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The purpose of this paper is to review the roles of human resource management (HRM) specialists in the contemplation and implementation of innovation in employing organisations and workplaces.

The authors review some of the literature and practice in this field as well as 11 other articles that are included in this special issue.

The authors propose six research questions. First, are HRM specialists analysing relevant trends and their implications for the future of work and the workforce? Second, are HRM specialists enabling employing organisations to identify and enable innovative ideas? Third, to what extent are HRM specialists leading partnership arrangements with organised labour? Fourth, what is the role of HRM specialists in creating inclusive work environments? Fifth, how should HRM specialists change to foster enterprise performance, intrapreneurship, agility, creativity and innovation? Sixth, to what extent is there an HRM function for line managers in coordination with HRM specialists in engendering innovation around “change agent” roles?

The authors argue that HRM specialists should embrace and enable innovation. The authors challenge HRM specialists to consider how they can contribute to facilitating innovation. The paper proposes further research on HRM and range of associated stakeholders who, together, have responsibility for innovating in the design and delivery of HRM to enrich our knowledge of HRM and workplace innovations.

This study offers a global comparative analysis of variables associated with job satisfaction, specifically work-life balance, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and work relations on job satisfaction for hotel housekeepers.

The study analyzes these variants across 29 countries using International Social Survey Program data.

Findings indicate significant differences in job satisfaction for hotel housekeepers across countries, lower job satisfaction for hospitality occupations compared to all other occupational categories, lower job satisfaction for hotel housekeepers than employees in other hospitality occupations, and a statistically significant positive impact of some elements of work-life balance, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, and coworker relations on job satisfaction.

The hospitality industry is characterized by poor work-life balance, high turnover rates and limited rewards. Hotel housekeepers report lower levels of satisfaction than other hospitality workers in terms of work-life balance, pay, relationships with managers, useful work and interesting work. Housekeepers play an important role in hotel quality and guest satisfaction. As such, understanding and addressing factors contributing to job satisfaction for hotel housekeepers is critical for managers

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

The paper aims to analyze collective bargaining in the facility management business of these six countries to explore similarities and differences between them. The analysis serves to test the differential impact of the national institutional setting on the protection provided by collective agreements to facility management workers.

The paper adopts a case study methodology to approach a facility management multinational company providing services in six European countries (France, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK) that represent different industrial relations systems with variance in key dimensions of collective bargaining, including its structure, coverage and extension of agreements.

The extension of the facility management business model has not always adopted a high-road strategy aimed at enhancing the quality and efficiency through the integrated management and delivery of services, which is expected to positively impact employment conditions. Rather, it has, in many cases, been a deliberate, low-road attempt to undercut working standards, taking advantage of the multiple services provided by the company in a context of growing de-centralization in collective bargaining. The results point to an important role of industrial relations institutions in shaping facility management strategies and outcomes.

Similar to other forms of outsourcing, facility management leads to fragmented employment relations. However, the concentration of outsourced workers under the same supplier organization introduces opportunities to ensure the protection of workers, depending on the adoption of a high- or low-road competitive strategy. This paper provides for the first time comparative evidence about industrial relations in facility management businesses, a largely under-researched area.

This study explores how compassionate managerial leadership style can help to mitigate workplace stressors and alleviate stress experiences among employees — particularly in an extreme situation, such as the current global COVID-19 pandemic. The study's context is Nigeria's banking, manufacturing and healthcare sectors, which have a history of high employee stress levels.

Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology, the study adopts the thematic analysis process (TAP) to draw and analyse data from semi-structured telephone interviews with 10 banking, 11 manufacturing and 9 frontline healthcare workers in Nigeria.

It was found that a compassionate managerial leadership can drive a considerate response to employees' “fear of job (in)security”, “healthcare risk” and concerns about “work overload, underpayment and delayed payment”, which respondents considered to be some of the key causes of increased stress among employees during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The study is limited to exploring the relationship between compassionate managerial leadership and an organisation's ability to manage employee stress in the COVID-19 situation, using 30 samples from organisations operating in three Nigerian cities and sectors. Future studies may involve more Nigerian cities, sectors and samples. It may also possibly include quantitative combination to allow generalisation of findings.

In order to survive in extreme situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are forced to take drastic and often managerialist-driven work measures which can trigger high stress levels, low productivity and absenteeism among employees. Hence, organisations would benefit from implementing compassion-driven policies that are more inclusive and responsive to the workplace stressors facing employees.

Employee stress has been widely explored in many areas, including definitions, stressors, strains, possible interventions and coping strategies. There remains, however, a dearth of scholarship on how management-leadership compassion can help to reduce employee stress levels in extreme conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the knowledge and understanding of organizational and supervisory support in the context of employee deviant workplace behavior (DWB) by examining the potential associations of employees’ cultural value orientations. This paper aims to: clarify DWB; review perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisory support (PSS); discuss the meaning of employees’ cultural value orientations (individualism–collectivism, power distance and paternalism); use the fuzzy logic model to analyze relationships between DWB and POS, as well as PSS and employees’ cultural value orientations.

This research applies a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

The results show the role of employee perceived organizational and supervisory support and cultural dimension (power distance and paternalism) configurations on employee DWB.

The main originality of this study is to further increase the understanding of organizational and supervisory support in the context of employee DWB by examining the potential associations of employees’ cultural value orientations. This study extends the previous research by providing evidence that organizational and supervisory support influences employees’ DWB.

This paper aims to assess the design of national-level flexible work arrangement (FWA) policies, evaluating their potential to serve as an effective resource for employees to work flexibly depending on how they set the stage for flexibility claims that will be subject to industrial and workplace dynamics.

Using a capability approach, the authors conceptualize and operationalize two aspects of FWA policy design, namely accessibility and availability. The authors' analysis allows for an understanding of how the availability and accessibility of national FWA policies explicitly and implicitly restrict or facilitate flexible working in a structural manner. The study focuses on countries with differing working time regimes and gender norms on work and care: the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia.

The authors' findings highlight how FWA accessibility is broader when national policy is specified and FWA availability is not conditional to care. In Spain and Slovenia, access to FWAs depends on whether employees have care responsibilities, which reduces accessibility and reinforces gender imbalances in care provision. In contrast, the Netherlands provides FWAs universally, resulting in wider availability and accessibility of FWAs for employees regardless of their care responsibilities. Despite this universal provision, gender imbalances remain.

The originality of this paper lies in its conceptualization and operationalization of FWAs at the national level using a capability approach. The study adds to the existing literature on flexible working and provides insights for policymakers to design more effective FWAs.

Tourism employment is very diverse ranging from precarious, exploitative study to high-quality workplaces. However, poor employment images dominate the tourism industry, which makes attracting employees difficult. This study aims to examine the processes that lead to such image construction.

Using a qualitative methodology, the study develops a multilevel framing cycle comprising a media analysis of newspapers and magazines (macro-level), a conversation analysis of peer communication/negotiations (meso-level) and a content analysis of single employee/manager interviews (micro-level); and a comparative analysis of the macro-, meso- and micro-level findings.

The multilevel frame cycle identifies image-construction processes that pass through working conditions, payment, seasonality and human resource problems. These processes are shaped by the two cross-level dynamics of radicalization and attenuation. The latter consists of rationalized and repressed framings of tourism employment images (TEI) and the former consists of ideological and emotional framings.

Tourism stakeholders should support and participate in a pragmatic and open dialog to overcome the radicalization and attenuation of tourism employment. The key players require a new deal to end the “information warfare” on tourism employment, inaugurating a new era of collaborative and constructive employment relations.

This study develops a holistic and dynamic understanding of TEI by exploring how media products, peer groups and employees/managers jointly construct these images. It demonstrates how attenuation and radicalization shape poor employment images in tourism. It argues that these dynamics “lock in” the status-quo, create mutual recrimination between employers and employees and counteract common strategies that could otherwise improve employment structures and the image of tourism.

Managerial discourses tend to portray work-related mobility practices in a positive light, presenting mobility assignments as a place of stimulus and differentiation. A conception of mobility as an opportunity, may contrast, in specific economies and business settings, with lived personal experiences. This article reports the results of a three-year study, aimed to question how multinational companies (MNCs) located in a small and developing European economy (Portugal) are building talent pools for expatriate assignments. Interaction effects, as proposed by the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory, are considered as lens to understand the interplay of company expatriate policies, willingness profiles and psychological contracts of expatriates. By using a Portuguese sample, the study examines whether prior findings in mature economies and consolidated MNCs can be generalized to less developed international business settings.

A three-year study, encompassing 24 expatriate cases observed in five multinational firms born or located in Portugal. Two techniques of empirical data collection were used: statistical sources and documental analysis and in-depth interviews. A total of 37 interviews were conducted, both in-person and remotely, of which 13 were with company managers and representatives, and 24 with expatriates (as defined and referred like this by the companies under study).

Heterogeneous company policies, ranging from juvenile, functionalist to more dynamic and flow-based approaches, are presented as qualifying resources of willingness levels and psychological contracts of expatriates. Observed interaction effects between policies, willingness and psychological contracts, empirically mirrored in three profiles (conformist, protean and disrupted expatriates) suggest that incentive effects (emanating from company policies) and job demand-resource balance, factored as terms of social and economic trade, are non-linear and asymmetric, influencing firm propensity to succeed while using international work to support company expansion goals. As job resources, expatriate policies are presented as operating as pull or push factors: functionalist HR approaches seem to act as push factors generating more conformist or compelled willingness profiles.

Generalization of study's outcomes has limitations. Future studies are encouraged to use comparative and longitudinal research designs. Furthermore, future research should include business expatriates with entry-level positions, and increase the number of interviewees, as results can also be considered as limited by sample size.

It is suggested that further strategic work is needed to present expatriation development value, formally screen and consider willingness level as selection criteria, and enlarge the pool (from internal to external) of candidates, in peripheral economic settings such as Portugal. A shift to more dynamic and job resource-dense policies are suggested as beneficial, as pathway to optimize social and economic value from expatriation assignments and work experiences.

By putting the interplay between macro and micro-level processes into perspective, the study provides empirical evidence on how company expatriate policies have come to promote unforeseen differentiation of employee willingness and psychological contracts at the heart of MNCs. This is particularly relevant in developing economies such as Portugal, challenging the need to build talent pools for international work assignments. Empirical data illustrating company policies interactive effects with different willingness profiles and psychological contracts of expatriates is provided.

The purpose of this work is to comparatively study human resources management (HRM) areas in Brazil, at the national level, analyzing how companies considered labor market and labor relations aspects when building their strategies and when configuring people management models in place in the country (2014–2019), based on local conditions.

The subject was approached through qualitative analysis, encompassing document survey, systematic literature review, specialists' panel discussions, eight focus groups (43 human resources [HR] managers), interviews (16 union members), applying institutional approach to people management.

In regards to labor market and unions, HR areas faced different conditions across Brazilian regions. They have dealt with those influences on their strategic and quotidian decisions in an unstructured fashion. HR areas remain constructed as traditional, adjuvant and far from strategic level. In the institutionalization process – normative isomorphism – a professional HR jargon use was identified. HR areas usually act in collective bargaining, resorting to specialized professionals or consulting companies. During the economic crisis, HR professionals' attitude had a reactive nature, responding to organizations leadership, with little dedication to the emerging context.

This work enables important players like HR managers, union members and specialists in public policies to interpret the institutionalization phenomena of practices related to management, labor market and labor relations in the country.

Understanding the effects of the relations among state, companies and unions allows the different power vectors, acting upon the institutionalization process of people management areas in the Brazilian case, to be outlined.

This study applies the institutional approach to understand the economic and social heterogeneity affecting organizations in Brazil. It enhances the knowledge on HRM areas scope and their articulation toward labor market and relations.