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This paper aims to explore how institutional factors determine the adoption of employee empowerment practices by multinational enterprises (MNEs) subsidiaries in China.

This paper examines the effects of MNE subsidiaries’ external and internal institutional factors on the degree of employee empowerment practices adopted by these subsidiaries. Using hierarchical regression analysis, hypotheses were tested with a sample of 99 MNE subsidiaries operating in China.

The results show that both the informal institutions of the host country and the subsidiary’s characteristics play an important role in shaping the degree of empowerment practices adopted by MNE subsidiaries in China.

Employee empowerment practices have been increasingly used by MNEs to leverage human resources for organizational competitive advantage. Although a large body of work has studied a bundle of HRM practices as a whole adopted in MNE subsidiaries, there is a paucity of research on the specific empowerment practices in MNE subsidiaries. This research fills this important gap in the literature by investigating the institutional forces that influence the empowerment practices in MNE subsidiaries in China.

The study examined the influence of environmental standards set by the SME agro-based processing firms and farmers' environmental empowerment on farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices; and the mediating role of empowerment on the relationship between SME agro-based processing firm environmental standards and farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices.

Data was collected from purchasing managers of the agro-based processing firms. The SPSS software, SMART PLS and CB-SEM software were used to obtain results on the influence of environmental standards set by the SME agro-based processing firms on adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices; the influence of farmers' environmental empowerment on adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices and the mediating role of farmers' environmental empowerment on the relationship between SME agro-based processing firm environmental standards and farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices.

Findings indicated that SME agro-processing environmental standards have an influence on farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices. Empowering farmers in environmental issues influenced their adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices. A partial mediation effect was observed on testing the mediating role of farmers' environmental empowerment on the relationship between SME agro-based processing firm environmental standards and farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly practices.

The study mainly focused on the upstream part of agricultural supply chains. The research has implications to decision-makers in government concerned with enhancing environmentally friendly practices among farmers in general.

The influence of SME agro-based processing firm environmental standards on farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices; the influence of farmers' environmental empowerment on farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly practices; and the mediating role of farmers' environmental empowerment on the relationship between SME agro-based processing firm environmental standards and farmers' adoption of environmentally friendly agricultural practices are aspects that have not been given significant attention.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between: two extreme points of discrete types of emotions (“joy” and “frustration”); two types of managerial practices (“reward” and “empowerment”); and employee‐perceived service quality.

A conceptual model of the aforementioned relationships has been presented, along with hypotheses on these relationships and collected data with a survey study frontline employees in service organizations. This paper has analyzed the data in order to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that employees' feelings of joy and frustration explain more of the variance in employee‐perceived service quality than managerial practices, i.e. “reward” and “empowerment.” Specifically, employees' feelings of frustration are found to be detrimental for employee‐perceived service quality.

This paper limits its focus to two types of managerial practices and two distinct feelings.

The paper has demonstrated the importance for managers to consider how their practices influence the service quality that their employees provide to customers. In particular, managers should be aware of employee's feeling of joy or frustration because of its role in explaining employee‐perceived service quality.

The paper has developed and tested an original conceptual model of a relatively unexplored area of services management.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine voice as an empowerment practice in a manufacturing company. The case study follows a qualitative approach to analyse employee voice and types of empowerment from a structural perspective. Findings suggest a variety of voice arrangements to empowering employees such as voice surveys, meetings, e-suggestions, opinion boxes and informal means such as casual meetings and walkarounds. In addition, employee voice is linked to types of empowerment such as information sharing, upward problem solving, task autonomy and attitudinal shaping. Further research would benefit from an exploration of employees’ feelings regarding voice mechanisms to examine the psychological perspective of empowerment.

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of empowerment concept and determine its role in the HRM‐performance linkage.

A survey of 211 customer‐contact employees at 30 upscale hotels in Lithuania was conducted to study organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and its association with employee attitudes and behaviour.

A distinction was made between organisational empowerment, as a bundle of HRM activities, and psychological empowerment, as an employee work‐related attitude, and their role in the HRM‐performance linkage was defined. Organisational empowerment was positively related to psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, and affective commitment. Psychological empowerment and affective commitment were found to mediate the impact of organisational empowerment on customer‐oriented behaviour.

Data were collected in a single industry in Lithuania; therefore, further research in other services needs to be conducted to make generalisations on the applicability of the proposed empowerment‐performance model to other industries.

In the upscale hotel context, where employee turnover reduction and service quality improvement are critical, organisational empowerment can enhance employee job satisfaction, commitment, psychological empowerment and customer‐oriented behaviour.

The paper provides empirical evidence of the positive effect of employee perceived HRM practices (organisational empowerment) on HR‐related performance outcomes ‐ employee attitudes (psychological empowerment, job satisfaction, affective commitment) and customer‐oriented behaviour. Besides the role of empowerment in the HRM‐performance linkage is defined and empirically tested.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how to raise organizational performance in public sector organizations through human resource management. Specifically, this paper aims to investigate the link between structural empowerment and organizational performance, and the mediating role of the psychological empowerment of employees.

The authors apply multilevel structural equation modeling using a sample of 103 local governments’ managers and 461 employees from Spain.

The results show that structural empowerment is positively associated with organizational performance. Surprisingly, this relationship is not mediated by psychological empowerment, although it is a powerful antecedent of organizational performance.

In the context of new public management, structural empowerment emerges as a useful component of human resource management for improving organizational performance in public sector organizations. Nevertheless, scant research has combined structural empowerment practices and employees’ feelings of empowerment, which would create a global view to shed light on their role to increase organizational performance. Therefore, this paper examines the mediating function of psychological empowerment (individual level) in the structural empowerment–organizational performance link (organizational level) in the context of public sector organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism through which perceived empowerment practices in a firm influence employees’ organizational identification. Specifically, the authors posit the mediating role of leader‒member exchange (LMX) and the moderating role of leader trustworthiness in the relationship.

Data were collected through survey from 236 white-collar employees working in 20 private companies in Turkey. The authors tested the model using hierarchical regression and conditional process analysis.

Findings of this study are as follows: first, LMX mediates the relationship between empowerment practices and organizational identification, second, leader integrity, a dimension of trustworthiness, moderates the relationship between empowerment practices and LMX and the relationship between LMX and organizational identification and, third, leader integrity moderates the indirect effect of empowerment practices on organizational identification via LMX. These direct and indirect effects are stronger when leaders have higher integrity than when they have lower integrity.

This study enhances the understanding of the mechanism through which empowerment practices influence employees’ organizational identification.

This study aims to investigate employee behavior toward work engagement with an integrative research framework that combines human resource practices, employee psychological empowerment and well-being. Moreover, the moderating effect of transformational leadership is tested between employee engagement at workplace during crisis such as COVID-19 and sustainable employment.

This study empirically investigates research framework with 353 responses retrieved from employees working in private sector organizations. The data were collected through structured, closed-ended questionnaires. For inferential analysis, structural equation modeling approach has been used. To test the predictive power of the research framework, blindfolding procedure Q² is incorporated.

Statistical findings indicate that HR compensation, HR training, opportunity enhancing, motivation enhancing, psychological well-being and empowerment have explained substantial variance (R² = 67.5%) in employee work engagement during crisis. Concerning with sustainable employment, the transformational leadership and work engagement have shown significant variance (R² = 20.6%) in determining sustainable employment. Moving further psychological empowerment has revealed maximum effect size (f²) to determine employee engagement behavior at work place during pandemic crisis. The blindfolding procedure Q² has exhibited substantial power to predict employee work engagement and sustainable employment during crisis such as COVID-19 pandemic.

This study has several contributions to theory and practice. Theoretically, this study develops an integrative research framework with the help of human resource practices and employee psychological factors such as employee well-being and empowerment. Therefore, practically, this research suggests that factors such as opportunity enhancing, transformational leadership and employee psychological empowerment need managerial attention to increase employee engagement at workplace and sustainable employment during pandemic crisis.

With the growing concerns of layoff during pandemic crisis, employees have shown lack of interest at workplace because of psychological fears. Nevertheless, this study has established that policymakers could enhance employee engagement at workplace and sustainable employment during crisis by redesigning HR practices and improving employee psychological well-being and empowerment. In addition to that, employee psychological well-being and empowerment are considered healthy factors for human beings and nurture society at large.

This research is original as it establishes an integrative research framework grounded in HR practices, employee psychological empowerment and employee psychological well-being to investigate employee behavior at work place during crisis such as pandemic. In addition to that, this study has enriched leadership literature by examining the moderating effect of transformational leadership between employee work engagement and sustainable employment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the customer-contact employees’ (CCE) empowerment and customer performance indicators, namely, perceived service quality (PSQ), customer satisfaction (CS), customer loyalty (CL) and word-of-mouth (WOM). The authors deepen the analysis by highlighting the mediating role of the dimensions of the customer relationship management (CRM) effectiveness in this link. The authors also investigate links between customer performance indicators.

An empirical study was carried out on the basis of a questionnaire administrated to a sample of 215 Tunisian bank CCE and 516 customers. Data analysis was performed using the structural equation modeling method.

Findings reveal that the CCE’ empowerment contributes to PSQ, CS and all the dimensions of CRM effectiveness which in turn are key factors of customer performance. This research also outlines the mediating role of two dimensions of the CRM effectiveness, namely, organizational commitment and customer experience between CCE’ empowerment and PSQ and CS, respectively. In addition, the study highlights that PSQ improves CS which is positively linked to CL. Finally, loyal customers tend to generate positive WOM.

Few studies have investigated the effects of the CCE’ empowerment on PSQ, CS, CL and positive WOM, especially in the banking sector. This research fills this gap by highlighting the mediating role of the dimensions of the CRM effectiveness in these links. This paper offers interesting insights to bankers by providing them with tools to improve their customers’ relationship. In this sense, banks must bet on the proximity of the CCE as a key asset that allows creating a real sense of closeness with customers and offers lighting to banks on how to create customized marketing approaches to ensure customer performance.

Recognizing that very less number of research has been conducted on workforce agility, the current research aimed to examine the impact of organizational practices in the form of organizational learning and training, compensation, involvement, team work and information system (IS) on workforce agility. Influenced by the “Black Box” approach, the study also examined the role of psychological empowerment as a mechanism mediating the relationship between organizational practices and workforce agility.

The study has been conducted in selective Indian industries, representing manufacturing and service sector across public and private sectors. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected from both executives and non-executives through reliable instruments validated in Indian context. Data have been analyzed using descriptive analysis, canonical correlation analysis and multiple regression.

Findings that organizational practices significantly related to workforce agility prove that organizational practices are capable of improving the agile attributes and behavior of the workforce. In detail, team work has the greatest influence on workforce agility, followed by Reward system, employee involvement, organizational learning and training and ISs. Further, the study result also proved the mediating role of psychological empowerment between organizational practices and workforce agility.

Organizations are to design practices related to organizational learning and training, compensation, involvement, team work and IS and implement them efficiently and effectively to enable agility within the workforce, as an agile workforce can only respond proactively to a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environment. Further, the result also suggests that managers should design the organizational practices capable of enhancing psychological empowerment, as the combination can deliver better workforce agility.

The research is useful considering very less number of research on workforce agility.