Leading corporate sustainability: The role of top management team composition for triple bottom line performance

Sustainable development at the corporate level requires balancing social, environmental, and financial performance goals. Achieving such “triple bottom line” (TBL) performance is a very challenging task. In this study, we explore the role the organization's top management team (TMT) plays in leading their organization towards corporate sustainability. We focus on how two distinct aspects of the TMT's structural composition—the presence of a “chief sustainability officer” (CSO) and the TMT's functional diversity—affect the organization's ability to reach high levels of TBL performance. We follow the presence of 22 global energy companies in Corporate Knight's “Global 100” sustainability index for a period of 11 years and find that, surprisingly, the presence of a CSO does not boost TBL performance. However, we do find a positive effect for TMT functional diversity, suggesting that more diverse TMTs are better able to lead their organization to higher levels of TBL performance.     

Measuring organizational performance: beyond the triple bottom line

Measuring organizational performance is difficult, especially when what has to be measured keeps changing. Sustainability concepts have dramatically widened the scope of measurement options and leading organizations are grappling with sustainability reporting, but there is no sign of consensus on a common reporting standard and the competing frameworks are impossibly complex. This paper recognizes that measuring sustainable performance has to be conceptually based but simplified to be practically useful. It proposes a stakeholder‐based, Sustainable Balanced Scorecard (SBSC) conceptual framework coupled with a single‐measure Organizational Sustainability Performance Index to integrate the measures in the SBSC. The Index helps make sustainable organizational performance measurable and accessible to stakeholders. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

HRM and front line managers: the influence of role stress

With front line managers (FLMs) being critical in the delivery of human resource management (HRM) we would benefit from a better understanding of how and why these managers execute their human resources (HR) responsibilities in the way that they do. Without such knowledge we cannot fully identify the factors that contribute to the known gap between intended and implemented HRM and mediate the relationship between HRM and organizational performance. Yet FLMs have been largely overlooked in many studies of line management-HRM with very few employing a role-theoretic framework. To address this, interviews were conducted with FLMs in the retail industry to examine the relationship between their work role stressors and their implementation of HRM. FLMs were found to experience role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity, and in accordance with process role theory, engaged in role-making as a response. This resulted in FLMs deviating from intended HRM whereby role overload and conflict often brought about a renegotiation of the more intangible or costly HR policies, whereas role ambiguity undermined their ability to consistently and confidently implement HRM. The paper concludes by arguing that FLMs and their experiences of role stress are critical to our understanding of the gap between intended and implemented HRM.     

Sustainable Entrepreneurship Research: Taking Stock and looking ahead

The recognition of entrepreneurship as a solution to, rather than a cause of, environmental degradation and social inequality moved the field to identify a new type of entrepreneurial activity, namely sustainable entrepreneurship. Scholarly interest has spiked in recent years; however, aside from its aspirational appeal, there remains a lack of understanding of the nature of the phenomenon and the future of sustainable entrepreneurship in theory and practice. This review seeks to provide a conceptual basis for stimulating scholarly thought and improving our collective understanding of sustainable entrepreneurship as a distinct subdomain within entrepreneurship research. Based on boundary definition and delineation of main features, this review critically discusses the main challenges ahead and elaborates on the research implications and future research directions beyond current, dominant approaches to entrepreneurial action. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Examining the extent of and determinants for sustainability assurance quality: The role of audit committees

This study examines the extent of and determinants for sustainability assurance quality. Data comprise sustainability assurance statements published by the top 100 listed companies in Australia and New Zealand from 2017 to 2019. The findings indicate that Australian companies lead their New Zealand counterparts in sustainability assurance. Although sustainability reporting has risen, assurance rates remain significantly low. Accountants dominate the market, and companies prefer to use their own auditors for sustainability assurance work. Sustainability assurance quality is poor and does not vary significantly among Australian and New Zealand companies. Low-quality sustainability assurance plays a limited role in mitigating potential stakeholder–agency conflicts. The regression analysis indicates that audit committee characteristics such as members' independence, industry/market expertise, and attending meetings enhance sustainability assurance quality, whereas audit committee size has no affect. These findings suggest that audit committee characteristics such as independence, industry expertise, and regular meeting attendance have the potential to reduce stakeholder–agency conflicts by improving the quality of sustainability statement assurance. Our findings build on the sustainability assurance literature by exploring current trends in sustainability assurance practices in Australia and New Zealand where corporate governance codes have been recently revised. Further, these findings are timely given recent changes in standards (International Standard on Assurance Engagements [ISAE] 3000 and Global Reporting Initiative [GRI]). Our study contributes to the audit committee literature and sheds light on the role played by audit committee characteristics on sustainability assurance statement quality. The study findings potentially offer useful insights for practitioners, standard setters, and regulators.     

Client organizations and the management of professional agency work: The case of English health and social care

A growing reliance on agency workers can lead to significant risks for client organizations, especially in core organizational roles. It has been suggested while these risk can be mitigated through investments in human resource management (HRM) directed at agency workers, in reality these will be hard to implement. This article draws upon Lepak and Snell's (1999) HR architecture model and uses a comparative case study method to explore this issue, focusing on agency working in core nursing and qualified social worker roles. The findings illustrate how client organizations can become more involved in the management of agency workers than has previously been acknowledged. Our analysis also identifies the conditions that shape this client‐side involvement, including the nature of agency worker contracts, the role of temporary work agencies, competing organizational cost‐control priorities, and perceptions of the regulatory context. These conditions are brought together in a general model for understanding the largely neglected role that client organizations play in the HR management of agency workers.     

Winning at all costs: An exploration of bottom‐line mentality,Machiavellianism, and organisational citizenship behaviour

This study seeks to advance the bottom‐line mentality literature by exploring an antecedent and outcome of employee bottom‐line mentality. We build and test a moderated‐mediation model by arguing that the personality trait of Machiavellianism promotes an employee's adoption of a bottom‐line mentality. Moreover, drawing on trait activation theory, we argue that this relationship is fully activated when the employee perceives that the organisation endorses a bottom‐line mentality. To expand our theoretical model, we also suggest that employee bottom‐line mentality inhibits organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co‐workers. Lastly, we investigate whether an employee's perception of an organisation's bottom‐line mentality conditionally moderates the indirect effect of Machiavellianism on organisational citizenship behaviour directed towards co‐workers through the mediated mechanism of employee bottom‐line mentality. Our theoretical model is tested across two distinct studies. Study 1, a field study conducted within a variety of organisations, provides evidence for our initial predictions (Hypotheses 1 and 2). Study 2, a multisource field study conducted in multiple industries, replicates and extends the findings from Study 1 by providing evidence for the entire moderated‐mediation model. We find support for our hypothesised model across both studies. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are identified.     

Beyond the line: exploring the HRM responsibilities of line managers,project managers and the HRM department in four project-oriented companies in the Netherlands,Austria, the UK and the USA

The topic of what human resource management (HRM) responsibilities are devolved from the HRM department to line managers has attracted much interest in recent years. We report findings from a study on the devolution of HRM practices in four project-oriented companies (POCs) and argue that although HRM practices are carried out beyond the HRM department, they are also carried out beyond the line. While the literature on devolving HRM responsibilities to line management is burgeoning, the HRM responsibilities of managers beyond the line organization are neglected. We make two contributions to the literature. Firstly, our study reveals that some HRM practices are the domain of the project manager rather than either the line manager or the HRM department. The complex interplay of the roles of the HRM department, line management and project management creates challenges and pitfalls where people are managed across the boundaries of the permanent and temporary organization. We identify a potentially powerful role for the HRM department in both monitoring and guiding the different players from the line and the project organizations, and in protecting the well-being of employees whose work traverses these organizational boundaries. Our second contribution is that we map the diversity of practices in different POCs for managing the interplay between the three main parties delivering HRM practices and offer project orientation as a contextual indicator that contributes to diversity in HRM practices.     

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.     

Giving a voice to managers: forging the desire line through the creation of informal employee voice channels and productive resistance

Abstract

Within the extensive body of employee voice literature, the voice of the ordinary shopfloor employee has resonated loudly. The important role that line managers play in encouraging or inhibiting that voice has also been well documented. However, within the voice literature there has been silence with respect to line managers themselves being considered as voicers. In this paper, these missing managerial voices are amplified through the presentation of a case study of front and middle line manager voice within a university setting. Within this hierarchical organisation subject to increased managerialism, semi-structured interviews with 26 participants were conducted and it was found that line managers’ voice was thwarted due to relational and structural blockages in their formal voice channels. In some cases, this led to suppressed voice and a sense that line managers had no one to voice to. However, some managers were able to be creative and their actions led to productive resistance. While for others, these blockages motivated line managers to use covert ‘underground channels’ where their voice was raised informally and their interests could be advanced. The paper extends our knowledge by considering the line manager as a voicer, and not merely a manager of voice.     

股权结构、债务约束与高管薪酬——以2008—2013年上市公司为例

与西方经济环境不同,中国上市公司向来存在大股东控制、债务软约束的治理环境。在这样的治理环境中,股东与管理层、大股东与小股东、股东与债权人之间的代理关系集中在公司高管层的激励与约束上。本文在控制了业绩、规模、行业等因素后,研究了大股东控制程度、财务杠杆水平等如何影响"货币薪酬+持股水平"这个薪酬包的结构与水平,且这种影响有些存在非线性关系。