Search results

High performance of new hires is of imminent interest to organizations in the hospitality sector. Yet, limited studies have focused on the relevant traits of new hires that improve on-job performance. This study aims to identify and understand a few critical traits that predict high performance across multilevel roles within the hospitality sector.

Drawing on the human capital theory, through a time-lagged field study spanning 16 months, this study used multisource data for 540 active job opportunities and 205 new hires within the hospitality industry. This study used partial least squares-based structural equation modeling and analyzed the various traits that predict high on-job performance.

This study finds that humility is a significant predictor of job performance and wholly mediates the effect of interpersonal understanding, self-confidence and flexibility on new hires’ performance.

This study enhances talent management research for the hospitality sector by determining the critical traits of new hires that can predict superior on-job performance.

A better understanding of applicant attraction enables organizations to manage their talent needs, thus enhancing HR effectiveness. Even though generational difference exists in modern organizations, scholarly work investigating the salient predictors of applicant attraction between the Gen-X and millennial cohorts is missing. The authors attempt to inform the literature by addressing this gap.

The study captures applicant attraction using a survey-based study of 1949 working employees in India, representing Gen-X and millennial generations.

The study provides critical factors that differentially impact millennial and Gen-X members' attraction toward an organization. It also reveals that satisfaction in the current job affects millennials and the Gen-X cohorts differently.

Recruitment research has neglected the predictors of applicant attraction among generational cohorts. Further, studies on generational differences have originated in western contexts and have ignored the emerging economies. Based on the responses of working professionals, our study increases the generalizability of the results.

The multi-generational workplace has the largest proportion of both Gen-X and millennial employees. A deeper understanding of their preferences can help HR practitioners leverage the drivers of applicant attraction. The study provides inputs to design recruitment strategies to target generational groups within and outside the organization.

The present study examines the phenomenon in an emerging market marked by a high economic growth rate and an eastern cultural context. The study presents a more realistic representation of applicant needs by sourcing inputs from working employees across generation groups.

The importance of mental wellbeing and the need for organizations to address it is increasing in the post-pandemic context. Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being adopted in HRM functions, its adoption and utility for enabling mental wellbeing is limited. Building on the Open System Theory (OST) and adopting the technology-in-practice lens, the authors examined the roles of human and technology agencies in enabling mental wellbeing.

The study was conducted in two stages; in Stage 1, the authors adopted a case methodology approach to examine the feasibility of a technology company's offerings to assess mental wellbeing. In Stage 2, the authors followed the grounded theory approach and interviewed 22 key stakeholders and HR leaders of diverse organizations. The authors used Gioia's approach to analyze the data.

The study demonstrates the interdependence and inseparability of human activity, technological capability and structured context. Specifically, the authors observe that AI adoption is pushing the boundaries of how organizations could support employees' mental health and wellbeing. These technological advancements and adoption are likely to facilitate the evolution of agentic practices, routines and structures.

This study carries two important implications. While the advent of cutting-edge technologies appears to affect employees' mental wellbeing, the study findings indicate the assistive role of technology in supporting mental wellbeing and facilitating changes in organizational practices. Second, the ontology of technology-in-practice shows how human–machine agencies gain newer relevance from the interactions that unite them. Specifically, per OST, technology (from an external context) can potentially change how mental wellbeing practices in organizations are managed. The authors extend the existing literature by suggesting that both human agents and internal contexts effectively limit the potential of technology agents to change existing structures significantly.

The authors address the need for more research on the technology-management interface, and the boundaries of technology-enabled wellbeing at work. While AI-HRM scholarship has primarily relied on micro-level psychological theories to examine impact and outcomes, the authors borrow from the macro-level theories, such as the OST and the technology-in-practice to explain how AI is shifting the boundaries of human and machine agencies for enabling mental wellbeing.

The case focuses on Thivra Info Solutions Pvt Ltd, an entrepreneurial organization incubated by Prasannan (she/her) in 2017. The organization started with a mission to provide technology-based learning solutions for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thivra Info Solutions Pvt Ltd had developed multiple offerings, including gamified learning, targeted to ASD and general ed-tech users. The firm also launched “Dwani,” the communicative-based learning app for ASD children. The initial feedback by users, parents and teachers had been encouraging. Prasannan was exploring avenues to scale the business when the Covid-19 pandemic affected all the operations.The case presents the multiple dilemmas entrepreneurial firms face in managing resources, finances, growth and product and customer focus. Students are encouraged to debate the organization strategy, product and consumer target segments and solutions to scale the business while managing frugal resources.

This case study can be used in entrepreneurship, leadership, crisis management, business development, organizational behavior and technology.

The case study describes the navigation of Thivra from a Generic Gamified App to its niche of catering for ASD students. The case presents the challenges presented to leadership to manage the crisis and try to grow their entrepreneurial venture. This case has been designed for use in business-to-consumer marketing or entrepreneurship, gender entrepreneurship, ed-tech-based startups, in MBA, executive MBA or executive education programs in the field. The case is suitable for those doing business in Asia, for post-graduate and under-graduate students studying business innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy and marketing. It is also appropriate for courses on gender entrepreneurship; women and crisis management; and product management. The case aims at facilitating classroom discussion on the extension of Indian-based ed-tech startups to ASD children.

Students will also be able to explore the following issues: to study the role played by a business model that withstands the competition over a long period and adopting sustainability; to describe the concept and implications of paradoxical leadership, thereby drawing its impact on business decisions; to analyze how a leader acts in terms of crisis from a startup point of view; to draw the phases and constraints of the enterprise development and compare and contrast it based on gender; to demonstrate the value to different constituents (ASD students, parents, teachers and ASD counselors) by understanding their differentiated needs and developing powerful value propositions for each. Articulating and demonstrating this value is key to gaining the buy-in of the various decision-making units; to understand how, having gained traction in one market segment (in this case, tractions with parents of ASD children), a company can develop new market segments; to study the issues and problems faced by startups in developing economies, especially the tech-based ones; and to understand the application of gamification on education and communication for ASD children.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

The importance of learning in development in increasingly dynamic contexts can help individuals and organizations adapt to disruption. Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a disruptive technology, with increasing adoption by various human resource management (HRM) functions. However, learning and development (L&D) adoption of AI is lagging, and there is a need to understand of this low adoption based on the internal/external contexts and organization types. Building on open system theory and adopting a technology-in-practice lens, the authors examine the various L&D approaches and the roles of human and technology agencies, enabled by differing structures, different types of organizations and the use of AI in L&D.

Through a qualitative interview design, data were collected from 27 key stakeholders and L&D professionals of MSMEs, NGOs and MNEs organizations. The authors used Gioia's qualitative research approach for the thematic analysis of the collected data.

The authors argue that human and technology agencies develop organizational protocols and structures consistent with their internal/external contexts, resource availability and technology adoptions. While the reasons for lagging AI adoption in L&D were determined, the future potential of AI to support L&D also emerges. The authors theorize about the socialization of human and technology-mediated interactions to develop three emerging structures for L&D in organizations of various sizes, industries, sectors and internal/external contexts.

The study hinges on open system theory (OST) and technology-in-practice to demonstrate the interdependence and inseparability of human activity, technological advancement and capability, and structured contexts. The authors examine the reasons for lagging AI adoption in L&D and how agentic focus shifts contingent on the organization's internal/external contexts.

While AI-HRM scholarship has primarily relied on psychological theories to examine impact and outcomes, the authors adopt the OST and technology in practice lens to explain how organizational contexts, resources and technology adoption may influence L&D. This study investigates the use of AI-based technology and its enabling factors for L&D, which has been under-researched.

There is an emerging interest in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) inclusion among researchers and practitioners. However, the interplay of macro-, meso- and micro-level factors that influence the behavior of various agencies, systems, structures and practices in different national, cultural and social contexts still needs to be researched. This paper aims to examine how organizations meaningfully engage with the marginalized and underrepresented workforce, especially the LGBTQ community, to promote diversity and inclusion through comprehensive policies and practices, thereby developing a sustainable inclusivity culture.

Adopting a practice theory lens and using a case study design, including multilevel interviews with 28 different stakeholders, this study examines how organizations institutionalize LGBTQ inclusion practices in an emerging market context with a historically low acceptance of the LGBTQ community.

Findings indicate that macro influences, such as regulatory, societal and market pressures and adopting international standards and norms, impact meso-level structures and practices. At the organizational level, leadership evangelism and workforce allyship serve as relational mechanisms for institutionalizing LGBTQ-inclusive practices. Furthermore, collaboration, partnerships and enabling systems and processes provide the structural frameworks within which organizations build an LGBTQ-inclusive culture. Lastly, at the micro level, cisgender allyship and the LGBTQ micro work environments provide the necessary psychological safety to build trust for authentic LGBTQ self-expressions. This study also indicates that organizations evolve their LGBTQ inclusion practices along a trajectory, with multiple external and internal forces that work simultaneously and recursively to shape HRM policies and practices for building an inclusive culture.

This study addresses the significant gaps in diversity and inclusivity research on LGBTQ employees and contributes to the literature in three significant ways. First, this study examines the diversity management mechanisms at the organizational level and explicates their interplay at the micro, meso and macro levels to create congruence, both internally and externally, for engaging with LGBTQ talent. Second, this study adopts a practice theory lens to examine the behavior of various actors, their agencies, the “flow” of underlying and emerging structures and processes, the continuous interplay between structure and action and how they enable inclusive culture for the LGBTQ community as a whole. Last, it addresses the call by diversity researchers for context-specific multilevel research design, including qualitative research, focusing on national, cultural and institutional contexts, where socio-organizational and historical factors and interactions among them shape diversity practices. Much of the literature on LGBTQ inclusion has, thus far, been within the Western context. By examining the emergence of inclusion practices in emerging markets like India, this study contributes to diversity and inclusion research.

The COVID-19 pandemic found deliberate and idiosyncratic adoption of telecommuting and other flexibility practices across industries. With the pandemic waning, many organizations adopted various models for employee work locations. Based on Self-Determination Theory and Social Comparison Theory, the authors examine the impact of the dissonance between employee preference for their work location and enforced work location norms and its impact on general well-being and organizational commitment.

The authors’ empirical study is based on a sample of 881 respondents across multiple industries in India over six months of the COVID pandemic. The authors use PLS-SEM for data analysis to examine the model and the moderating influence of individual resilience on control at work.

The authors find that increased dissonance between work locations reduces general well-being, control and work. Further, higher individual resilience reduces the impact of this dissonance on control at work.

The study informs policy and practices that choice of work location is important for employees to feel a higher sense of control, impacting their affective commitment and general well-being. While implementation of policies across an organization for varying job roles and complexities presents a challenge, practitioners may ignore this need of employees at their peril, as employees are likely to demonstrate lower well-being, engagement and organizational commitment and eventually leave.

This study is significant as it provides relevant scholarship based on the COVID-19 pandemic, guiding practice on future ways of working. This study further supports the impact of an individual's sense of control on where work is done. The authors build a strong theoretical foundation to justify the impact of the lack of autonomy in the emerging working norms on employees' general well-being and organizational commitment.

The fear of the pandemic, confinement at home and the need to work created a unique situation. The pandemic catalyzed work-from-anywhere practice by adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) across all industries. While ICT saved organizations, it increased technostress among the workforce. A better understanding of the adverse effects of ICT usage might enable organizations to manage the mental well-being of the workforce. While technostress is gaining increasing interest, scholarly work investigating the dimensions of technostress and its impact on creating stress across various employee demographics and industry types is missing. Contrary to the prevalent assumptions, the authors theorized and tested the adverse moderation effect of the home-work interface on the linkage between technostress dimensions and stress. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

The study captures dimensions of technostress and the resulting stress at work using a survey-based analysis of 881 working employees in India, representing multiple industries and functions.

The study indicates that techno-overload, techno-complexity and techno-invasion significantly impact employees during the pandemic. The authors further found that the home-work-interface is a powerful factor in understanding the complex linkage between dimensions of technostress and its outcomes.

Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory and the Job-Demand-Resources model, this study highlights the adverse impact of this trend on employee well-being. However, the study suffers from a cross-sectional research design. The technostress research has focused primarily on static, at-premise environments and mostly on high ICT usage industries. Due to the pandemic, it has neglected the impact of various technostress dimensions across employee cohorts subjected to rapid technology-enabled working. Further, most studies focus on the voluntary choice of remote work. Employees struggle with the unexpected and involuntary shift to technology-enabled remote work. This study contributes to the literature by examining the consequences of technostress in the context of non-voluntary remote work. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, this study highlights the adverse effect of organizational home-work interface in influencing ICT-created stress.

The increasing use of ICT enables telecommuting across the workforce while increasing organizational productivity. Due to the pandemic, these trends will likely change the future of work permanently. To minimize employee stress, practitioners need to reconsider the dimensions of technostress. Further, the study cautions against the prevalent interventions used by practitioners. While practitioners facilitate a home-work interface, it could have adverse consequences. Practitioners may consider the adverse consequences of home-work interface while designing organizational policies.

This study during the pandemic is crucial as research forecasts the likelihood of other cataclysmic events, such as future pandemics and political or climate change events, which may sustain technology-driven remote work practices and remain a feature of the future workplace. Hence understanding the implications of the dimensions of technostress would help organizations and policymakers to implement necessary interventions to minimize employee stress.

The present study examines the dimensions of technostress across multiple industries and job functions in an emerging market marked by a high economic growth rate and an Eastern cultural context. This study presents the dark side of excessive ICT adoption and indicates how organizations and HRM practices can help mitigate some of these effects.

The global pandemic and the resulting rapid and large-scale digitization changed the way firms recognized and understood knowledge curation and management. The changing nature of work and work systems necessitated changes in knowledge management (KM), some of which are likely to have a long-term impact. Using the lens of technology in practice, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technology agency on KM structures and practices that evolved across five knowledge-intensive global organizations. This study then argues that sustainable knowledge management (SKM) systems evolve in specific contexts.

This study adopts a qualitative case study design to examine five multinational knowledge-intensive global organizations’ KM systems and practices across diverse industry sectors.

Based on the findings, the authors develop SKM systems and practices model relevant to a post-pandemic organizational context. The authors argue that KM digitization and adoption support socialization in knowledge sharing. Further formalization through organizational enabling systems aids the externalization of knowledge sharing. Deliberate practices promoted with leadership support are likely to sustain in the post-COVID era. Further, organizations that evolved ad-hoc or idiosyncratic approaches to managing hybrid working are more likely to revert to legacy KM systems. The authors eventually theorize about the socialization of human-to-human and technology-mediated human interactions and develop the three emerging SKM structures.

This study contributed to practitioners and researchers by developing the various tenets of SKM.

Despite studies claiming gender inclusion is beneficial for organizations, the under-representation of females in the workforce is a reality. As recruitment practices impact employees' entry into organizations, examining the salient predictors of job pursuit intention might foster gender inclusivity.

Based on a mixed-method study conducted in two phases (Phase 1: a sample of 2,084 professionals; Phase 2: interviews of 20 senior human resource (HR) professionals and interviews with 26 women professionals), we examine the key predictors of job pursuit intention of women. We employed a qualitative study as Phase 2 employed a qualitative study to understand why some of the proposed hypotheses were not supported.

We found that work–life balance, perceived job security and perceived ethical behavior of organizations were more important for female than the male applicants in influencing their job pursuit intention. Also, the type of work and person–organization (P–O) fit were found to be equally important for both the gender groups. The implications of the study to theory and practice were discussed.

Our study extends the existing literature by identifying salient factors (such as work–life balance, perceived job security and ethical citizenship) that are found to be more important for female applicants compared to their male counterparts while pursuing a job. Also, females were found to worry more about losing or not finding a job than males. Our results further indicate that type of work and P–O fit have a significant effect on job pursuit intention for both male and female applicants. The study addresses the need for research on targeted recruitment to increase gender inclusion.

The contribution of this paper lies in identifying critical factors relevant to the female applicants in India who potentially constitute a large talent pool waiting to be leveraged. It adds to the body of knowledge on enabling inclusivity and affirmative action for increasing gender diversity through recruitment. By highlighting the factors that should be given prominence in job promotions to attract more female candidates and emphasizing the gender-focused HR policies and practices and through internal and external communication, it helps practitioners attract and retain female applicants in an emerging economy like India.

Our study contributes in three ways. First, it attempts to plug the gap by investigating gendered preferences in job pursuit intentions between male and female applicants, especially in different cultural environments and in emerging markets such as India. Second, existing studies on job pursuit intentions were based mostly on inputs from student respondents. Our study has collected data from professionals working in organizations who have worked and experienced gender-related HR practices in organizations. Third, our study used a mixed-method approach to get a nuanced understanding of female talent expectations and preferences during the job-seeking behavior.