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Viewed in the context of liberalization, privatization and globalization, the socio-economic and legal environment facing the unions have changed, throwing them into clutches of adversity and destitution. The purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons (i.e. antecedents) behind workers’ participation in union activities (such as strikes, rallies, demonstrations) in today’s scenario, and to understand how these participation tactics influence workers’ performance (i.e. worker behavior effectiveness) at work.

A range of published sources is drawn on, including quantitative, survey based and qualitative, case-study and other evidence for building the conceptual review.

The investigation clearly indicates that contemporary challenges facing unions in the present scenario prompt industrial actions. Only specific and genuine grievances and justifiable demands motivate workers to form a strong emotional attachment to their unions and engage in union participation activities such as strike activity (Darlington, 2006; Bean and Stoney, 1986).

Contrary to the traditional view, which sights unions as detrimental to worker productivity, turnover, and attendance at work (via restrictive work rules, featherbedding and disruptive strikes or other adversarial tactics), the investigation, through extensive review of literature proposes that unions positively influence worker behavior at work. The model, however, requires empirical testing to validate the proposed relationships.

Unions and organizations interests are often seen to be in competition. However, union-voice hypothesis suggests that unions can provide a distinctive mechanism to lower organizational costs by reducing exit behavior, absence from work and conflict levels at work. This study aims to look at union participation as a form of voice which is affected by a number of antecedents and in turn has an effect upon the workers performance (i.e. worker behavior effectiveness [WBE]) in an organization.

The study draws on data from 340 permanent labors working in 19 manufacturing units across different regions of India to explore both the antecedents and outcomes of union participation. Hypotheses are tested using mediation analysis.

Results indicate statistically significant relationships between union participation, its antecedents and WBE, with union participation partially influencing the relationship between the constructs.

Uniqueness of the study lies in its findings which report positive relationship among union participation, its antecedents and behavior effectiveness. Contrary to the traditional belief that unions are detrimental to the health of any organization, the study suggests that workers decision to join and participate in unions should be viewed positively because only if a person is willing to stay with the organization, he/she seeks to resolve the issues/problems through collective mechanism of union participation and which in turn leads to enhanced performance, reduced absenteeism at the workplace.

This study aims to test the hypothesized moderated mediation process combining job resources, job demands, work engagement, job satisfaction and organizational engagement, which proposes that work engagement can be considered as a mediator between the relationship of job resources with job satisfaction and organizational engagement, and such mediation effect is moderated by level of job demand.

Data were collected from Junior Management Grade–Scale I officers of 442 branches of 27 public sector banks situated across four States in North India. The final responses stood at 704. Regression analyses was performed through the SPSS macro (developed by Preacher and Hayes, 2004) for testing of H1 and H2 on the mediation effects. H3 was tested by moderated hierarchical regression analysis. The last two H4 and H5 proposing the moderated mediation mechanism were examined in lines with the four conditions suggested by Muller et al. (2005) and Preacher et al. (2007).

It is suggested that job demands should ideally be adequate and job resources ample to deal with the former, because a suitable fit between these two aspects is related to work engagement, which would further contribute positively to job satisfaction and organizational engagement.

There is dearth of research hypothesizing the moderated mediation process proposing job demands as a moderator in job resources, work and organizational engagement and other work-related outcome relationships. Resting on various propositions and of job demands–resources (JD-R) model, and empirical outcomes of the studies of JD-R perspective, and research gaps identified, this study attempts to propose a unique model of engagement hypothesizing a moderated mediation process, where work engagement might be a mediator between the relationship of job resources with job satisfaction and organizational engagement; such mediation effect is moderated by the level of job demands.

The purpose of this study is to develop innovations in human resource (InHR) framework in the context of Indian banking industry and further develop a scale for its measurement.

A non-response bias test is conducted on a sample of 300 employees, and the assumptions of constant variance, outliers and normality are tested. Further, the InHR scale is validated through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tests.

EFA confirms the existence of five empirically distinct constructs at banking industry in India, and CFA affirms the dependability of the arrived constructs. It is concluded that the InHR framework constructs possess high reliability and validity.

The authors duly recognize the limitations of survey-based research, the exploratory research design and the use of single method.

The proposed InHR scale and its constructs are an important input to guide managers and human resources (HR) policymakers to devise strategies for the Indian banking industry. Banks can also benchmark existing HR policies by applying the proposed InHR framework constructs.

The InHR constructs provide academicians and practitioners with a better approach of understanding the InHR practices.

Despite the significance of Indian banking industry for the socio-economic capital, academic research focusing on this industry’s innovative practices has been limited. This study reveals originality and value by proposing an InHR framework in the context of Indian banking industry which integrates all the major innovative practices. Further a scale has been developed for its measurement.

The notion of social performance of the company (SPC) is a fundamental concept of the research on ethics of business and work on company-society relationships. The study raises several debates concerning SPC’s determinants. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework of SPC along with its social and technological determinants. After identification of the determinants, the authors have searched through a managerial perspective to recognize the effects of these determinants on SPC.

Content analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with the HR managers, and statistical analysis of data collected from Managers/HR Managers (n=250) working in private and public sector banks of Tunisia was undertaken. Structural equation modeling (SEM), has been used to test the hypotheses and statistically validate the proposed relationships. Data for the study were collected online.

Results indicate a strong interrelationship between SPC and its determinants. Such an interrelation aims to enrich the framework of analysis of the SPC by considering the action of social responsibility of the company, organizational commitment and managers’ characteristics on one hand, and human resources information system, the practices of knowledge management, and facilitating conditions for the use of the information and communication technologies on the other.

The study reconciles various perspectives in the SPC literature and presents a comprehensive model of SPC by identifying its determinants – social and technological, which could stimulate the SPC in Tunisian context.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the antecedents of employability from the employer’s perspective to provide sustainable employment and to develop a measurement scale.

In the study, the survey-based approach has been adopted. The authors developed an instrument following extensive literature review and further pre-tested the instrument with experts drawn from the academics. The data collection was monitored following Dillman’s (2007) total design test method. Finally, 114 usable responses were collected. The data were further tested for normal assumptions. Orthogonal and parsimonious constructs were derived following exploratory factor analysis, and the construct validity was checked using confirmatory factor analysis.

The following antecedents of employability were obtained: innovative skills and innovative abilities along with the knowledge, innovative abilities, personality factors, career-building traits, emotional intelligence and efficacy beliefs.

The authors observed that the present study like other survey-based research has its own limitations. Currently, cross-sectional data were used, which inherit some serious limitations like endogeneity and common method bias. However, utmost care was taken to minimize the effects of endogeneity and common method bias using some suggested measures in the existing literature.

The findings and conclusions are expected to aid students, academicians and practitioners in developing an understanding of employability. Moreover, these antecedents can be developed in graduates along with their higher education as per the requirements of the industry.

This paper is an attempt to develop a scale for measurement of employability in the education sector.