Beginning to Unlock the Black Box in the HR Firm Performance Relationship: The Impact of HR Practices on Employee Attitudes and Employee Outcomes

Theoretical models in strategic human resource management research commonly include employee attitudes and behaviors as key mediating links between human resource practices and firm performance. However, almost all empirical SHRM work to date has ignored the mediating hypothesis and merely examined the direct relationship between HR practices and firm outcomes. The purpose of this study is to test the relationship between HR practices and employee attitudes and behaviors. Using a sample of 174 independent work groups, we examined the relationship between HR practices and collective behaviors (turnover and absenteeism) mediated by collective attitudes (job satisfaction and commitment). Results indicate attitudes partially mediate the relationship between HR practices and employee behaviors. The direct and indirect relationships identified in this study support the notion that attitudes and behaviors play a mediating role between HR practices and firm outcomes. These findings illustrate the varying impacts of HR practices and the importance of utilizing multilevel theory and methods

Distinct neural substrates of visuospatial and verbal-analytic reasoning as assessed by Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices

Recent studies revealed spontaneous neural activity to be associated with fluid intelligence (gF) which is commonly assessed by Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, and embeds two types of reasoning: visuospatial and verbal-analytic reasoning. With resting-state fMRI data, using global brain connectivity (GBC) analysis which averages functional connectivity of a voxel in relation to all other voxels in the brain, distinct neural correlates of these two reasoning types were found. For visuospatial reasoning, negative correlations were observed in both the primary visual cortex (PVC) and the precuneus, and positive correlations were observed in the temporal lobe. For verbal-analytic reasoning, negative correlations were observed in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and temporoparietal junction, and positive correlations were observed in the angular gyrus. Furthermore, an interaction between GBC value and type of reasoning was found in the PVC, rIFG and the temporal lobe. These findings suggest that visuospatial reasoning benefits more from elaborate perception to stimulus features, whereas verbal-analytic reasoning benefits more from feature integration and hypothesis testing. In sum, the present study offers, for different types of reasoning in gF, first empirical evidence of separate neural substrates in the resting brain

Variability Within Organizations: Implications for Strategic Human Resource Management

[Excerpt] Strategic human resource management refers to the pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals (Wright & McMahan, 1992). It involves all of the activities that are implemented by an organization to affect the behavior of individuals in an effort to implement the strategic needs of a business. Over the last decade or so, the field of strategic human resource management has witnessed a progression through a number of stages, including a) initial excitement and energy around the convincing argument that HR practices should be considered as a system that, when implemented appropriately, can enhance organizational performance; b) empirical tests of this argument, and c) critiques of the growing field accompanied by propositions for how thinking on the topic can be expanded and improved. Of the critiques that have been levied at the field, the most common contend that the “black box” through which HRM practices are thought to impact organizational performance remains insufficiently specified. Less common, but no less valuable, are critiques surrounding the conceptualization and measurement of fit or alignment, and the need to identify the boundary conditions that influence the effectiveness of “high performance” HRM systems. Even more critiques and proposed theoretical extensions to the field are likely, as it is through such endeavors that we will improve upon and advance our science (cf. Reichers & Schneider, 1990). In this chapter, we introduce and discuss another potential critique of the SHRM field, and, in so doing, hope to illuminate a number of important research questions for the future. In particular, we are concerned with the lack of attention which has been paid to variability within SHRM research. By variability we mean variability at all relevant levels of analysis, but particularly variability within organizations (i.e., individual and group levels). It is our contention that by failing to examine the potential role of variability in SHRM research, we miss a very interesting and important part of the picture

Team Learning: A Theoretical Integration and Review

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel (individual and team, not individual or team), dynamic (iterative and progressive; a process not an outcome), and emergent (outcomes of team learning can manifest in different ways over time). The integrative theoretical heuristic distinguishes team learning process theories, supporting emergent states, team knowledge representations, and respective influences on team performance and effectiveness. Promising directions for theory development and research are discussed

Towards a multi-actor theory of public value co-creation

This essay suggests changes to the theory of public value and, in particular, the strategic triangle framework, in order to adapt it to an emerging world where policy makers and managers in the public, private, voluntary and informal community sectors have to somehow separately and jointly create public value. One set of possible changes concerns what might be in the centre of the strategic triangle besides the public manager. Additional suggestions are made concerning how multiple actors, levels, arenas and/or spheres of action, and logics might be accommodated. Finally, possibilities are outlined for how the strategic triangle might be adapted to complex policy fields in which there are multiple, often conflicting organizations, interests and agendas. In other words, how might politics be more explicitly accommodated. The essay concludes with a number of research suggestions

Competitive Positioning in International Logistics: Identifying a System of Attributes Through Neural Networks and Decision Trees

Firms involved in international logistics must develop a system of service attributes that give them a way to be profitable and to satisfy customers’ needs at the same time. How customers trade-off these various attributes in forming satisfaction with competing international logistics providers has not been explored well in the literature. This study explores the ocean freight shipping sector to identify the system of attributes that maximizes customers’ satisfaction. Data were collected from shipping managers in Singapore using personal interviews to identify the chief concerns in choosing and evaluating ocean freight services. The data were then examined using neural networks and decision trees, among other approaches to identify the system of attributes that is connected with customer satisfaction. The results illustrate the power of these methods in understanding how industrial customers with global operations process attributes to derive satisfaction. Implications are discussed

Workplace Contextual Supports for LGBT Employees: A Review, Meta‐Analysis, and Agenda for future Research

The past decade has witnessed a rise in the visibility of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This has resulted in some organizational researchers focusing their attention on workplace issues facing LGBT employees. While empirical research has been appropriately focused on examining the impact of workplace factors on the work lives of LGBT individuals, no research has examined these empirical relationships cumulatively. The purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive review and meta‐analysis of the outcomes associated with three workplace contextual supports (formal LGBT policies and practices, LGBT‐supportive climate, and supportive workplace relationships) and to compare the relative influence of these workplace supports on outcomes. Outcomes were grouped into four categories: (a) work attitudes, (b) psychological strain, (c) disclosure, and (d) perceived discrimination. Results show that supportive workplace relationships were more strongly related to work attitudes and strain, whereas LGBT supportive climate was more strongly related to disclosure and perceived discrimination compared to the other supports. Our findings also revealed a number of insights concerning the measurement, research design, and sample characteristics of the studies in the present review. Based on these results, we offer an agenda for future research

From social context and resilience to performance through job satisfaction: A multilevel study over time

Giving the crucial role of organizational context in shaping individual attitudes and behaviors at work, in this research we studied the effects of collective work-unit Perceptions of Social Context (PoSC) on individual work resilience and two key individual outcomes: job satisfaction and job performance as rated by the supervisor. We theorized that collective PoSC act as antecedents of individual variables, and that individual job satisfaction mediates the relationship between collective PoSC and job performance, and between work resilience and job performance over time. A sample of 305 white-collar employees, clustered in 67 work-units, participated in the study. Hierarchical linear modeling highlighted that collective PoSC are significant related to individual work resilience. Moreover, results showed that individual job satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between collective PoSC and individual job performance and the relationship between individual work resilience and individual job performance. At a practical level, results suggest that interventions on collective PoSC may increase work resilience, job satisfaction and job performance over time at the individual level

Count what counts: improving charitable investor access to the community development sector with better data and better analytical models

Developing investor-quality analysis could trigger a tremendous increase in donations to community development nonprofits from philanthropic sources. Bamberger and Gross survey existing analysis tools and make suggestions for a better one.