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The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between employer and employees in a public power sector undertaking through the validation of CODE (compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment) and PLE (workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement) model.

A hypothesized research model was developed and validated by using structural equation modeling (AMOS 20). In total, 303 responses were accumulated by administering a structured questionnaire among the employees of a state-owned power sector.

The results revealed that a harmonious climate of employee relations is prevailing in the public power utility. Additionally, the findings suggest that the CODE and PLE model of employee relations are found to be positive and significant by investigating the impact of compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment as the predictors; and workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement as the critical outcomes of employee relations.

The study recommends some plausible insights for practitioners, decision-makers and policy formulators to develop strategies and policies for nurturing congenial employee relations and also to cultivate a facilitative work environment for generating contented and competent manpower.

Validation of CODE and PLE model of employee relations in the new perspective of power sector undertaking is an epoch-making and novel contribution that offers significant empirical evidence to the extant literature. Moreover, the exploration of employer–employee relations in this context is a unique and innovative effort toward existing research.

The main goal of this study is to determine the role of employee commitment in the relations between the compensation system and turnover intentions of employees in the Republic of Serbia, as well as to investigate whether there is a mediating effect of employee commitment in this relation.

The primary methodology implemented in the research was data gathering, obtaining theoretical research works on the proposed relations and empirical studies based on the PLS-SEM, analysed by IBM SPSS Statistics and SmartPLS data processing software. The data for the analysis was obtained from a total sample of 764 employees, collected in the Republic of Serbia via an online questionnaire.

The results indicated a positive statistically significant relationship between the formative construct (compensation system) and reflective construct (commitment), as well as a negative statistically significant relationship between the compensation system and reflective construct (turnover intentions). Employee commitment partially mediates the relationship between the compensation system and turnover intentions of employees.

The study was conducted in Serbia and is thus rooted in the specific national context which is characterized by high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance and more collectivistic society with feminine values more expressed. Most of the previous investigations related to the mentioned constructs were performed in companies from more developed countries, including Western Europe and the United States of America, whereas there has been no such research conducted in Serbia to date. The results portrayed a mismatch between the expected relations regarding the attitudes of employees to the rewards and the proposed national context. Modern companies in Serbia need to follow a modern reward mechanism to build stronger commitment and decrease turnover intentions. Moreover, in most earlier research works, compensation was examined in terms of satisfaction with rewards, while this study was based on questions related to perceptions of employees toward HR compensation practices (“The organization offers me”-type questions), not related to their satisfaction. Further, in the majority of previous research works, the compensation system was examined as a variable in combination with other HR processes (staffing, training and development, career development, employee relations, HR planning, communication, etc.), as a HPWP, while in this case the authors used only the practice of compensation (reward elements and employee performance evaluation) to investigate relations with commitment and turnover intentions.

This study is concerned with the dynamics of the internal communications at Netflix following the release of The Closer and the public debate that followed, testing Netflix's long-standing reputation for promoting diverse content and supporting a progressive organizational culture.

Using the circuit of culture (CoC) as a theoretical framework, this study applies a case study approach to analyze internal communication and strategic public relations in addressing this crisis.

This study's findings illustrate that by failing to interpret two of the five moments of the CoC, production and identity, Netflix negated the very values that constitute its brand. These findings have implications for how public relations' long-standing focus on two-way symmetrical communication is problematic, especially in the workplace.

The findings situate how the exertion of power within an organization, particularly in moments of identity and production, problematize the role of two-way symmetrical communication within an organization in crisis.

Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide rich, qualitative insights around internal communication in strategic communication agencies, addressing the evolutions in expectations and best practices for agency leadership through COVID-19.

Qualitative interview study with 18 US-based leaders of public relations and advertising agencies to examine their experiences of leading and managing strategic communication teams during COVID-19.

Synthesized findings around changes in leadership values and important facets of ongoing internal crisis communication led to the development of the following five categories—Improvisation and Flexibility, Transparency and Trust, Ownership and Embodiment, Care and Empathy, Relationships and Resilience.

Using a high-value sample, the study is the first (to the best of the authors' knowledge) to focus on the crucial context of agencies and internal communication around COVID-19; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and other pandemic-era challenges. It provides theoretical implications around ongoing, internal crisis communication and practical implications for agency leaders in crisis.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.

The empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.

This study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.

The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.

The findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.

This paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

After a period of accelerated workplace change, this chapter takes an interpretivist-constructionist approach to explore the experiences of, and perceptions around, flexible and hybrid working among a sample of women owners/directors in the UK small and medium size enterprise (SME) public relations (PR) agency community. Their views, both in terms of running teams and their own engagement with flexible and hybrid working, are discussed through both a personal and a sociocultural lens, with particular reference to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the gendered experience. Specifically, we consider whether global events have alleviated or heightened concerns around teamwork, collaboration, creativity and culture. This chapter adds to a growing body of research into flexible and hybrid working relating to the PR profession and focuses on gendered experience which has often seen women caregivers and those in unstable relationships at a disadvantage with career progression. We explore whether recent events have ‘improved’ the situation for women in PR. We consider how the life stage and personal experience of the individual owner/director impacts their learned and dynamic attitude development and assess whether flexibility for family is viewed differently to other needs. Themes include authentic leadership and responding to ‘the crucible’, reputation and ‘doing the right thing’ and discretionary effort and ‘work ‘til it hurts culture’.

The interest in sustainable human resource management has grown in the last decades. However, comprehensive, and systematic research concentrating on the evolution of this field, is still needed. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview and synthesis of the existing body of knowledge on human resource management (HRM) related to sustainability through a bibliometric study of articles published until 2022, identifying the most relevant research in this field. In the literature review, special attention is given to articles that link sustainable HRM to employees’ attitudes, identifying gaps and future research opportunities.

A bibliometric analysis and literature review was conducted over 105 documents obtained from the WoS database, using VOSviewer software program, from which 27 were selected for full-text reading. The applied database filters were: document type (article and early access); index (SSCI and SCI-expanded) and year (2019–2022).

The results show that: sustainable HRM literature is growing, especially after 2019; “Sustainability” is the journal with more publications; and England is the leading country. The network of co-occurrence of keywords analysis unveiled that performance, job satisfaction and behaviors are the most frequently studied topics in HRM.

For successful adoption of sustainable HRM practices, organizations should engage all staff comprehensively, focusing not only on consistent implementation but also on fostering a supportive organizational climate. This is vital for establishing a sustainable workplace where employees who strongly identify with the organization are less willing to leave it.

Through the Systematic Literature Review carried out on the articles published from 2019 to 2022, it was possible to identify opportunities for future research. These topics include employees' perceptions of the implementation of sustainable HRM practices in companies, as well as the impact of these practices on their attitudes and behaviors, taking into account the various HRM practices.

This study aims to explore the holistic context of organisational staff retention in small, medium and large organisations. It also aims to identify the factors affecting the retention of organisations of different sizes.

The study implements an empirical test of a model created during previous research with the participation of 511 employees. The responses to the online questionnaire and the modelling were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling method. The models were tested for internal consistency reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, multicollinearity and model fit.

Two models were tested by organisation size, which revealed a total of 62 significant correlations between the latent variables tested. Identical correlations were present in both models in 22 cases. After testing the hypotheses, critical variables (nature of work, normative commitment, benefits, co-workers and organisational commitment) were identified that determine employees’ organisational commitment and intention to leave, regardless of the size of the organisation.

As a result of this research, the models developed are suitable for identifying differences in organisational staffing levels, but there is as yet no empirical evidence on the use of the scales for homogeneous groups of employees.

The results show that employees’ normative commitment and organisational commitment are critical factors for retention. Of the satisfaction factors examined, the nature of work, benefits and co-workers have a significant impact on retention in organisations, so organisational retention measures should focus on improving satisfaction regarding these factors.

The readers of the journal would appreciate the work, which highlights the significance of employee psychology and retention for organisational success.

The study is based on primary data and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the few studies that take a holistic approach to organisational staff retention in the context of the moderating effect of organisational size. This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of employee retention and in contrast to previous research, examines the combined effect of several factors.