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The purpose of this paper is to extend understanding regarding the basis and foci of employee commitment. It does so by exploring the direction towards employee centric rather than an assumed organisation basis of commitment.

Survey data of over 300 employees from a variety of organisations in the Republic of Ireland were collected. Data focussed on worker orientations and their foci of commitment.

The findings confirm a more pluralistic and mixed basis to the antecedents of worker commitment, as opposed to an assumed human resource management unitarist ideology often promoted by organisational managers. At the level of individual workers, a dominant focus for commitment relates to career development and the milieu of an immediate workgroup.

There are three implications. First, mutual gains possibilities are not straightforward and there are practical pitfalls that employee interests may get squeezed should managerial and customer interests take precedence. Second, there remain competing elements between job security, flexibility and autonomy which can impact performance. Finally, line managers are key conduits shaping commitment and especially psychological contract outcomes.

This paper unpacks the relationship between ideological orientation and an individual’s foci of commitment. The research found that traditional orientations and foci of commitment are deficient and that simplified individualistic interpretations of the employment relationship are complex and require more critical scrutiny.

For some years, human resource management (HRM) scholars have sought to understand how the high performance work system (HPWS) impacts performance. Recently, attention has turned to developing knowledge about the more micro-level aspects of this relationship, with the ability–motivation–opportunity (AMO) framework providing a useful lens. Empirically, these studies have produced mixed results. This study explores whether context is useful in explaining these anomalous findings.

This study considered the effects of context across two levels – the descriptive (situated demography–gender) and the analytical (societal–national culture) – on employees' behaviour in the HPWS–job performance relationship using survey data obtained from a sample of New Zealand organisations.

Results indicate that the employee demographic of gender may play an influential role, with ability found to be the most significant predictor of job performance for males and opportunity the strongest predictor of job performance for females. Given the importance of cultural context when examining employees' gendered behaviours, this study also considers the influence of New Zealand's national culture.

By describing the interaction between trait expressive work behaviours and job features, this study dispels the myth of universalism. In line with a contingency view, practitioners are encouraged to ensure alignment between features of their organisational context and the behavioural outcomes sought from their HPWS.

This study suggests HPWS research designs would benefit from analysing the full effects of contextual variables, rather than considering them purely as controls.

The positive psychology movement suggests organisational behaviourists should accentuate the positive by increasing the attention paid to the enhancement of employee wellness. This fits comfortably with the ethos of human resource management which is rooted in notions of social exchange, reciprocity and mutual gain. The purpose of this paper is to inject some positivity into HRM research by examining the mediating role of positive emotions in the HRM–performance relationship.

To examine the role played by positive emotions in the relationship between HRM and citizenship behaviours, the authors surveyed a sample of 250 employees from 14 organisations in New Zealand service industries. Sobel and bootstrapping tests were used to examine the mediation model.

Results show positive emotional states, both personal and job-related, to positively and partially mediate the HRM–contextual performance relationship.

Theoretically, this finding opens up HRM’s black box affording support for the inclusion of a wider range of psychological states than those presently studied.

Support is provided for HRM approaches which are more progressive than remedial in nature.

Emotions are malleable and this study suggests that fostering positive emotional states might hold the key to performance, unlocking desirable employee behaviours.

Drawing on the dynamic model of ability, motivation, opportunity (AMO) for human resource research, this study aims to examine how organizational system-level (i.e. the high-performance work system (HPWS)) and individual-level AMO affect employees' performance. Specifically, this paper proposes that employee task performance is resultant from the integration of system- and individual-level AMO factors with employee contextual performance.

A survey design is employed with data collected from 250 employees working in New Zealand's service sector.

This study finds both organizational system (HPWS) and individual AMO dimensions have positive associations with employees' performance. At the system level, the supportive role played by contextual performance is highlighted with pro-social behaviors fully mediating the relationship between the HPWS and task performance. At the individual level, contextual performance is found to partially mediate the relationship between ability and task performance and fully mediate the relationship between motivation and task performance. Opportunity, on the other hand, is significantly associated with task but not contextual performance.

In acknowledging there are a plurality of factors that impact performance, this study enriches our understanding of AMO's influence in the context of people management.

The connection between employees’ well-being and performance, although widely studied in organizational psychology, has received much less attention from HRM scholars. The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature by examining the impacts of the multidimensional structure of well-being consisting of psychological, social and health dimensions on employees’ task and contextual performance.

The authors collected data from 281 employees from the New Zealand service sector using a questionnaire survey. Factor analysis was used to determine items that form various facets of well-being and performance constructs. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the well-being – performance relationship.

The findings show that different facets of well-being differentially contribute to employees’ task and contextual performance. Specifically, the facets of happiness and trust were positively associated with both task and contextual performance, while the effects of life satisfaction and work life balance on task and contextual performance were insignificant. Moreover, work intensification was only associated with task performance, in contrast, job satisfaction and over commitment were only related to contextual performance.

The implications of these findings are two-fold. For researchers, a review and overhaul of the conceptualization and operationalization of well-being in HRM studies is long overdue. For managers, improvements to employees’ job performance and the organization’s health can result from simultaneously enhancing multiple dimensions of employees’ well-being.

This study provides new insights into the complex relationship between well-being and performance by incorporating a multidimensional and multifaceted perspective of well-being and highlighting the distinctive effects of various facets of well-being on different types of employees’ performance.

The behavioral framework presents a logic for understanding the relationships between characteristics of the organization and the HRM system. Drawing on this logic to connect the broader management oriented area of strategy with HRM, a micro-level lens is used to examine how competitive strategies and human resource (HR) practice subsystems cohere to influence employees' role behaviors and performance outcomes.

Online survey data were collected from 301 employees working in the retail trade and hospitality segments of New Zealand's service industry.

Relationships represented in the behavioral model are supported. Specifically, this study finds identifiable differences between the types of HR practices employed and the competitive strategy followed by an organization. Distinguishable sets of HR practices could also be connected to discernible employee role behaviors, which in turn, were related to strategically-aligned performance outcomes. Some commonality in these relationships were evident however.

HR practitioners need to be cognizant of their organization's competitive strategy and ensure the design and messages sent by their HRM system supports the realization of desirable employee role behaviors that promote organizational success. This alignment is supported with job descriptions that clearly articulate to prospective employees the role behaviors required, along with screening processes that support this assessment.

This descriptive, exploratory study presenting data about the alignment between competitive strategies, HR practices, behavioral and performance outcomes contributes to our understanding of contingency arguments and employees' experiences and reactions to HRM. Moreover, by adopting a particularistic focus, this research is able to highlight the salient role of context in SHRM research.

The purpose of this empirical study is to develop an understanding of how human resource (HR) managers employed by organizations with an explicit sustainability agenda view employees as stakeholders, and to explore how such views are operationalized in HR policies and practices.

An interpretive approach using data from 35 semi-structured interviews was adopted for this study. Data were transcribed and analyzed using the Gioia methodology.

Comparison of approaches to sustainable human resource management (HRM) revealed three distinctive conceptualizations of employees with respect to the sustainability agenda – employees as a driving force for sustainability, employees as consumers of HR practices and employees as members of a community. Strong levels of integration between the HRM and sustainability agendas were only evidenced in those organizations where an attempt had been made to address all three roles simultaneously. Findings suggest that engagement with a sustainability agenda widens the remit of the HRM function, underscoring the importance of employees' roles as consumers of HR practices and as members of wider communities.

By addressing the integration of HRM with a sustainability agenda, this article helps practitioners recognize diversity among employees' roles and the varying associated needs. Examples of policy and practice initiatives that effectively address these needs are provided.

HRM has been widely criticized for overemphasizing shareholder value, thereby lacking in attention to the needs of other stakeholders, including employees. Findings from this study suggest the holistic approach advocated by a sustainability agenda can effectively quell these concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how digital creative graduates develop new businesses on graduating from university, and how their creative, business and personal lives interact until their nascent ventures fail financially.

Seven digital creative nascent graduate entrepreneurs were followed for up to five years. Although independently assessed as having promise of business success, they were young and lacked business experience. They were followed through six-monthly semi-structured interviews which investigated their business, creative and personal development. The interviews were transcribed and key statements manually coded and extracted for analysis to identify issues, tipping points and outcomes.

The primary contribution is the finding that, despite a promising beginning and very generous start-up support, all seven nascent ventures failed financially and most were closed down in favour of employment, particularly when personal issues such as parenthood sharpened the need for stable levels of income. The graduates demonstrated weaknesses in their commercial skills, especially selling (human capital) and insufficient utilization of networks (social capital) so that in the mainly mature low entry-barrier markets they were entering they were at a disadvantage from the outset. The research has also demonstrated the value of a real-time longitudinal qualitative approach to investigating businesses from business start-up to eventual exit.

The insights gained have practical implications for start-up and survival support for creative graduate businesses, as well as raising issues about the effectiveness of postgraduate entrepreneurship education and cultural policy relating to this economically important sub-sector.

The longitudinal approach has brought new insights and indicates several areas where more research would be valuable, especially in dealing with the consequences of unsuccessful nascent business ventures.

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) offers management researchers an approach which allows deep examination of the relationship between individuals and their environments, particularly in complex social situations. Phenomenology studies phenomena, or things and events, as they are perceived by people's consciousness. Interpretivism allows researchers to access such internal awareness of research participants by attempting to understand the words used by subjects to describe their experiences and perceptions. Inherently subjective, this approach requires self-awareness by the researcher and the willingness to abandon preconceived notions in favor of interactive listening and exploration, relying on terms and concepts volunteered by participants rather than nominated by theory or preceding literature. Qualitative text analysis software can be utilized to facilitate aggregation and distillation of the voluminous narratives that result from the open-ended semi-structured interviews typically employed to collect data for IPA. However, impartiality and discernment on the part of the researcher remain essential in interpreting any automated analytical results. The researcher becomes in essence a second-hand observer, peering through windows voluntarily opened by participants, attempting to understand their understanding of their world.

This chapter introduces IPA, providing an overview of its rationale and approach, and illustrates its application in a management-related setting, focusing on cultural adaptation of immigrant professionals.