Search results

In the field of innovation, there is growing interest in exploring the factors that determine the extent to which firms can learn from external sources. However, most previous studies neglect the role of human factors. Little is known about which employee behaviors are desirable for boundary-spanning learning activities and which human resource management (HRM) practices are appropriate to respond to external knowledge transfer across boundaries. To fill this gap, the authors investigate the role of empowerment-focused HRM in interfirm learning and explore the integration of external inputs from the perspective of employees.

Based on empirical survey data collected from different countries, the authors test the proposed model with structural equation modeling.

The authors’ findings indicate that empowerment-focused HRM practices, including job enrichment, job autonomy, teamwork and cross-functional communication, are positively associated with relationship learning.

In this study, the authors present a theoretical explanation for how empowerment-focused HRM may influence firm's innovation through relationship learning process and provide empirical evidence regarding the specific HRM practices that can have different effects on the different phases of relationship learning.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between owner-manager or leader’s ambidextrous leadership style and its effect on human resource management (HRM) practices, contextual ambidexterity and knowledge-intensive small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) strategic agility.

This study presents an in-depth qualitative case study analysis of two knowledge-intensive SMEs from India’s information technology and health-care products industry serving a range of global clients. Using the theoretical lenses of empowerment-focused HRM practices, ambidextrous leaders, contextual ambidexterity and strategic agility, semi-structured interview data of leaders, managers and employees of the case organizations were analysed. Through a two-staged analytical process, we abductively developed a novel conceptual framework at the intersection of the above theoretical lenses.

The findings suggest that the knowledge-intensive SME’s strategic agility, ambidexterity and empowerment-focussed HRM approach was influenced by the owner-manager or leader’s ambidextrous leadership style and their philosophy towards managing people and had a positive impact in creating a culture of trust, participation, risk-taking and openness, and led to delivering innovative products and services as well as several positive employee-level outcomes.

Recent literature reviews on HRM In SMEs highlight several gaps, including the impact of owner-manager or leader’s philosophy of managing people in shaping HRM practices and employee outcomes. This paper thus adds to the existing literature on HRM and knowledge-intensive SMEs.

This study aims to investigate whether big data enabling (BDE) and empowerment-focused human resource management (EHRM) can effectively promote employee intrapreneurship and their effects on platform enterprises’ innovation performance. The paper also examines the contexts under which employee intrapreneurship may affect business performance.

Data were collected from 155 platform enterprises in China in the form of questionnaires. Participants were mainly middle and senior managers with a comprehensive grasp of the enterprises’ information.

The results indicated that BDE, EHRM and their synergy positively influenced employee intrapreneurship, which could potentially extend to enterprise performance. Specifically, employee intrapreneurship played a partial mediating role between BDE, EHRM and performance, and a whole mediating role between synergy and performance. Finally, platform strategic flexibility played a positive moderating role between employee intrapreneurship and performance.

Platform enterprises should focus on the construction and utilization of big data and EHRM to stimulate organizational vitality. They also need to encourage employees to start businesses and build more flexible strategies to adapt to the dynamic economic environment.

This is an empirical study on the effect mechanism of big data and HRM on employee intrapreneurship and platform enterprises’ performance in China. The paper combined big data, HRM and employee intrapreneurship, which broke through the previous research on enterprise entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. The findings guide platform enterprises to stimulate organizational vitality and achieve better performance in the digital era.

The purpose of this paper is to examine innovation in the resource-constrained context of India’s healthcare industry. It is argued that the process of innovation in addressing healthcare management challenges in such a context occurs through organisational ambidexterity and that human resource management (HRM) plays an important role.

A qualitative research methodology is applied to explore the role of HR practices in facilitating contextual ambidexterity and subsequent innovations in healthcare in India. The unit of analysis is the “case” of healthcare providers in India and in-depth interview and documentary data in two case sites are analysed to reveal the role of HRM in facilitating contextual ambidexterity and innovation. Data analysis was undertaken first at a within-case and then at a cross-case analysis level using interpretive manual coding based on how the data explained the role of HRM in delivering innovative outcomes and supporting organisational ambidexterity.

The authors found evidence of the use of sets of high-involvement HRM practices for exploration of new ideas and efficiency-driven HRM practices for creating contextual ambidexterity in the case organisations. Further, managerial/leadership style was found to play an important role in creating cultures of trust, openness, risk-taking and employee empowerment, supported by an appropriate mix of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Finally, training was also reported as being central to creating an ambidextrous context for delivering on various innovations in these healthcare providers.

This study represents an exploration of innovation in the context of India’s healthcare sector through intersecting literatures of ambidexterity, innovation and HRM practices. In light of the emerging economy research context, an important empirical contribution is palpable. Moreover, through a study design which included collecting data from multiple informants on the role of human resources in facilitating innovative outcomes, the authors reveal the role of HR-related initiatives, beyond formal HR practices in creating contextual ambidexterity. This study also reveals the degree to which contextual idiosyncrasies enhance our understanding of the role of HR in facilitating innovation in emerging economies.

Call center is a large and growing sector worldwide and is facing important human resource management (HRM) and service challenges. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of structural empowerment (SE) and psychological empowerment (PE) on customer satisfaction (CS) through employee job satisfaction (JS) at a call center in Portugal.

Data were collected by means of a survey handed over personally to 267 employees at the call center of a telecommunication company. This was then linked to their respective net promoter score (CS) provided by the call center. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used as analytical tools.

SE affects PE, and both have a positive impact on JS. Empowerment impacts CS: SE positively affects CS mediated by PE; and PE affects CS mediated by JS.

This study emphasizes the importance of the use of organizational practices of SE in call centers to achieve two important organizational outcomes: employee JS and CS.

This study tests a process model involving two domains, HRM (employee side) and service delivery (customer side), which are traditionally dealt with separately in the context of call centers. This helps to understand how HRM polices are connected to CS. Although some of these relationships have been studied separately in different contexts, the research offers a strong methodological design by linking employee perceptions of empowerment with data provided by the firm on CS.

O setor dos call centers é grande e está em crescimento em todo o mundo, enfrentando importantes desafios de Gestão de Recursos Humanos (GRH) e de Serviços. O objetivo principal deste estudo é analisar o impacto do empoderamento estrutural (EE) e do empoderamento psicológico (EP) na satisfação do cliente (SC) através da satisfação no trabalho (ST) dos colaboradores de um call center em Portugal.

Os dados foram recolhidos por meio de um questionário entregue pessoalmente a 267 funcionários do call center de uma empresa de telecomunicações. Esses dados foram ligados aos dados fornecidos pela empresa em relação à satisfação do cliente para cada colaborador, utilizando o net promoter score. A análise fatorial confirmatória e a modelagem de equações estruturais foram utilizadas como ferramentas analíticas.

O EE afeta o EP e ambos têm um impacto positivo na ST. O empoderamento impacta a SC: i) o EE afeta positivamente a SC mediada por o EP; ii) o EP afeta a SC mediado pela ST.

Este estudo enfatiza a importância do uso de práticas organizacionais de EE em call centers para atingir dois resultados organizacionais importantes: a ST do funcionário e a SC.

Este estudo testa um modelo processual envolvendo dois domínios, a gestão de recursos humanos (lado do funcionário) e a entrega de serviços (lado do cliente) no contexto de call centers, que tradicionalmente são tratados separadamente. O estudo ajuda a entender como as políticas de GRH estão conectadas à SC. Embora algumas dessas relações tenham sido estudadas separadamente em diferentes contextos, a pesquisa oferece um forte desenho metodológico ao vincular as perceções dos funcionários sobre o empoderamento com os dados fornecidos pela empresa sobre a satisfação do cliente.

El sector de los centros de llamadas es grande y está creciendo en todo el mundo, y se enfrenta a importantes desafíos de gestión de recursos humanos y servicios. El objetivo principal de este estudio es analizar el impacto del empoderamiento estructural (EE) y el empoderamiento psicológico (EP) en la satisfacción del cliente (SC) a través de la satisfacción laboral (SL) de los empleados de un centro de llamadas en Portugal.

Los datos fueron recolectados mediante una encuesta entregada personalmente a 267 empleados en el centro de llamadas de una empresa de telecomunicaciones. Estos datos se vincularon a los datos proporcionados por la empresa en relación con la satisfacción del cliente de cada empleado, utilizando el net promotor score. El análisis factorial confirmatoria y el modelado de ecuaciones estructurales se utilizaron como herramientas analíticas.

El EE afecta el EP y ambas tienen un impacto positivo en la SL. El empoderamiento impacta el SC: i) EE afecta positivamente el SC mediado por el EP; ii) El EP afecta a la SC mediada por la SL.

Este estudio enfatiza la importancia de utilizar prácticas organizacionales de EE en los centros de llamadas para lograr dos importantes resultados organizacionales: la SL del empleado y la SC.

Este estudio prueba un modelo de proceso que involucra dos dominios, la gestión de recursos humanos (lado del empleado) y la prestación de servicios (lado del cliente) en el contexto de los centros de llamadas, que tradicionalmente se tratan por separado. El estudio ayuda a comprender cómo las políticas de recursos humanos están conectadas a SC. Aunque algunas de estas relaciones se han estudiado por separado en diferentes contextos, la investigación ofrece un sólido diseño metodológico al vincular las percepciones de empoderamiento de los empleados con los datos proporcionados por la empresa sobre la satisfacción del cliente.

Scholars have adopted different theoretical perspectives to explain the influence of HR practice on employee outcomes. However, few studies have investigated the role of human resource (HR) practice in fostering higher in-role and extra-role employee performance by encouraging employee participation in job design, a process referred to as job crafting. Drawing on human resource management (HRM) process theory and the job crafting literature, this study aims to examine how work engagement and job crafting mediate the relationship between employee perceptions of HR practice and employee performance.

The authors use survey on a sample of 455 employees working in five Chinese manufacturing firms to test their theoretical model.

This study finds that where management maintains a strong HR system, employees are more likely to be engaged in their work and participate in job crafting. In addition, job crafting on its own, and work engagement and job crafting together, are shown to mediate the HRM–performance relationship.

In a Chinese context, line managers (including supervisors) are both important implementers of HR policy and vary in their adoption of particular roles. Yet our research did not consider the role of these persons in facilitating work engagement or job crafting. Future studies could usefully explore how these managers vary in their attitudes towards job crafting and the roles they play in encouraging this important activity.

One important implication is that strong HR system with distinctive, consistent and consensus HR practices should be used by managers to motivate employees to encourage work engagement and job crafting behaviours.

This study enriches the theoretical framework to explain the underlying mechanism between HRM and employee performance from job crafting perspective.

Academic and practitioner attention to the constructs of authentic leadership and work engagement and their implications for organizations has grown dramatically over the past decade. Consideration of the implications of these constructs for high-performance human resource practices (HPHRP) is limited, however. In this monograph, we present a conceptual model that integrates authentic leadership/followership theory with theory and research on HPHRP. Then, we apply this model to systematically consider the implications of skill-enhancing, motivation-enhancing, and opportunity-enhancing HR practices in combination with authentic leadership for authentic followership, follower work engagement, and follower performance. We contend that authentic leadership, through various influences processes, promotes HPHRP, and vice versa, to help foster enhanced work engagement. By cultivating greater work engagement, individuals are motivated to bring their best, most authentic selves to the workplace and are more likely to achieve higher levels of both well-being and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the effect of aligning HR practices horizontally and vertically to support organizational strategic goals.

Hypotheses were tested using 85,840 employees’ responses collected from a single, large public organization’s annual employee survey. Factor analysis with principal axis factoring and varimax rotation was used to confirm the variables being studied. The relationships were analyzed using ordered logistic regression.

Results suggest that compensation practices, workforce planning, and work/life balance-focused HR practices can be used to predict job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Additionally, when the combined effects of the three HR practice types are considered together, an increased reduction in turnover intention is indicated.

To achieve optimal performance organizations should be diligent in their efforts to align their functional area HRM strategies and practices with each other and with the overall strategic goals and objectives guiding the organization.

While the positive effect of alignment has been proposed by many scholars, empirical examinations of the binary approach are rare. This paper contributes to the field by providing a unique empirical examination of an organization’s implementation of HR practices designed to achieve stated strategic objectives through a large scale study.

Women leaders operate within multiple roles, managing both work and nonwork obligations. Exploring work-life balance constructs, this study examined role integration, social support sources, and work-family conflict to determine their influence on women leaders. Findings suggested that women leaders felt the benefit of a variety of social support services, but especially from sources external to the organization. Women leaders were diverse in role integration strategies, with respondents largely divided between blurring and segregating their work and nonwork roles. Time-based work-family conflict was slightly more apparent than strain-based conflict. Women leaders also indicated that their work interfered with their family more than their family interfered with their work. Findings provide valuable insights as to how women view work-life balance within their roles as leaders.