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Employee recognition systems are ubiquitous in organizations (WorldatWork, 2019) and have positive effects on work outcomes (e.g. Stajkovic and Luthans, 2001). However, psychologically meaningful recognition relies on the recognition giver being motivated to observe and recognize coworkers. Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic may impact recognition giving in varying ways, yet little research considers this possibility.

This longitudinal field study examined the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on recognition and acknowledgment giving among frontline and nonfrontline healthcare workers at daily and aggregated levels. We tested the relationships between publicly available daily indicators of COVID-19 and objectively measured daily recognition and acknowledgment giving within a web-based platform.

We found that the amount of daily recognition giving was no different during the crisis compared to the year before, but fewer employees gave recognition, and significantly more recognition was given on days when COVID-19 indicators were relatively high. In contrast, the amount of acknowledgment giving was significantly lower in frontline staff and significantly higher in nonfrontline staff during the pandemic than before, but on a daily-level, acknowledgment was unrelated to COVID-19 indicators.

Our results suggest that organizational crises may at once inhibit and stimulate employee recognition and acknowledgment.

Our research is the first to empirically demonstrate that situational factors associated with a crisis can impact recognition giving behavior, and they do so in ways consistent with ostensibly contradictory theories.

Employee recognition programs are ubiquitous, and recognition is a multibillion-dollar industry. Yet, very little research has tested the utility of recognition-based interventions. The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of managerial training for employee recognition on the occurrence of recognition and unit-level performance.

The design was a quasi-experimental field study of branches within a financial services company. Differences between a recognition training group and a no-training control group were examined using objective unit-level performance and recognition data before and after the training intervention.

Results indicated that the training program led to more recognition and improved unit performance compared to control.

The sample size was small, but the research demonstrates that managerial recognition training is effective.

This research establishes the effectiveness of recognition training and describes its effects on important business outcomes, supporting the notion that recognition programs may be a worthwhile investment for organizations.

This study is one of the first to demonstrate the benefit of training managers on effective recognition practices on recognition behavior and unit performance.

Research on the effectiveness of organizational change initiatives tends to focus primarily on the positive benefits of organizational change including improved financial performance. Rarely are negative outcomes examined, such as financial losses resulting from change initiatives. However, negative outcomes are possible, common, and understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational change and financial loss.

The research used a database of insurance losses from a global reinsurance company over a 30-year period. Each loss event was examined to determine the cause of the loss, the amount of loss, and type of organizational change if any that preceded the loss.

The results indicate that losses attributed to the organization and its employees are preceded by an organizational change initiative more often than not. In particular, the occurrence of losses attributable to the organization and its employees were preceded more often by organizational changes involving mergers, acquisitions and changes to ownership, changes involving downsizing, changes involving restructuring, but not changes to reporting relationships.

This research represents one of the few studies to examine financial loss from a wide variety of different types of organizational change and the only that has examined these questions using data from insurance losses. Findings support the growing theoretical movement focussing on the risks of organizational change.

Human resource management (HRM) practices are implemented to improve outcomes, such as reducing turnover, absenteeism, and improving performance. Using social exchange theory (SET), the purpose of this paper is to examine one HRM practice that has received less attention by researchers: employer-sponsored childcare assistance programs.

Study 1 – a field study compared three groups of hospital employees’ (n=148) attitudes and behaviors using MANCOVA/ANOVA over two time periods. Study 2 – using a field study, on-site and voucher childcare assistance programs were evaluated in terms of the cost to the organization and the relationship to attitudinal variables.

Study 1 – results indicated that employee performance was higher and absenteeism lower for employees using the on-site childcare center than employees using an off-site center or with no children. Although the attitudinal results did not align with hypotheses, they were not inconsistent with SET. Study 2 – results indicate that childcare assistance programs may be a beneficial HRM practice for organizations to implement.

One limitation of Study 1 is the small sample size. Future research should continue to examine how employee benefits like childcare programs affect employees, as well as examine how such benefits differentially employees who value and do not value the benefits. In Study 2, although the authors randomly selected the sample of on-site and voucher programs, the health care facilities self-selected themselves to participate in the program and selected the type of childcare program, a potential source of bias. Future research should examine childcare assistance programs and their impact on work-family balance and strain-based conflict in a wider variety of samples.

Implications for research and practice: Both studies offer researchers a “next step” in the evaluation of childcare assistance research. Additionally, these studies are of practical value to administrators/researchers in organizations who may be considering vouchers or on-site programs as they relate such programs to organizational outcomes.

The first study is one of the few studies on this topic to use a field design with two time points and with multiple behaviors and attitudes. The second study provides a descriptive comparison of two types of childcare assistance programs, a comparison made by few studies to date.

Almost all historical accounts of psychological work related to the self-concept begin with the pioneering work of William James (e.g., Harter, 1996; Pajares & Schunk, 2002, 2005; Roeser et al., 2006). James' distinction between the self as knower and agent (the I-self) and the self as known and object (the Me-self), in the famous Chap. 10, on self-consciousness, in his Principles of Psychology (1890), undoubtedly informs much subsequent work on the self-concept (a term that James never used himself). In particular, the general idea that the self is made up of different constituents (e.g., the Me-self contains material, social, and spiritual selves) arranged hierarchically is still very much a basic structural assumption in many contemporary theories of the self-concept, just as James' assumption that the I-self can create and monitor a variety of Me-selves anchors much self-concept methodology and process theorizing. With respect to the general aims of self-concept research, James' framing of self-esteem (a term he did use) also has been extremely influential on subsequent generations of both self-esteem and self-concept researchers. For James, self-esteem is a feeling that “depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do” (James, 1981, p. 310), a feeling that depends on the success with which we achieve those things we set out to achieve.²

Ultra-thin chip packaging (UTCP) is one of the flexible assembly technologies, by which thinned dies are encapsulated inside spin-coated dielectric films. For sake of higher density integration and bending stress suppression, two UTCPs can be stacked vertically. The purpose of this paper is to present an improved UTCP process flow to embed thinned chip in a symmetric dielectric sandwich for a flat topography. The UTCP flat top surface is suitable for metallization and further 3D stacking.

In the new process, a central photosensitive polyimide film is introduced, in which a cavity is made for the embedded chip. The cavity is defined by lithography using the chip itself as a photo-mask. In this way, the cavity size and position is self-aligned to the chip. The chip thickness is compensated by the surrounding central layer, and a UTCP with flat topography (flat UTCP) is realized after top dielectric deposition.

A batch of daisy chain test vehicles was produced. The feasibility of the process flow is verified by optical and electrical measurements. The result shows 100 percent yield, which is much better than previous work. A thermal humidity test showed no significant degradation of the flat UTCPs after 1,000 hours.

High yield fabrication of flat UTCP is first shown. An innovative self-alignment lithography step is introduced to make a cavity in dielectric for chip thickness compensation by using the chip itself as a photo-mask.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) differentiation on team creativity by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of relationship conflict in linking LMX differentiation with team creativity and the moderating role of team-member exchange (TMX) median in influencing the mediation.

The authors tested the model with a time-lagged field survey data from 358 employees and 98 supervisors belonging to 98 teams in a large diversified company with more than 15,000 employees, based in Shanghai, Southeastern China. In the first stage (T1), employees assessed LMX, TMX, relationship conflict, and control variables. In the second stage (T2), the leaders were asked to report team creativity.

Results indicated that the relationship between LMX differentiation and team creativity was mediated by relationship conflict. Moderated mediation analyses further revealed that relationship conflict mediated the relationship between LMX differentiation and team creativity for only those teams with low-TMX median.

Testing the moderated mediation model helps to advance our theoretical understanding of the intervening processes that underlie the effect of LMX differentiation on team creativity. The findings may also help Chinese managers to inform the importance of helping subordinates better adapt to LMX differentiation, reducing relationship conflict, and constructing high-quality TMX relationships within groups, in order to promote team creativity.

This empirical study provides preliminary evidence of the mediating role of relationship conflict in the negative relationship between LMX differentiation and team creativity. The moderated mediation model also extends the existing finding by showing that not only the quality of social exchange relationships with a supervisor (i.e. LMX) but also with team members (i.e. TMX), can moderate the impact of LMX differentiation on team outcomes.