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This paper aims to describe and explain women's labor participation in the public sector, particularly at the local level. The paper analyses the representation of women employees in the public sector through a case study of a city council in a mid-sized Spanish city. The authors delve into the extent of gender labor discrimination in public administration, exploring a diversity of situations, experiences, and perceptions of women workers in female, neutral, and male-dominated areas in the local administration.

The authors have applied a combined methodology of quantitative analysis based on an exhaustive analysis of the list of job posts, and qualitative analysis from the narratives of women workers in biographical interviews, in women-dominated, neutral and male-dominated areas.

The authors conclude by providing a clear description of women's representation in local administration. Despite the institutional efforts in applying gender equality norms and public policies in administration, employment and labor market, this article shows the persistent inequality in employment within the administration. The paper demonstrates that public administrations can be seen as gender regimes that tend to reproduce inequality by formal and informal dynamics. This inequality gender reproduction in a supposedly gender-neutral administration reflects discrimination in a labor market. The paper details phenomena relating to horizontal occupational segregation, glass ceilings, sticky floors, and the undervaluing of women's work, among other phenomena.

The administration should consider two essential factors that endanger gender equality: (1) the demonstrated regression of gender mainstreaming and the effects on women's employment as a consequence of the crisis, and (2) neoliberal governments and extreme right-wing parties (or neoliberal governments and extreme right-wing parties' support, as is the case with the current Andalusian regional government), whose agenda includes the fight against what neoliberal governments and extreme right-wing parties call “gender ideology”.

The gap between the effectiveness of gender legislation and actual working practices within the administration has been highlighted. This fact should be a wake-up call for the administrations to strictly comply with gender legislation, given that local administrations are the closest to the citizens. Future research should focus on changes to detect any regression and to prevent losing the improvements already achieved, which can still be very much strengthened.

This article helps to fill the gap in the literature on gender discrimination in the labor market, which often omits the public sector, especially in local administration, which is the closest administrative structure to citizenship respecting public policies. The article contributes to highlighting the need for an egalitarian labor market in order to achieve optimal performance, commitment and efficiency in egalitarian labor relations in local administration.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of innovative HR practices as an important mechanism through which strategic flexibility affects firm performance as well as the role of female leadership in this relationship.

Data were gathered from a sample of 113 firms in China. The authors collected information on organizational strategy, HR practices, CEO information, corporate social responsibility and other firm characteristics in terms of firm age, location, and financial performance. Conditional procedural analysis was conducted to test the model.

The authors found strong evidence in support of the mediation relationship in which organizations with a strong focus on strategic flexibility are more likely to adopt Innovative HR Practices. Furthermore, the authors found that the extent to which firms have adopted innovative HR practices has a strong effect on employee productivity. In addition, the authors found that female leadership enhances strategic flexibility-performance relationship.

Information on strategic flexibility, HR practices and firm performance was collected at the same time. Future studies based on panel data would be helpful to establish the causal relationships in the model.

The authors’ findings suggest that practitioners should put more emphasis on developing innovative HR practices, as they are required by strategic flexibility.

Firms pursuing strategic flexibility should feel more confident when appointing a female CEO, because the results show that female leadership may enhance the positive impact of strategic flexibility on firm performance.

This research study is the first empirical examination of the mediating influence of innovative HR practices on the relationship between strategic flexibility and firm performance. The study also shows that female leadership benefits an organization in implementing strategic flexibility. The results are of value to researchers, human resource management managers, employees, and executives who are seeking to develop practices that are flexible and innovative in order to stay competitive in dynamic environments.

The study investigates the effect of political instability and employee tenure security on the performance of firms in middle-income economies (MIEs) after controlling for the influence of corruption, international quality certification, external auditor services and firm age. It examines whether ownership and sector effects matter in the explored relationships.

The study adopts the generalized method of moments estimator and collects firm-level cross-sectional data from 77 MIEs.

The evidence shows that political uncertainty, employee tenure security and firm age negatively impact firm performance. Also, external quality assurance mainly improves firm performance. Additionally, foreign-owned firms benefit from corruption more than their domestic counterparts. Moreover, there are ownership and sector effects in the firm performance drivers.

The findings suggest the need for MIE firm managers to implement policies and programs to improve permanent employees' efficiency, commitment and honesty. Policy makers and political actors must work toward a stable political environment in MIEs. The policy must also focus on at least minimizing corruption.

The study shows the contributions of employee tenure security, political instability and corruption to the performance of MIE firms. It documents sector and ownership effects in the factors influencing firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the contribution of company functional areas – production, marketing, and human resources – to strategic flexibility configurations. It also seeks to explore the comparative contributions of functional areas to product innovation.

The study uses the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to develop a better understanding of departmental contributions to strategic flexibility configuration and the effect of strategic flexibility on product innovation by functional areas.

The findings of this study indicate that marketing flexibility has a key role in product innovation.

A limited number of cases may be one of the possible reasons for no proven contribution of HR flexibility to product innovation, and may affect results due to poor representation.

The required flexibility level is at least the one maintaining the company’s status and certifying competitive advantage.

A pressure for flexibility leads companies to modify their organizational structure, processes, and resources.

The environmental change and uncertainty provide dynamic challenges that increase the need of company flexible reactions

It has been a tremendous challenge for organisations to navigate and survive the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposes a novel multi-level conceptual model, based on the resource-based view (RBV), to address the pandemic crisis and highlight the importance of strategic human resource management (SHRM) in promoting employee motivation and organisational resilience. The paper aims to provide insights and practical guidance for organisations to leverage their internal resources and capabilities to thrive in the post-pandemic landscape.

This paper conducted a comprehensive literature review of the existing research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, SHRM, RBV, job satisfaction, turnover intentions and organisational resilience, covering the main contributors to this research stream and their findings.

The conceptual model presented in this paper offers five testable propositions to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee motivation and organisational resilience and how organisations can navigate challenging times through SHRM, which enables RBV. It highlights the foundational role of RBV and identifies the resources employed by SHRM as intervening constructs that significantly enhance employee outcomes, including motivation, job satisfaction, turnover intention and organisational resilience.

The proposed model counsels that organisations need to look beyond the straightforward application of SHRM and should enable the RBV climate to protect and uphold employee motivation and organisational resilience. Finally, measurement and analysis implications are presented for future research opportunities and managerial interventions to mitigate the impact of difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently, there is a lack of research regarding the conceptualisation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on employee and organisational resilience. Therefore, the proposed model discusses the significance of the alignment of SHRM and RBV as a moderator of the relationships between the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, employee motivation and organisational resilience.

Although the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model has been widely adopted throughout Europe, a thorough examination of the factors that contribute to the internalisation of the model (i.e. a substantive adoption) has been neglected in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to present a model that analyses the drivers of the real internalisation of the EFQM excellence model, with a focus on the role of motives for adoption, and appraisal and compensation systems.

An empirical study was carried out based on a sample of Spanish organisations that had been awarded EFQM recognition. Structural equation models, cluster analysis and ANOVA were used to examine the research questions.

Internal motives concerning the creation of a participative style are the main driver of internalisation. Moreover, having an appraisal system-oriented towards the development of employees helps the substantive adoption of the EFQM model. These findings reinforce the importance of the soft elements of the EFQM model.

This study enhances evidence about the motives for adoption and their influence on the internalisation of the EFQM model. It analyses internalisation in a novel context, EFQM recognised organisations, and contributes to the debate about the efficacy of the EFQM model to performance improvement, by unveiling the factors that could foster the internalisation of the model within the organisational routines.

As a Quality Management (QM) framework, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model has stakeholder management at its core. In EFQM (2012), based on which assessments were made until 2021, “creating a sustainable future” was a fundamental principle, but how it translated to a Sustainability Orientation and delivered to stakeholders remains questionable. This study aims to investigates the Sustainability Orientation within EFQM (2012) and its associations with Results for stakeholders.

Longitudinal assessments of recognized-for-excellence organizations by a partner of EFQM are considered. Using factor analysis, scores on the sub-criteria that defined “creating a sustainable future” are investigated, and a Sustainability Orientation is inferred. Panel regressions and structural equation modeling assess the correlations between Sustainability Orientation and Results. A qualitative analysis follows, where sustainability reports from role-models within this population are text mined to examine whether and how they reflected the guidance in EFQM (2012) concerning “creating a sustainable future”.

Direct and indirect positive associations between the Sustainability Orientation implied by EFQM (2012) and stakeholder-performance are confirmed. Yet, inferences from text mining of reported priorities of role-models of excellence illustrate that EFQM (2012) might have driven different strategies towards sustainability.

Despite conceptualizations that the EFQM model embeds a Sustainability Orientation, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, its existence and likely impact remain to be examined. By combining longitudinal statistical analysis, structural equation models and text mining, consistent insights on the link between Sustainability Orientation and organizational performance are obtained.