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Although considerable research has been completed on employee voice, relatively few studies have investigated employee silence. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between employee silence and job burnout as well as the possible mediating role of emotional intelligence (EI) on the silence-burnout relationship.

This paper reports the findings of an empirical study based upon the survey of 286 managers working in four different states in India. Correlational and mediated regression analyses were performed to test four hypotheses.

Contrary to findings from studies conducted in Western countries in which employee silence was positively related to undesirable work outcomes, in this study, employee silence was negatively related to job burnout. Additionally, results indicated that the relationship between employee silence and job burnout was mediated by EI. These findings suggest the importance of considering country context and potential mediating variables when investigating employee silence.

This study demonstrates how Indian employees may strategically choose employee silence in order to enhance job outcomes.

This study is one of the few efforts to investigate employee silence in a non-western country. This is first study that has examined the role of EI as a mediating variable of the relationship between employee silence and job burnout in India.

This study aims at investigating the effect of vertical trust on distributed leadership (DL) and performance as mediated by job satisfaction, and further to observe the role of DL in carrying out the effect of satisfaction on employees’ performance.

As grounded in the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature, the author proposes that employees’ participation in DL should be viewed as an extra role behavior, as leadership functions are not directly related to their job description. The study uses large-scale survey data from a study in one of Denmark’s largest public hospitals (N = 1,439).

The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis showed that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between vertical trust and DL, and DL had a positive impact on job performance. Furthermore, the results showed that job satisfaction had a positive impact on DL and employees’ performance. Moreover, DL has positively affected employees’ performance, and it carries the impact of job satisfaction on performance.

The study showed that trust and job satisfaction are important triggers of DL. Furthermore, results are interesting because literature so far has shown an insignificant relationship between satisfaction and performance. Here, the author establishes that the satisfaction–performance relationship is mediated by DL. The findings should motivate health care organizations to introduce structures and educate formal leaders so that DL can be enabled.

This should be the first study that relates trust and DL in an empirical manner. As grounded in the OCB literature, results also showed the significance of job satisfaction as a mediator variable.

With growing stress at work, the need for scholars to focus on humanizing organizations is pressing. Scholars agree five factors lead to humanizing organizations. This study dwells upon one factor – employee strengths at work (ESAW) – problematizes, identifies the gap in its conceptualization, deploys critical social systems theory and reconceptualizes the construct of ESAW by taking key contextual factors into consideration. Thereafter, this study aims to develop a conceptual model and makes propositions related to the mediating effects of ESAW on the association of leadership style and employee performance.

Aimed at contributing to humanizing organizations, this conceptual study problematizes the construct of competency and the trait-based conceptualization of strengths in identifying gaps in the construct of competency for humanizing organizations. Next, the study deploys the technique of construct mixology for evolving the new construct of ESAW. To empirically test ESAW in the field, the authors deploy the critical social systems theory and develop a conceptual model. Further, drawing upon the conceptual model and the extant literature, the authors develop many propositions for enabling future research.

The study develops a new construct of ESAW that holds the promise of contributing to humanizing organizations. By embedding the current trait-based conceptualization of employee strengths to the context of the organization, the new five-factor construct of ESAW is indigenous to the field of organization science, hence, has a higher relevance. The study develops a conceptual model and makes propositions for empirically testing the new construct in the field that future researchers may focus upon.

There is a compelling need for humanizing organizations. This conceptual study attempts to bring back the focus of researchers on humanizing organizations, within the framework of the market-driven economy. The new construct of ESAW has huge potential for theory-building and empirical testing.

Deployment of ESAW will contribute to humanizing organizations. The construct of ESAW is relevant to practice as it has evolved from the domain of organization science, unlike the earlier trait-based conceptualization of strength that emerged in personality psychology. Practitioners can deploy the construct of ESAW and achieve the two seemingly conflicting objectives of enabling employee well-being while also ensuring superior performance.

Any contribution toward humanizing organizations forebodes increasing the social capital and the personal well-being of employees. If employees are happy at work, their productivity increases. As per the broaden and build theory of Fredrickson, higher well-being and productivity at work creates a spiral of positivity that transcends the working life of an employee. Hence, the study has huge social implications at times when the social fabric is stretched because of multiple demands on an employee.

Constructs developed in other fields and adopted in organization science have less relevance than those evolved in the domain of organization science. Past deficient conceptualization and practices persist unless scholars logically challenge it an alternative and improved conceptualization provided. The new construct of ESAW uses the method of construct mixology after unravelling the assumptions that impedes humanizing organizations.

Although common throughout the world, little is known about the mechanism by which nepotism is associated with employee outcomes. Drawing from social exchange theory, this study examines whether fear-based silence mediates the relationship between nepotism with employee workplace withdrawal and career satisfaction. In addition, whether gender moderates the relationship between nepotism and fear-based silence is also examined.

Two time-lagged surveys of 330 employees in the Indian banking sector were completed.

As hypothesized, nepotism was positively related to fear-based silence and employee workplace withdrawal; it was negatively related to career satisfaction. Fear-based silence partially mediated the relationships of nepotism with workplace withdraw and career satisfaction. Gender moderated the relationship between nepotism and fear-based silence.

This study shows the negative impact of nepotism on employee outcomes and suggests means for reducing its prevalence in organizations.

This is the first study to examine fear-based silence as a mediator of nepotism’s relationship with employee workplace withdrawal and career satisfaction. It also answers repeated calls for more research on fear-based silence and its antecedents.

This paper aims to propose an explorative metamodel of the key organizational competences management and presents a Web-based tool (Co.S.M.O.^© Competences Software Management for Organizations) for all-around assessment of the identified competences.

Building on the Great Eight Competencies Model- GEC, the European Qualifications Framework-EQF and focus group feedback, an online questionnaire was developed to manage the key organizational competences and to adapt the competence metamodel to the Italian context.

The competence metamodel described in this study and its newly designed tool (software with online questionnaire) could be used at the organizational level to improve productivity and efficiency by allowing an easy identification of key organizational competences and facilitating their acquisition and sharing.

Currently, the metamodel is mainly theoretical and the software sustained only a partial validation.

The developed tool is a dynamic, easy to use and interactive Web-based software useful for managing the competences in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

European official documents invite companies and institutions to work together and share human capital: the European Qualifications Framework-EQF, at the base of this model, facilitates a common organizational language for human resources management.

Managerial competence literature indicates that a comprehensive model capturing a link between the EQF and a managerial competence model has not yet been considered in the literature.

Using psychological contract theory as its foundation, the purpose of this paper is to examine the important, but under-explored, relationship between careerism and organizational attitudes among workers in India.

In total, 250 middle-level executives, working in six manufacturing plants of motorbike companies located in Northern India, were surveyed.

As hypothesized, careerism was found to be negatively related to affective commitment, organization satisfaction and perceived organizational performance. Contrary to expectations, however, careerism was positively related to continuance and normative commitment.

The study is based on a cross-sectional survey. Also, because the motorbike industry is male dominated, all the executives surveyed are men.

Despite concerns that employees with more transactional relationships with their employers are no longer loyal to their organizations, this study demonstrates that Indian employees with a higher careerism also have higher levels of normative and continuance organizational commitment.

Prior research has produced conflicting results as to whether employees with more careerist, transactional psychological contracts with their employers have more negative organizational attitudes. This study contributes to research on psychological contract theory and careerism in today’s turbulent career landscape while also answering calls to examine the generalizability of western theories of careers in non-western countries.

Utilizing employee strengths contributes to humanizing organizations. However, the current concept of strengths has evolved from the domain of social work, advanced by personality and positive psychologists and adopted in management. The trait-like conceptualization of strengths conceptualized by psychologists is of lesser relevance to organizations as it discounts the significance of contextual factors for manifesting employee strengths. This study traces the evolution of strengths conceptualization, identifies gaps in its relevance to organizations, employs the concept relation method for developing a conceptualization of employee strengths at work and proposes a framework for management development that predicts improved employee engagement and performance.

The study utilizes the Cochrane method for carrying out a systematic conceptual review and shortlists 19 articles from an initial selection of 430 articles. Drawing insights from the 19 reviewed studies, the study deploys the concept relation method to conceptualize the concept of employees' strengths at work (ESAW) that has a higher relevance for management and organizational behavior. Thereafter, utilizing ESAW, the study proposes a conceptual framework that has huge implications for improving employee engagement and performance by carrying out effective management development. The conceptual framework additionally serves as a springboard for future empirical research.

The conceptualization of human strengths in extant literature favors a trait-based conceptualization advanced by personality psychologists. Concepts borrowed from other domains have lesser relevance than those indigenously developed in the field of management. Incorporating the recent empirical evidence highlighting the importance of factoring in key contextual attributes for the strengths to manifest at work, this study develops a new higher-order construct of ESAW that factors in personal as well as situational variables. Thereafter, the study suggests a conceptual framework for effectively carrying out management development by utilizing the new construct of ESAW.

Deployment of ESAW will contribute to humanize organizations, improve employee engagement and performance. The construct of ESAW is relevant to practice as it has evolved from the domain of organization science, unlike the earlier trait-based conceptualization of strength that emerged in personality psychology. The conceptual framework proposed in the study can be utilized by practitioners for carrying out effective management development.

Any contribution to increasing employee engagement predicts increasing social capital. If employees are happy at work, their productivity increases. Furthermore, higher engagement and productivity at work creates a spiral of positivity that transcends the working life of an employee. Hence, the study has huge social implications at times when the social fabric is stretched due to multiple demands on an employee.

Constructs developed in other fields and adopted in management have less relevance than those evolved indigenously in the domain of management. The systematic conceptual review of the concept of human strengths reveals a gap in its relevance to organizations. The study develops a new concept of ESAW that has higher relevance for organizational behavior and holds the promise of humanizing organizations. The next originality of the study lies in proposing a conceptual framework for carrying out effective management development that predicts higher employee engagement and performance. The methodological originality lies in utilizing the systematic conceptual review for developing a new concept.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between CEO leadership behavior and the culture of the organization within the context of Indian organizations.

Two five-scale questionnaires were completed by senior executives (n=485) who have interaction with their CEO. The first instrument captured the executives’ perspective of their CEO’s leadership behavior along six dimensions (People Centric, Global Ambitions, Opportunity Sensing, Visionary, Exemplary, and Dependable). The second instrument captured the executives’ perspective of their organization’s culture along six dimensions (Results Focused, Talent Development, Employee Empowerment, Equity and Fairness, Open Communication, and Decentralization). These data were analyzed using factor analysis, correlation analysis, and least-squares regression.

A correlation analysis indicates that a significant relationship exists between several aspects of CEO leadership behavior and characteristics of the organizational culture. Regression analysis indicated that the overall CEO leadership behavior prominently explains (R²=0.397) the organization’s culture. Notably, two CEO dimensions, People Centricity and Global Ambition, were found to have an exceptionally high degree of association with the culture of the organization.

There is consistency between findings from western academic leader-culture research and the same in the Indian work setting.

Findings of this study can serve as a guidepost for the selection of leaders in an organization.

There is a scarcity of leader-organization research involving national culture features; the Indian context is fundamental to this study and is called for by the growing presence of India-born leadership in western organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of motives for volunteerism and organizational culture on organizational commitment (OC) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) in Indian work context.

The data were collected from 248 middle and senior managers of a public sector organization in India. The self and other reported questionnaires were used to collect the data.

Results of hierarchical regression analysis have shown that personal development dimension of volunteerism was found to be the positive predictor of OC and OCB both. However, career enhancement, empathy and community concern dimensions of volunteerism had mixed effects on both the criterion variables. Furthermore, culture had not shown a significant impact on OCB; however, it had a positive influence on affective and continuance commitment. Moreover, demographic variables (age, education and tenure) had strong impact on OC than OCB.

OC and OCB are highly desirable forms of employees’ behavior in which motivation for volunteerism and organizational culture can play a significant role. However, both OC and OCB are differentially predicted by these antecedent variables.

This is the first study which has explored the impact of motives for volunteerism on OC and OCB in the field of organizational behavior in a non-western work context such as India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of altruistic and egoistic motives with person- and organization-oriented citizenship behaviors as mediated by affective commitment. The author hypothesized that altruistic motives are positively associated with person-oriented citizenship behavior and affective commitment while egoistic motives are positively associated with organization-oriented citizenship behavior and negatively associated with affective commitment.

The data were collected from 248 middle and senior managers from 20 different locations of a power generation organization in India. Self- and other reported method were used to collect the data by administering the questionnaires.

Results of structural equation analysis have supported, with some exception, the hypotheses. Affective commitment has mediated the relationship between motives and both forms of citizenship behavior. However, altruistic motives had shown a negative relationship with affective commitment and had a positive relationship with person-oriented citizenship behavior. Meanwhile, egoistic motives had a positive relationship with affective commitment and organization-oriented citizenship behavior.

Results suggest that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) per se is not important rather motives play an important role during the performance appraisal process. Further there is a differential impact of altruistic and egoistic motives on employees’ attitude and behavior, and both can coexist in this process.

This is the first study on the relationship of motives, affective commitment and OCBs in India.