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Management discretion in the decision to reduce payroll costs is an important but under-researched issue in management accounting. The authors leverage the experimental environment to test the role of organizational culture (close vs. distant) and managerial communion (concern for others) along with their interaction with sales decline persistence (one vs. two periods) on planned layoff decisions. The authors find that communal managers are hesitant to downsize employees and that a close organizational culture interacts with one period sales declines to reduce layoffs although the influence of culture is reduced with persistent sales declines. The authors also examine the influence of culture and communion on managers’ preference for pay cuts as an alternative to layoffs. The authors find that a close culture and higher communion are associated with decisions to choose pay cuts over layoffs; however, these costs interact such that managers low in communion in a distant culture express a higher preference for layoffs. These findings illustrate the combined influence of economic, organizational, and dispositional factors on manager decisions about the extent and form of labor cost reductions due to sales declines.

This study explores the concept of “workplace survivor syndrome” (WSS) using bibliometric analysis and literature review, thereby identifying the avenues for future research in business management.

The study adopted a methodological combination of bibliometric analysis and literature review. The methodological order is as follows: using the Scopus database and identifying 118 articles from ABDC listed journals, performance analysis by VOS viewer (citation analysis), science mapping analysis by Biblioshiny (visualisation and graphical presentation), and finally, the content analysis of the best 40 articles with a minimum of 50 citations and without any year restriction.

The bibliometric analysis reveals the most influential authors, articles, journals, countries, publication trends, impactful articles, and impactful authors of workplace survivor syndrome research, along with popular keywords used in this area. The content analysis identified three themes: emotional, cognitive, and behavioural syndrome. The content analysis reported the central mechanism adopted in 40 articles, including theories, methodologies, variables, sample size, etc. Additionally, the study explored the positive reviews on WSS.

The study considered only the articles from the ABDC journal quality list for the review.

The article is persuasively the first research to provide the intellectual structure and comprehensive bibliometric analysis of workplace survivor syndrome.

This study focuses on HR practices that foster employee engagement during Covid-19. Companies in transition economies are particularly vulnerable to crisis and downsizing and other recessionary practices are frequently used.

Drawing on the model of caring human resource management, we utilise interviews with human resource representatives of 10 banks in the transition economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We analyse the banks at two different times to demonstrate how and why companies adapt their HR practices.

Our findings show a changing mindset in the deployment of highly context-specific HR practices. Strengthening company culture through a sense of community and communication ensure stability and continuity in work. Rather than layoffs, flexible work has become standard.

By highlighting the interplay between HR practices and employee engagement, we contribute to the discussion on engagement in exceptional circumstances and challenging settings and demonstrate how caring responsibilities “migrate” into HR practices in the professional context of a transition economy.

We propose a context-specific “protective caring approach” to foster employee engagement during crises.

Based on trait activation theory and established HRM frameworks, this paper examines the effect of HR managers’ proactive personalities on their use of HRM systems in times of crisis. As ambiguity and uncertainty provide room for personal traits to unfold and HR managers gain influence in times of crisis, we hypothesise that highly proactive HR managers report more intense use of HR practices. We thereby explore a potential alternative to maximize the value derived from HRM in times of crisis and to contribute new insights about organisational and managerial crisis responses.

This paper draws on data from 269 HR managers collected during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hypotheses are tested by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and multi-group analysis.

We find that a proactive personality can indeed influence the use of HR practices given that the impact of the crisis is not extremely high. This holds for HR practices that require investments (e.g., time and effort) from the HR manager, e.g., information sharing or employee involvement practices. Interestingly, we find that top management support weakens this link.

By emphasising the importance of managerial personality, we add important nuances to HRM frameworks that account for the influence of organisational actors (i.e. managers and HR managers) on HR policies and practices.

This study aims to address the question of why managers make different decisions in employee downsizing when their firms face external threats. Our research intends to shed light on whether and how CEOs' cognition (motivational attributes associated with regulatory focus) influences their decision-making and firms’ strategic actions on downsizing under high resource scarcity in the industry environment.

We used a longitudinal panel of 5,544 firm-year observations of US firms from 2003 to 2015 to test our conceptual model. The data was obtained from various sources, including corporate earnings call transcripts and archival databases. We used panel logistic regressions with both fixed and random effects in our research design.

Our results suggest that CEOs' motivational attributes could influence their employee downsizing decisions in response to external threats. We find that CEOs who are more promotion-focused (a stronger drive towards achieving ideals) are less likely to lay off employees during high resource scarcity. Conversely, CEOs with a higher prevention focus (a greater concern for security) do not have a meaningful impact on employee downsizing during periods of external resource scarcity.

Previous research has argued that a significant external threat would diminish individuals' impact on firm strategies and outcomes. Our findings challenge this idea, indicating that CEOs with a stronger drive towards achieving ideals are less inclined to lay off employees when resources are scarce in the environment. This study contributes to behavioral strategy research by providing new insights into how upper echelons’ cognition can influence their decision-making and firms’ employee downsizing.

By investigating the reactions of family businesses to COVID-19 pandemic this article aims to explaining how family firms are capable to preserve employment during hardship.

Stemming from resource-based-view, we theorise that familiness is not directly associated with new hiring but instead fully mediated by pivoting strategic decisions (the propensity to transform the business).

Our findings show that familiness triggers pivoting strategic decisions and consequently increases the likelihood of new hiring. Additionally, we found that the involvement of multiple generations strengthens this relationship.

Family firms must consolidate their family human and social resources (familiness) and assure the presence of multiple generations in the firm because they can leverage their entrepreneurial disposition and increase the need to preserve employment and new hires during crises.

The main contribution lies in the explanation of the mechanisms that family firms deploy to overcome a crisis and thus explains why some family firms are more resilient than others in relation to firm’s employment during hardship.

The current research investigates the gender difference in the attitudes of current employees and job seekers (or “future” employees) to payroll cost reduction methods (downsizing vs cutting pay).

Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, we analyzed a secondary dataset (survey data) of 2,139 employees in Ireland. In Study 2, we conducted an online experiment on 384 people in the US.

Study 1 reveals that, for males, downsizing survivors' commitment and job satisfaction levels are higher than those of employees whose pay is cut. In contrast, there were no differences in the commitment and job satisfaction levels between survivors of downsizing and pay-reduced employees for females. The analysis in Study 2 indicates that females are more attracted to organizations that utilize pay cuts over downsizing to overcome financial difficulties. In contrast, males demonstrated no differences in job-seeker attraction outcomes to organizations that chose either of these two payroll cost reduction methods. Thus, the results of the two studies indicate that females, compared to males, form less negative (or more favorable) attitudes toward pay cuts over downsizing.

The findings urge organizations to consider gender differences and develop relevant mitigation plans when one method must be chosen to reduce payroll costs.

The outcomes of this research indicate that the selection of a payroll cost reduction method may lead to a disparate impact on gender composition in an organization.

In Chapter 1, we critically reviewed the foundations of the free enterprise capital system (FECS), which has been successful primarily because of its wealth and asset accumulation potentiality and actuality. In this chapter, we critically argue that this capacity has been grounded upon the profit maximization (PM) theories, models, and paradigms of FECS. The intent of this chapter is not anti-PM. The PM models of FECS have worked and performed well for more than 200 years of the economic history of the United States and other developed countries, and this phenomenon is celebrated and featured as “market performativity.” However, market performativity has not truly benefitted the poor and the marginalized; on the contrary, market performativity has wittingly or unwittingly created gaping inequalities of wealth, income, opportunity, and prosperity. Critical thinking does not combat PM but challenges it with alternative models of profit sharing that promote social wealth, social welfare, social progress, and opportunity for all, which we explore here. Economic development without social progress breeds economic inequality and social injustice. Economic development alone is not enough; we should create a new paradigm in which economic development is the servant of social progress, not vice versa. Such a paradigm shift involves integrating the creativity and innovativity of market performativity and the goals and drives of social performativity together with PM, that is, from market performativity to social performativity.

This paper aims to examine whether information technology (IT) managers’ virtual listening, as rated by their high-tech employees, affected turnover behaviour beyond a new constellation of variables, some of which have never been researched as antecedents of turnover behaviour, particularly during a pandemic or crisis. Namely, the main aim, among others, is to answer the research question: does IT employees’ perception of the quality of their supervisors’ virtual listening in the pandemic and crisis era, when employees and managers work remotely, will negatively affect turnover behaviour? If yes, in which constellation of antecedents the virtual listening effecting on turnover behaviour?

Logistic regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses via SPSS 26 and PROCESS (Model 6). The variance inflation factor was calculated to test multicollinearity. Interaction was tested using the Hayes and Preacher PROCESS macro model. The researchers also used the J-N technique test (Johnson–Neyman via process). The supplemental analysis used also PROCESS MACRO (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA, 2023) Model 4 and Bootstrap test.

The findings show that perceptions of supervisors’ virtual listening quality as rated by their employees moderated the relationship between organisational deviance as a type of organisational misbehaviour (OMB) and turnover behaviour and had the strongest effect on turnover behaviour beyond other key predictors (organisational deviance as a type of misbehaviour, turnover intention, job satisfaction, embeddedness and alternatives in the labour market). Alternatives to current work moderated the association between the perception of managers’ virtual listening behaviour as rated by their employees and turnover behaviour. Specifically, when alternatives in the labour market were high or medium, the perceived quality of managers’ virtual listening reduced turnover behaviour. Finally, the perception of the IT employees supervisors’ virtual listening moderated the relationship between organisational deviance and turnover intention among high-tech employees.

Evaluating supervisor listening in the high-tech firm may have value in terms of its relationship to outcomes such as retaining employees, turnover intention and especially turnover behaviour. The effect on turnover behaviour and of that new constellation of antecedents on turnover behaviour when people work remotely was not researched yet and important for the post COVID-19 era. Additionally, in contrast to most studies of turnover, this study also focus on the positive aspects of turnover and especially turnover behaviour to organisations in general and especially to high-tech firm and not just the negative aspect as was researched until now. Another contribution is the finding that when employees perceived their managers’ virtual listening quality as high, the effect of deviance as a type of OMB on turnover behaviour was positive. Namely, the listening as a moderator and turnover assisted in making the organisation cleaner from inappropriate behaviour. Additionally, when alternatives in the labour market are high or medium, perceived quality of virtual listening of managers as rated by their employees can reduce turnover behaviour. This virtual listening–turnover relationship and the moderator of alternatives to current work had not previously been found in the turnover literature and this is also significant a contribution to the turnover and withdrawal literature.

COVID-19, like many previous crises, proved once more that some hospitality and tourism organizations are more crises resilient than others. Despite increasing frequency and magnitude of crises, little is known about the features of crises resilient organizations and mitigation strategies they adopt. If the characteristics of such resiliency are identified, those strengths might be targeted. Hence, the purpose of this study is to identify characteristics of crises resilient organizations by analyzing the interface between different organizational characteristics, recovery strategies they adopted and impacts of COVID-19 on individual hospitality and tourism organizations.

A global sample of 202 respondents from 20 countries and four continents, representing different sectors of the hospitality and tourism industry, participated in the survey. Descriptive analysis and cluster analysis were used to rank the items and group hospitality and tourism organizations based on their crises resiliency.

Service quality, loyal customers, branding, high paid in capital, domestic market base, hygiene and safety image, information and communication technology adoption, product and market diversification and restructuring debts emerged as major characteristics and strategies of crises resilient organizations. Using cluster analysis, four different groups of organizations were identified. Based on the impacts of COVID-19 on these organizations, Cluster-1 emerged as significantly more crises resilient, whereas Cluster-4 organizations were significantly more vulnerable to crises. Their characteristics and mitigation strategies they adopted were discussed.

The paper not only identified features of crises resilient organizations and successful mitigation strategies but also measured their impact on various performance indicators. Future studies might use characteristics, mitigation strategies and performance indicators identified in this study.

Based on the findings, tourism organizations would focus on strengthening characteristics and implementing strategies that make crises resilient organizations. Public bodies and destination management would also set their decision criteria based on these findings to create a more resilient tourism industry.

This research not only identifies how hospitality and tourism organizations are affected by COVID-19 but also how these impacts change based on different organizational characteristics and strategies. Understanding which organizational characteristics affect the crises vulnerability of hospitality and tourism organizations might inform risk and crises management literature and structural design elements in tourism businesses, hence offer both theoretical and practical implications.