/life balance early in the career

This article reports the findings of research that explored relationships between work/life balance, work/non‐work conflict, hours worked and organisational commitment among a sample of graduates in the early years of their career. It concludes that, although graduates seek work/life balance, their concern for career success draws them into a situation where they work increasingly long hours and experience an increasingly unsatisfactory relationship between home and work. The article discusses the causes and potential consequences of this predicament and in particular how work/non‐work conflict is linked to hours worked, the state of the psychological contract and organisational commitment. It highlights the role of organisations' policy and practice in helping to manage the relationship between work and non‐work and the development of organisational commitment through support for younger employees' lives out‐of‐work and effective management of aspects of the psychological contract.     

Plugged In or Disconnected? A Model of the Effects of Technological Factors on Employee Job Embeddedness

Technology continues to play an ever‐increasing role in both our work and private lives. In parallel with this expanding reliance on technology has been a shift in how people now view their jobs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical model that bridges these two areas—technology and employee attitudes (more specifically, work‐related feelings of embeddedness). Within our model, we consider aspects of common work‐related technologies and key perceptual variables related to technology, and how both areas can influence embeddedness in one's job. We conclude the article by providing examples of how specific technologies that are commonly found in today's work environment may influence job embeddedness perceptions, and we discuss the implications of the model on both theory and practice. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Are some sectors more “youth friendly” than others? Employment regimes,sectors, and gender disparities in the Great Recession

Despite national differences in youth employment, many countries share striking similarities in the uneven sectoral distribution of job opportunities for young women and men in Europe. A shift‐share analysis of European Labour Force data identifies “youth‐friendly” sectors, how this varies between countries, and how this changed during the Great Recession. This reveals how youth job opportunities were lost because the sector shrank or because employers were less likely to offer full‐time, permanent contracts. New jobs for youth were more likely to be in part‐time and temporary employment. Youth vulnerability to unemployment is contingent not only on employers' engagement with institutions shaping school‐to‐work transitions but also on gender segregation and to the fact that some sectors have been particularly fragile during the economic crisis. Future research needs to link institutional effects with employers' business strategies to understand how these shape job opportunities for young women and men.     

The Dark Side of Deeply Meaningful Work: Work‐Relationship Turmoil and the Moderating Role of Occupational Value Homophily

How are close personal relationships experienced by people in deeply meaningful work? Drawing upon in‐depth interview data with 82 international aid workers, I offer three distinct contributions. First, I find that people who experience their work as deeply meaningful have high work devotion. I identify boundary inhibition as a mechanism to explain why they participate more willingly in overwork and erratic work, despite giving rise to time‐ and trust‐based conflict in their relationships. Second, I find that people with high work devotion often also experience emotional distance in their personal relationships when their close others don’t value their work – a context I call occupational value heterophily. This disconnection‐based conflict compounds the time‐ and trust‐based conflict and engenders an emotionally agonizing situation, which I call work‐relationship turmoil. Third, when close others do value their partner’s work – a context I call occupational value homophily – it fosters an emotional connection and offers an avenue for work‐relationship enrichment. These findings draw upon deeply meaningful work to detail the multi‐faceted work‐relationship experience among those with high work devotion.     

The Dynamics of Influence in Corporate Co‐Evolution

This paper aims to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into co‐evolutionary development. Theoretically, it advances a political perspective which focuses on the role of power and how this can be translated into influence as an evolutionary driver through the relational framework between an organization and external parties. Empirically, the paper elaborates this perspective by reference to how China's largest container terminal evolved within a changing environment, and how its evolution in turn impacted on the evolution of its sector. In this case, the key relational framework was that between the organization and government institutions. Application of a political perspective to the case study suggests a theoretical model that can inform future research and practice.     

Why Do I Feel Valued and Why Do I Contribute? A Relational Approach to Employee's Organization‐Based Self‐Esteem and Job Performance

Drawing on the relational perspective and self‐consistency theory, we theorize how relationships involving work‐centric, off‐work‐centric, and/or personal components can affect an employee's organization‐based self‐esteem and job performance in Chinese organizational contexts. Matched data were collected from a multi‐source sample that included 219 employee–supervisor dyads from a Chinese bank. Results based on hierarchical regression analyses reveal that a high‐quality relationship with a supervisor through work and off‐work domains (leader–member exchange and guanxi) is positively related to organization‐based self‐esteem. Organization‐based self‐esteem plays a mediating role in the relationship between guanxi and job performance. Additionally, career mentoring from a supervisor (a work‐centric relationship involving personal components) moderates the relationship between organization‐based self‐esteem and job performance.     

The Effect of International Work Experience on the Career Success of Expatriates: A Comparison of Assigned and Self‐Initiated Expatriates

This article is one of the first to examine the long‐term effect of expatriation on careers, comparing the impact of international work experience on the career success of assigned and self‐initiated expatriates. Our sample consists of employees who were working abroad in 2004, and we examine their subjective and objective career success eight years later. Despite the “dark side of international careers” arguments associated with the repatriation literature, we find that the long‐term impacts of international work experience on career success are generally positive and mainly unrelated to whether the work experience was acquired as an assigned or self‐initiated expatriate. Companies recruit employees with international experience externally but are much more likely to offer further internal jobs to assigned expatriates. This reinforces the need for further research and for companies to see all those with international experience as important elements of the workforce. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Women's attitudes towards trade unions in the UK: a consideration of the distinction between full‐ and part‐time workers

This article considers the attitudes and experiences of female full‐ and part‐time workers towards trade unions. Expanding upon previous research it suggests that while the attitudes of full‐ and part‐time workers towards trade unions are similar, experiences of trade unions are not: they depend upon the employment context and work history. A life course perspective is advanced, which examines women's employment contexts and transitions between full‐ and part‐time work in order to further explain female part‐timers’ lower likelihood of unionising.     

Workaholism versus work engagement and job crafting: What is the role of self‐management strategies?

Job crafting refers to the proactive actions employees take to redesign their jobs in order to get a better fit with their competencies, expectations, and wishes. So far, little is known about job crafting's underlying mechanisms. In this study, we examine how two different states of affective well‐being (workaholism and work engagement) relate to job crafting 3 months later and how these well‐being states steer different self‐management behaviours, which ultimately lead to job crafting. Structural equation modelling on a heterogeneous sample (N = 287) revealed that work engagement and workaholism both relate to expansive job crafting through different self‐management strategies. Work engagement relates to challenge and resource seeking via self‐goal setting and self‐observation strategies, whereas workaholism associates with challenge and resource seeking only through self‐goal setting. In addition, the results show a strong relationship between workaholism and self‐punishment. Altogether, the findings suggest that self‐management strategies can function as an explanatory mechanism for different job crafting behaviours.     

Physician Incentives and Treatment Choice

I analyze the impact of physician competition for patients on treatment selection and an insurer's ability to induce its preferences through a supply‐side payment mechanism. Informed patients choose the physician whose treatment practice best fits their preferences, aligning physician incentives with patient preferences. An insurer's ability to counter these incentives is not monotonic in how informed patients are, however. When demand is either perfectly inelastic to treatment practices because patients are completely uninformed or a sufficient proportion of the market is informed relative to the number of physicians in the market, then an insurer can induce its preferences through supply‐side payment rules. Otherwise, more intensive policy levers such as utilization review must be employed. Programs that increase patient information can therefore improve the efficiency despite generating stronger incentive to treat according to patient preferences. I also explore how noisy signals of illness type and diagnostic testing further complicate the insurer's problem.     

Human resource differentiation: A theoretical paper integrating co‐workers' perspective and context

This paper conceptualises “human resource (HR) differentiation” as a set of deliberate and differentiating HR practices across individuals within the organisation to address employees' unique work needs and preferences as well as reward them for their input. Despite the importance of HR differentiation, research has mainly focused on the recipients of such practices, overlooking the consequences of HR differentiation from co‐workers' perspective. This is a significant omission because a growing concern suggests that HR differentiation might be a double‐edged sword, as the presumed positive effects might only be confined to employees benefiting from it. Taking a first step, this paper offers a conceptual model that explains how co‐workers of a focal employee, who is entitled to an advantageous outcome through HR differentiation, are likely to react, either positively by showing contentment or negatively by showing anger, with behavioural consequences towards the focal employee and organisation. In so doing, we rely on deontic justice theory and explore contextual conditions at the individual and team level under which co‐workers react. As a result, our model can inspire future research by adopting a broader and more inclusive approach to HR differentiation, underlining the need for caution when implementing HR differentiation in a team setting.     

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.     

Which Resources Matter How and Where? A Meta‐Analysis on Firms’ Foreign Establishment Mode Choice

Firm resources play an important role in explaining the foreign establishment mode choice. However, a theoretical framework that simultaneously a) differentiates between heterogeneous types of resources, b) provides a rationale that consistently explains how firms adapt their establishment mode choice to their resource base, and c) reflects on contextual factors that intervene in the consistency of the direct relationships is largely missing. The present paper draws on the resource‐based view (RBV) to develop such a framework. More specifically, we study the effect of knowledge‐based and experience‐based resources on a firm's establishment mode choice and the moderating impact of cultural distance on these relationships. We validate our theoretical framework by a meta‐analysis (integrating 31 studies with 13,559 establishment mode choices) and find that knowledge‐based resources enhance a firm's propensity for greenfield investments, while experience‐based resources more likely lead to acquisitions. Further, cultural distance increases knowledge‐intensive firms’ preference for greenfield investments.     

Keeping Their Cards Close to Their Chests: How Non‐Delegating CEOs Avoid Forced Career Ends

It is a common belief that CEOs must delegate to be successful. We hesitate to support this generalization and investigate how the distribution of responsibility within top management teams (TMTs) can influence the likelihood of a CEO’s dismissal. Consistent with an agency theory perspective, our results indicate that CEOs may choose not to delegate their responsibilities to other executive TMT members, so as to benefit from an increased information asymmetry vis‐à‐vis the board of directors. Taking the resource‐based view as a complementary theoretical perspective, we find that non‐delegating CEOs benefit from their greater firm‐specific knowledge, which the board of directors considers as a valuable resource that should be retained. Our work also demonstrates that a more intense CEO–TMT interaction weakens the relation between non‐delegation and the likelihood of CEO dismissal. In sum, our research shows that the CEO’s delegation decision does not necessarily lead to a competence distribution that is in the firm's best interest; rather, it reflects a complex interplay between the potentially opportunistic career interests of the CEO, the involvement of other TMT members and the board of directors. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Firm Productivity Moderated Link Between Human Capital and Compensation: The Significance of Task‐Specific Human Capital

The human capital of a firm as manifested by employee knowledge and experience represents a key resource of a firm's capabilities. Prior empirical studies have found that firms composed of high levels of human capital experience superior firm performance. Human capital theory proposes that an individual's general or firm‐specific human capital is positively related to compensation. However, empirical studies examining firm‐specific human capital's association with higher employee compensation have been inconclusive. The current study proposes that firm‐specific human capital be categorized as task‐specific and non‐task‐specific. Employees accumulate task‐specific human capital through duties conducted in their current position. Non‐task‐specific human capital represents experiences gained in prior positions to an employee's current job within the firm. Utilizing human capital data from 38,390 employees representing 76 firms in the IT sector, this study examines the association between forms of human capital and employee compensation at different levels of firm productivity. Results show that task‐specific human capital is associated with higher employee compensation. In addition, firm productivity moderates this association.     

Creating accountability through HR analytics – An audit society perspective

This paper introduces an accountability-based perspective of the effects of implementing HR analytics. Considering central arguments about HR analytics' potential to transform HRM and using research on the audit society and concepts from critical accounting research, we develop a framework that analyzes the emergence of three forms of accountability in HRM: accountability through exposure, design, and connectivity. The paper contributes to research on HR analytics by identifying three forms of accountability in HRM that result from implementing HR analytics and by determining how they influence how HRM is understood, how HR practices are augmented, and how HRM's status in organizations can be improved.     

ARGUING FOR LIBERTY IN A SECULAR AGE

This article reviews Michael Levin's philosophical argument that minimal government is necessary and that, by the same reasoning, more‐than‐minimal government is unnecessary. Levin's argument does not appeal to any concept of rights, so can easily be used with those for whom rights‐based arguments require belief in a transcendent deity.