Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic responses of multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries in China toward a unique institutional characteristic – the structural discrimination against rural migrant workers.

Based on surveys of 181 firms and 669 rural migrant workers, as well as a case study of eight firms in Jiangsu and Shanghai, the authors examined and compared the human resource management (HRM) policies of MNE subsidiaries and domestic Chinese firms toward rural Chinese migrant workers.

This study found that MNE subsidiaries are more likely to accept local discriminatory HRM practices when managing migrant workers. In response to the institutional environments of host countries, MNE subsidiaries tend to share similar behavioral characteristics with local firms and are reluctant to show leadership in initiating institutional change in host countries.

This study is important since it enables investigation of some prevailing assumptions in the literature. Contrary to common wisdom that MNEs are change agents that proactively engage in institutional entrepreneurship in host countries, this study found that MNEs’ responses to the institutional environment of host countries are shaped by their entry modes and the institutional environment in their home countries. MNEs are as diverse as their home countries and far from forming a unified organizational field with similar behavioral characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the adverse impact of a female executive’s fraudulent behaviour on other female employees working in the same organisation.

This developmental study uses a comprehensive literature review and a set of propositions to identify the consequences of a female’s fraudulent activity on other female employees working in the focal organisation. It develops a conceptual framework for the same. Propositions are further supported by five focus group interviews.

Leveraging stigma-by-association theory, the paper asserts that fraud committed by one female executive in an organisation enhances discriminatory practices against other female employees in the organisation. The level of adverse impact is contingent on the seniority of the female executive committing the fraud, severity of the fraud, gender of the other female employees’ managers and diversity in culture in the organisation.

This paper extends the stigma-by-association theory. In its original spirit, the theory describes how individuals who keep company with stigmatised individuals are also stigmatised. This study asserts that for this effect to take place, especially under fraudulent conditions, mere group affiliation, such as working in the same organisation, may cause an adverse effect on other women.

The paper is based on a rich conceptual and theoretical discussion that identifies the key consequences of a female executive’s fraudulent activity in an organisation. The study also conceptually establishes the moderating relationship between a female executive’s fraudulent activity and several key organisation-level variables.

This chapter aims to answer whether foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) operating within the Chinese context differ from indigenous firms on several essential labor standards indicators: white- and blue-collar salaries, pension insurance, and working hours. In drawing upon neo-institutional and organizational imprinting theories and applying these to the Chinese context, the study addresses competing arguments regarding the expected effects of ownership type on these indicators. We employ seemingly unrelated regressions (SURs) to empirically examine a novel national survey of 1,268 firms in 12 Chinese cities. The regression results show that foreign MNCs do not provide uniquely beneficial labor practice packages to workers when compared with various indigenous firm types, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs), affiliate businesses of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and domestic private enterprises (DPEs). Specifically, although MNCs provide relatively higher wage rates, they underperform relative to SOEs concerning social insurance. However, DPEs consistently underperform relative to MNCs across most indicators. The mixture of the results contributes important nuances to the application of neo-institutional and organizational imprinting theories to the Chinese context.

This paper aims to offer a review of the concept of wasta, as a form of social capital in Arab societies. Furthermore, this paper seeks to elucidate the main implications of the use of wasta among human resource management (HRM) practices on the workplace environment and the overall performance of institutions.

The authors embraced a qualitative approach in this paper. A total of 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with HR officials from different levels in a number of Jordanian public organizations.

The results obtained indicate that wasta has negative consequences on the overall performance of organizations, through the influence it exerts on employee motivation, morale and job satisfaction, frustration, workplace diversity, turnover, brain drain, as well as its effect on the image and reputation of the individuals and organizations alike.

In this paper, the authors attempted to illustrate the concept of wasta as a form of social capital and to analyze its links with the features of the Jordanian culture through two of Hofstede’s dimensions. Furthermore, this paper is based both on the available literature and on data obtained through the semi-structured interviews. The findings through this process not only corroborate what we already know in the literature but they also generate an understanding of the hidden mechanisms that link the different implications of wasta together, creating the actual known consequences of this practice.

The purpose of the article is to examine the experiences of workers with intellectual disability (WWID) and subtle discriminatory practices that hold these workers back from thriving at the workplace.

The research design employs the Shore et al. (2011) framework of inclusion supported by optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT) (Brewer, 1991). These theoretical frames are used to examine the potential for WWID to become members of a work group and experience the opportunity to develop their unique selves, negotiate and thrive through their work for purposeful career outcomes. A qualitative case study approach was adopted through interviews and focus groups with a total of 91 participants: 41 WWID, 5 human resource (HR) managers, 5 duty/department managers (DMs), 24 colleagues and 16 supervisors.

The authors found that enhancing inclusion is underpinned by the positive impact of human resource management (HRM) practices and line management support for WWID feelings of belongingness and uniqueness that enable them to thrive through their work activities. The authors demonstrate that WWID need manager support and positive social interactions to increase their learning and vitality for work to embrace opportunities for growth. However, when WWID do not have these conditions, there are fewer opportunities for them to thrive at the workplace.

There is a need for formal HRM and management support and inclusive organisational interventions to mitigate discriminatory practices and better support WWID at work. There is an opportunity for HRM to design training and development around belongingness and uniqueness for this cohort of workers to maximise WWID opportunities to thrive through their work.

This study examines a cohort of WWID who are often forgotten and subtly discriminated against more so than other minority or vulnerable cohorts in the workplace, especially in terms of their development and reaching their full potential at work, which has an impact on their ability to thrive through their work. The paper makes an innovative contribution to the HRM literature through unpacking the processes through which Shore et al.'s (2011) conceptualisation of belongingness and uniqueness contributes to thriving for a marginalised and often overlooked cohort of workers.

Two key developments exert an important influence on the nature of human resource management (HRM) in South Africa (SA). The first is two seemingly conflicting imperatives, sometimes and arguably wrongly juxtaposed: that of developing a high-growth, globally competitive economy with fuller employment and the sociopolitical imperative of redressing past structural inequalities of access to skilled, professional, and managerial positions, as well as ownership opportunities. The first development is the related influences of globalization and multinational corporations (MNCs), information technology, and increased competition, which have become very prominent in postapartheid SA. South Africa has a dual labor market, with a well-developed formal sector employing some 8.5 million workers in standard or typical work and a growing informal labor market. In the case of the formal, knowledge-based economy, the World Wide Web, and increasing communication that the Internet has made possible, has influenced changes at the organizational level. A second development is that these changes and changing patterns of employment are having a dramatic impact on HR policies within organizations. In a knowledge-based economy, organizations rely on knowledge that is embedded deeply in the individual and in the collective subconscious. It is the property of an individual and cannot be taken away from that person (Harrison & Kessels, 2004). He or she would agree to put it in the service of the collective whole, which is known as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In technology-driven advanced firms in SA, there are several themes among the various models of citizenship behavior: helping behavior, sportsmanship, organizational loyalty, organizational compliance, initiative, civic virtue, and self-development (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, & Bachrach, 2000). Many of these themes overlap with the common competencies demanded by advanced MNCs. Thus OCBs rest upon a recognition of mutuality of interest and of responsibility between the organization and the individuals. Increasing globalization and worldwide competition and the knowledge-based economy have their greatest impact on business strategies, process, and practice involving, among others, management of human resources. In this chapter we examine factors influencing the management of human resources in SA and their impact on human resource practices in organizations.

This paper aims to accomplish two purposes: firstly, it revisits the “positional identity” – the ambivalent-hybrid disposition – of human resource management (HRM) in the (postcolonial) Global South. Secondly, it seeks to reframe the role of Southern agents of the epistemic community of HRM, particularly human resource (HR) managers, in managing people in the South.

This paper takes inspiration from the postcolonial theory of Homi Bhabha, his notions of hybridity, the Third Space and colonial positionality, to revisit the positional identity of HRM and to reframe the role of HR managers in the South.

In postcolonial Southern organisations, HR managers play a dual role – as “mimics” and “bastards” of Western discourses of HRM. The dual role tends to put the managers in Southern organisations in a “double–bind”.

This paper helps in the understanding of the role of HRM as well as HR managers in Southern organisations regarding the (post-)colonial legacy of the South.

This paper provides new insights into the identity of HRM in the Global South beyond the dualistic understanding of HR practices, such as convergence–divergence and the mere form of crossvergence. It argues that hybridisation of HRM in Southern organisations takes place in the form of (post-)colonial hybridity.

Managing diverse talents has become a necessary part of the human resource management of contemporary organizations. The growing diversity of organizations' workforce makes companies reassess their conventional HRM approaches. State-owned enterprises get the increasing attention of talent management scholars since state firms enthusiastically compete for talents. These companies have some particularities that distinguish them from private firms, and there is a need to analyse the existing research on the HRM in state companies which has the potential to add a missing part to the puzzle of managing diverse talents. We study the major topics in the literature on human resource management and talent management in state-owned enterprises, the key findings researchers provide and the gaps in the literature that need to be covered and the resulting research directions for future studies.

Workplace discrimination negatively affects the functioning of organizations. Scholars have generally focused their attention on specific forms of prejudiced treatment at work as well as on particular groups of discriminated employees. Conversely, studies investigating the multifacetedness of this phenomenon are sporadic. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the advancement of the scientific knowledge about workplace discrimination showing a full-fledged portrait of this phenomenon in Italy.

Secondary data about self-reported experiences of workplace discrimination of a large sample of Italian people were collected and run in a logistic regression model. Five forms of discrimination at work were taken into account: prejudiced job design and work allocation; discriminatory use of promotion and awards; wage differentials; unjustified increased workload; and mismanagement of HRM instruments.

More than a fifth of respondents perceived at least one form of workplace discrimination. Different types of prejudiced treatment were triggered by distinctive socio-demographic and work-related factors. People who were unemployed at the moment of the interview were consistent in claiming that they suffered from all the forms of workplace discrimination. Former employees who underwent a work-family conflict were more likely to suffer from iniquitous treatment at work.

The occurrence of workplace discrimination was not objectively assessed. Besides, since only Italian people were included in this study, the findings are not generalizable at the international level.

This article provides some insights to inspire policy and management interventions intended to prevent and/or curb the occurrence workplace discrimination.

Arab female academics struggle to advance within their universities in both academic and managerial ranks. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the factors hindering Arab women’s academic career development through studying the case of Jordanian academic women.

Data were gathered through document analysis (Jordan constitution, Jordanian Labour Law and its amendments, higher education and scientific research law, Jordanian universities’ law and universities’ HR policies and regulations), interviews with 20 female academics and a focus group with 13 female academics (members of the Association of Jordanian Female Academics).

The results indicate female academics as tokens facing many interconnected and interrelated barriers embodied in cultural, social, economic and legal factors. The findings support the general argument proposed in human resource management (HRM) literature regarding the influence of culture on HRM practices and also propose that the influence of culture extends to having an impact on HR policies’ formulation as well as the formal legal system.

The influence of culture on women’s career development and various HR practices is well established in HR literature. But the findings of this study present a further pressure of culture. HR policies and other regulations were found to be formulated in the crucible of national culture. Legalizing discriminatory issues deepens the stereotypical pictures of women, emphasizing the domestic role of women and making it harder to break the glass ceiling and old-boy network.