Who are ‘managing’ the lawyers in China? Control and commitment in an evolving institutional and cultural context and gendered implications

National legal systems are distinctive with strong institutional legacies and societal contexts. Research on the lawyers' work and their operating environment in China has been limited. This study fills part of this gap by investigating the nature of work and career prospect, with gendered implications, in six Chinese law firms. We argue that the lack of commitment to each other between the employer and the lawyers is a result of the governance structure, culture and business process of the law firms, societal norms, market pressure and the active involvement of other stakeholders. The political, economic, social and physical insecurity that engulfs lawyers' work environment undermines their ability to uphold justice for the weak, standards of the profession and ethical values of the society. The study has implications for western law firms operating in China as well as for Chinese law firms that intend to internationalize as part of an emerging trend of Chinese professional services firms. It also has broader implications for human resource management of professional services organizations in China.     

Mobility and the Role of Education as a Commitment Device

In closed economies, human capital investment faces a hold-up problem of excessive redistributive taxation. Increased international labor mobility, however, changes the constraints which affect optimal education and tax policy. We show that in a non-altruistic, gerontocratic world, investments in human capital which increase the mobility of the young generation can be interpreted as a commitment device overcoming the hold-up problem. This is in line with Kehoe (1989) who derives a similar result with respect to capital mobility.     

福利满意度对员工工作态度的影响机理分析

福利满意度作为员工对企业福利制度和措施的一种感受和评价,对员工的工作态度和行为产生很重要的影响。文章分析了福利满意度对企业员工工作态度及行为的影响机理,并指出人力资源管理者在提高员工福利满意度,端正员工的工作态度,减少员工离职行为的过程中应当注意的问题。     

How to motivate your older employees to excel? The impact of commitment on older employees’ performance in the hospitality industry

This study examined the relationship between employee age and performance, defined as in-role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB), using a sample of 599 hospitality employees from Hong Kong. Results of a regression analysis indicated a negative relationship between age and in-role and OCB. We also examined whether organizational commitment is a necessary condition for older workers to perform well. Findings indicated that organizational commitment moderated the relationship between age and work performance, such that the relationships were strong and negative only when commitment was low.     

The role of renqing in mediating customer relationship investment and relationship commitment in China

There is a growing research interest in guanxi marketing, which has been considered the Chinese version of relationship marketing. However, very little empirical research has investigated the implicit nature of renqing, the underlying mechanism that explains the cultivation and maintenance of guanxi. This study examines the role of renqing in mediating customer relationship investment and relationship commitment in the insurance industry. The authors surveyed 245 car insurance policyholders in China. The findings confirm the mediating role of renqing in such relationships and show that renqing explains a very high proportion of the variance in levels of customer relationship commitment. This result offers valuable insights and suggestions as to how to increase levels of customer relationship commitment in China.     

企业组织沉默对组织承诺影响的实证研究

以组织沉默作为组织承诺的前因变量、组织承诺作为组织沉默的后果变量来构建组织沉默各维度对组织承诺各维度影响的结构方程模型,在运用结构方程模型的分析方法并运用相关软件处理调查研究数据的基础上,从实证的视角检验了组织沉默各维度对组织承诺各维度的负向影响效应。     

Building consensus in strategic decision making: System dynamics as a group support system

System dynamics was originally founded as a method for modeling and simulating the behavior of industrial systems. In recent years it is increasingly employed as a Group Support System for strategic decision-making groups. The model is constructed in direct interaction with a management team, and the procedure is generally referred to as group model-building. The model can be conceptual (qualitative) or a full-blown (quantitative) computer simulation model. In this article, a case is described in which a qualitative system dynamics model was built to support strategic decision making in a Dutch government agency.Since people from different departments held strongly opposite viewpoints on the strategy, the agency had discussed its strategic problem for more than a year, but was obviously not able to reach consensus. The application of group model-building was successful in integrating opposite points of view, as well as in fostering consensus and creating commitment.The purpose of the article is twofold: first, to illustrate the process of group model-building with system dynamics; second, to evaluate why it was successful. Evaluation results reveal the importance of both systemic thinking through model-building and the role of the facilitator in catalyzing the strategic decision-making process.     

Fairness,legal compliance,and organizational commitment

Attribution theory is used to hypothesize a positive relationship between one's perception that a fairness motive underlies personnel/human resource management activities and one's organizational commitment. The hypothesis is tested via a survey of 48 operating managers in a Midwestern department store chain. Using hierarchical regression to control for job satisfaction and length of service, a significant positive relationship exists between commitment and the perception that a fairness motive underlies personnel/human resource management activities. Commitment is not significantly related to the perception that a legal compliance motive underlies the activities.     

A Toy Store(y)

This article was used as the starting point for a series of seven analyses that comprise a special issue on entrepreneurial narrative. This article was given to scholars with the title “A Toy Store(y)” with no other identifying characteristics. The story describes the founding and operation of a toy store in Rutland Vermont in 1965. The story describes the process of realizing an opportunity, identifying and acquiring resources to pursue this opportunity, involving and managing others, and adapting to unforeseen circumstances as new competitive conditions are encountered.     

Supervisor Support for the Permanent Replacement of Economic Strikers

Sixty-one supervisors were surveyed to examine the importance of organization commitment, union approval, and quality of union-management relationship in explaining supervisor support for hiring permanent replacements in short and long strike situations. Organization commitment and union approval exhibited a unique negative relationship with support for hiring replacements in a short strike, and union approval exhibited a unique negative relationship with support for hiring replacements in a long strike situation.