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The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in Australia.

First, the authors compare the strategic involvement of Chinese and Australian HR professionals. Second, based on the upper echelon theory, the authors compare the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) and top management team (TMT) between both countries on HR involvement in strategic decision-making. Data were collected from matched pairs of HR and TMT executives in China (n = 168) and in Australia (n = 102).

Results indicate a difference, despite of no statistical significance, in HR involvement in strategic decision-making between Chinese and Australian samples. TMT behavioural integration was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in a collectivistic culture (i.e. in China), but not in an individualistic culture (i.e. in Australia). However, CEO support for HRM was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in Australia, whereas it is not related in China.

The paper conducts a comparative study and practical, and research implications are discussed at the end.

The broad aims of this research are to analyse the status of, and processes underlying, strategic human resource management (HRM) integration within organisations and to contribute to theory development in the area. A great deal of attention is given in the literature to the facilitative role that HRM can take in organisational change but as yet little attention has been given to modelling the change processes within HRM itself. This paper addresses that gap by providing a model of the proposed influences on the move towards strategic HRM integration.

In‐depth interviews with senior HR, finance and line managers in 13 Australian Best Practice companies are used to explore the supports and barriers underlying strategic HRM integration.

The model that is developed uses ideas from the change literature to explain that the engagement of strategic HRM integration requires a certain set of symbolic and ritualistic gestures. These symbolic changes, however, do not always result in desired strategic HRM outcomes: symbolic adjustments must be accompanied by deeper levels of change both from within the HR profession and from other stakeholders in the organisation.

The research holds a number of practical implications for the career design of HR professionals: a case is made, for example, for a broader business career background requirement that may provide the level of business acumen necessary to be a credible participant at the senior management strategic decision‐making level. Intended future research will draw from a larger sample to test the proposed model.

This research model's specific responses and outcomes require an ideological shift both from the HR profession and from stakeholders within the organisation.

The purpose of this research is to examine how the chief exective officers (CEO's) transformational leadership impacts organizational innovation and individual innovative behavior, through the mediating role of collaborative human resource management (HRM) practices.

By using a stratified sampling technique, the data were obtained from ten Microfinance banks located in five metropolitan cities of Pakistan. By adopting a purposive sampling technique, total 427 responses were received out of which 411 responses were considered for data analysis. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was adopted using AMOS 21.0 to test the developed hypotheses.

The findings of the study described a significant and positive relationship between CEO transformational leadership and collaborative HRM. The collaborative HRM has also a positive impact on organizational innovation and individual innovative behavior. Moreover, the results revealed that collaborative HRM fully mediates between CEO transformational leadership and organizational innovation. However, partial mediate between CEO transformational leadership and individual innovative behavior.

The results of this study can be helpful for bank organizations and policymakers who have extended vision and anticipate the significance of innovation in a fast-changing market. The results of the study also provide the space and scope for prospective researchers and scholars for further research.

There is substantial literature existing on the relationship between CEO transformational leadership, organizational innovation and individual innovative behavior. However, the study finds this that only few researchers took the opportunity to observe the mediating role of collaborative HRM on the relationship between CEO transformational leadership, organizational innovation and individual innovative behavior in the context of Pakistan.

This study aims to draw upon research from strategic human resource management (HRM) and strategic management to examine how HRM demands influence the likelihood that chief executive officers (CEOs) will staff top management with a human resource (HR) executive.

The theory and hypotheses developed in this study are tested on a sample of US initial public offering firms from the calendar year 2007, using logistic regression.

The results of hypothesis tests suggest that HR executive presence in top management is positively related to the HRM demands faced by a CEO stemming from product/service innovation strategies, the number of HRs employed by the firm and CEO’s financial orientation.

The results of this study may not generalize to other settings. This study does not simultaneously consider the role of other structural forms which may increase or reduce the degree of HRM demands faced by the CEO. This study extends prior research on executive job demands by expanding the understanding of factors which give rise to HRM sources of executive job demands. Study results suggest that CEOs with financial orientations are more likely to staff their top management teams with an HR executive, which suggests that in the face of executive job demands stemming from a particular functional area, CEOs delegate responsibility for that function to another member of top management. This finding suggests that CEOs can, and in fact do, recognize the limitations engendered by their experiences and that when confronted with a specific type of executive job demand that does not align with their expertise, they take steps to address their individual limitations by appointing others that are more capable of addressing the particular source of executive job demand.

Study results suggest that product/service innovation strategies, CEO’s financial background and the number of HRs employed by the firm increase the likelihood of HR functional representation in top management.

The theory and results of this study extend the focus of extant research on factors giving rise to HRM’s functional representation in top management. Although prior research has emphasized the role of ownership characteristics and risk preferences in the adoption of this structural form, this study examines the role of CEO HRM demands. This approach allows for the integration of the upper echelons theory with the strategic HRM literature and provides an empirical examination of CEO job demands arising from the HRM function.

This study proposes and tests a model grounded in resource-based theory to describe how the formal rules embedded in an organization's green human resource management (GHRM) combine with informal cues communicated by members of the firm's upper echelon, including the CEO and members of the top management team (TMT), to affect a firm's environmental performance.

Multi-source data were collected from 240 human resource managers, chief financial officers and CEOs in 80 firms.

The results show that CEO ethical leadership moderates the positive relationship between GHRM and TMT green commitment, which in turn mediates the relationship between GHRM and firms' environmental performance.

The tested importance of CEO ethical leadership as an organizational condition that amplifies the effectiveness of strategically aligned HRM systems offers new theoretical insights to advance HRM scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the antecedents of the development of dynamic capabilities from an HRM perspective, considering the leading role of leadership styles and their potential impact on the orientation of HR systems and a firm’s capabilities.

The authors designed an empirical study of a sample of 107 Spanish industrial firms, asking HR, production and marketing managers to assess the CEO’s leadership styles, the system of HRM practices applied in their organizations and dynamic capabilities. They applied multiple regressions and mediation analysis.

The authors’ results suggest that both transactional and transformational leadership styles are positively associated with dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing and reconfiguration), directly and indirectly, through their effects on HR systems.

This paper approaches dynamic capabilities by using cross-sectional data. A longitudinal analysis would enrich this study. Also, the data aggregation in this paper does not allow to check different HR orientations from different departments. Finally, other HRM practices and strategic orientations could be assessed.

This paper highlights the need to develop CEOs who are able to combine leadership behaviors in such a way that they promote HR systems (skill-based development vs job-based development) and to use them as mediating mechanisms and in order to generate greater dynamic capabilities in the organization.

The authors are proposing that HRM can be applied to leverage a firm’s competitive advantage, as HR systems mediate for obtaining different dynamic capabilities. Second, it could be concluded that any CEO should combine or display traits of both forms of leadership styles (transformational and transactional) in order to develop the full range of dynamic capabilities. Finally, this paper can provide some insights into the way dynamic capabilities can be measured and approached, through HRM microfoundations.

It is widely accepted that global competitive advantage frequently requires managing such complex situations where traditional organization and job structures are simply insufficient. Increasingly, in order to create a flexible and integrated set of decisions that balance local flexibility with global efficiency, organizations must rely on more social, informal and matrix-based shared visions among managers and employees. Research on global strategic advantage, global organizational structures and even shared mindsets has suggested that dimensions of culture, product and function provide a valuable organizing framework. However, typical decisions about organization structure, HRM practices and talent often remain framed at such a high level as to preclude their solution. We maintain that there is often no logical answer to such questions as, “Should the sales force be local or global?” or “Should product authority rest with the countries or the corporate center?” However, we propose that embedding business processes or value chains within a Culture and Product matrix provides the necessary analytic detail to reveal otherwise elusive solutions. Moreover, by linking this global process matrix to a model that bridges strategy and talent, it is possible to identify global “pivotal talent pools,” and to target organizational and human resource investments toward those talent areas that have the greatest impact on strategic advantage. We demonstrate the Value-Chain, Culture and Product (VCCP) matrix using several examples, and discuss future research and practical implications, particularly for leadership and leadership development.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the perceptions of key stakeholders of the human resource management (HRM) practices and challenges in performing arts organisations in Victoria, Australia. Challenges include the precarious nature of employment in the industry; poor wages and conditions leading to financial insecurity and the domination of the industry by small- and medium-sized organisations. The passion and commitment of the performing arts workforce are both a strength and a weakness in that they “buy in” to the expectations of long hours and unpaid work. These challenges impact on managers and administrators as well as performers and raise many challenges for the HRM function and places constraints on even basic HRM practices. Despite the claims of the stakeholders that the large companies have sophisticated HRM practices the early evidence suggests otherwise. Furthermore, many of these problems cannot be solved at the organisational level and need an industry and government response.

A qualitative research approach is used to guide this study as it allows contextual evaluation of the data. Eight key stakeholders interviewed for this study included one official specialising in industrial relations from Live Performance Australia, one official from the Media and Entertainment and Arts Alliance, two government officials from the State government, one with responsibility for working with Performing Arts companies in relation to funding and resources, and the other with responsibility for government arts policy development; two chief executive officers – one from a small arts company and the other from a large arts company; one HR director from a large arts company; and one manager from a small-to-medium-size company. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were undertaken to provide an information-rich inquiry.

The study suggests that there are considerable barriers to the effective adoption and implementation of HRM in the performing arts. In particular, the research identified four major features that impact on HRM practices in the arts sector. These are: first, the precarious nature of employment, due to the short-term and project focussed work. Second, the reliance on often limited government funding, supplemented by philanthropy, sponsorship and box office takings, leading to short-term and long-term financial insecurity and limited capacity for long-term planning. Third, limited resources and high levels of casualisation which leads to low income, poor working conditions, lack of training and few opportunities for career development. Fourth, despite these difficult conditions, the sector appears to attract a highly motivated and committed workforce including not just performers but also managers and administrators and the sector appears to rely on their passion, commitment and shared endeavour.

The study has limitations. For example, it focussed at the macro level of key stakeholders rather than at the organisational level which is the usual unit of analysis for HRM studies. The stakeholders made many claims about HRM practices that need to be explored in further research at the organisational level. Also, apart from the trade union interviewee, the employee voice is missing. Again, further research into both performing arts practitioners and managers and administrators would be valuable future research.

This study raises a number of implications for practice. The first is that government policy makers need to focus on the sustainability of their funding models and take account of the myriad of evidence that now exists in regard to the detrimental impact of precarious employment in the increasingly valuable performing arts sector. A policy approach that highlights longevity and development of the sector rather than an emphasis on encouraging competition between small companies for financial survival has much to offer. The second is in relation to industry players who rather than blaming governments could take some control through supporting the growth of networks that could provide training and development and career development opportunities for organisations and individuals (Hennekam and Bennett, 2017).

This study contributes to the understanding of HRM systems and practices in the performing arts.

By investigating the use of formal compensation practices in family small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the purpose of this paper is to provide important new insights in these issues for academics, as well as family business practitioners, prospective applicants and financiers of family businesses. Moreover, this study includes a contingency that allows to explore heterogeneity across family businesses in their use of formal compensation practices: the CEO type.

A survey of 124 small- and medium-sized Belgian family businesses to explore the use of formal compensation practices is analyzed by the author.

The results support the hypothesis that family firms with a family CEO adopt significantly less formal compensation practices than their counterparts that are led by a non-family CEO.

Generalizing the findings of this study must be taken with care, as the findings are based on a cross-sectional sample of family SMEs in one country, Belgium. Future research can build on these findings with studies on larger samples in other countries.

This study may be interesting for family business practitioners and consultants, as it provides insight in the actual use of formal compensation practices that are recommended as a best practice in numerous practitioner handbooks. Also, the results of this study might be important for prospective applicants and financiers, since the compensation system is an important communication device to signal legitimacy to external stakeholders.

Compensation issues are among the main challenges SMEs, especially family firms, face. Despite the clear importance of this matter, academic interest has been rather limited. This paper therefore displays sound descriptive survey results and empirically investigates the determinants of the use of formal compensation practices in Belgian family SMEs by distinguishing between different types of family businesses.

This paper aims to examine the implications of high performance work system (HPWS) strength from a managerial perspective and the impact of economic, cultural, political, legal and technological factors on the operationalization of HPWSs in the banking industry in Sri Lanka.

The data for this study were collected from three licensed commercial banks in Sri Lanka. This research used a case study approach for data collection with archival analysis of records and semi-structured interviews with the CEO, head of HR, two board members and three focus groups (top, middle and lower level managers across various functional areas) in each bank which altogether covers 66 key informants.

The findings supported the research proposition that to gain positive outcomes on organizational effectiveness, there should be a strong HPWS, resulting in a positive attitudinal climate among employees. Further, the findings provide evidence of the global applicability of HPWSs, although more research is needed to clearly specify the contextual boundaries of HPWS effectiveness.

Contemporary research provides ample evidence to endorse the contribution of high performance work systems toward organizational effectiveness. However, there is a dearth of literature on how high performance work systems are operationalized across the management hierarchy and support the achievement of organizational effectiveness. Few studies have been conducted on high performance work system strength and organizational effectiveness in emerging economies.