‘Taking on almost everyone?’ Migrant and employer recruitment strategies in a booming labour market

This paper explores the recruitment strategies of employers in the Irish Celtic Tiger boom labour market. It explores Irish employers' turn towards immigrants rather than pursuing other strategies such as raising productivity or mobilising alternative sources of labour. It demonstrates that during the boom years a more casualised approach to recruitment was favoured, privileging soft skills and competencies above credentialised skills. Immigrants became the employees of choice, not least because of issues of costs and obedience, but also because they brought new skills, in particular soft skills. Indeed, employers in some sectors developed a categorical preference for migrant workers as they recruited for attitude, work ethic and potential.     

Workgroup Climates and Employees’ Counterproductive Work Behaviours: A Social‐Cognitive Perspective

This research examines employees' anticipation of social and self‐sanctions as a self‐regulatory mechanism linking workgroup climates and counterproductive work behaviours (CWBs) and personality as a limit to these effects. A cross‐level study with 158 employees from 26 workgroups demonstrated that in groups with a high compliance climate – a climate emphasizing the importance of complying with organizational rules – employees anticipate more social and self‐sanctions, leading those low in conscientiousness and low in agreeableness to engage less frequently in CWBs. In contrast, a high relational climate – a climate emphasizing the importance of positive social relations over self‐interest – indirectly unbridles the CWBs of these employees by alleviating the social and self‐sanctions they anticipate for CWBs. Climates did not have indirect effects for employees high in agreeableness and high in conscientiousness. These findings elucidate why workgroup climates do not affect the CWBs of all members in the same way.     

Ethical Blindness

Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sensemaking approach, we argue that ethical blindness results from a complex interplay between individual sensemaking activities and context factors.     

Are Ethical Codes of Conduct Toothless Tigers for Dealing with Employment Discrimination?

This study examined the influence of two organizational context variables, codes of conduct and supervisor advice, on personnel decisions in an experimental simulation. Specifically, we studied personnel evaluations and decisions in a situation where codes of conduct conflict with supervisor advice. Past studies showed that supervisors’ advice to prefer ingroup over outgroup candidates leads to discriminatory personnel selection decisions. We extended this line of research by studying how codes of conduct and code enforcement may reduce this form of discrimination. Eighty German managers evaluated and selected candidates from an applicant pool including Germans (ingroup members) and foreigners (outgroup members). Supervisor advice to prefer ingroup members lowered suitability ratings of outgroup members as well as their chances to be selected for an interview. Ethical codes of conduct referring to equal opportunities limited this form of discrimination, but only when codes were enforced by sanctions and integrated into organizational every-day practice. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.