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In response to demands and opportunities of the labor market, contemporary employers and employees voluntarily are entering into highly customized agreements regarding nonstandard employment terms. We refer to such idiosyncratic deals as “i-deals,” acknowledging that these arrangements are intended to benefit all parties. Examples of i-deals include an employee with highly coveted skills who is compensated more generously than other employees doing comparable work, and an employee who is granted atypically flexible working hours to accommodate certain personal life demands. The nonstandard nature of i-deals is likely to prompt questions about the fairness of the arrangement among three principal stakeholders – employees who receive the i-deal, managers with whom the i-deal is negotiated, and the co-workers of these employees and managers. We analyze issues of fairness that arise in the relationships among all three pairings of these stakeholders through the lenses of four established forms of organizational justice – distributive justice, procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice. Our discussion sheds light on previously unexplored nuances of i-deals and identifies several neglected theoretical issues of organizational justice. In addition to highlighting these conceptual advances, we also discuss methods by which the fairness of i-deals can be promoted.

This study aims to identify when and why receiving i-deals will result in an increase in affective commitment rather than continuance commitment. As affective commitment yields long-term benefits for organizations than continuance commitment, this work will help organizations accrue maximum benefits from granting i-deals.

This study develops a cognitive model delineating the process between i-deal receipt and the variation in i-dealers’ continuance or affective commitment.

After receiving i-deals, i-dealers’ perceived valence may change with i-dealers’ evaluations of i-deal resources under the condition of coworkers' negative reactions or organizational investment. The i-deal valence changes trigger i-dealers’ internal or external attributions of coworkers' negative reactions or organizational investment, which leads to the variation in continuance or affective commitment. The changes of affective commitment also affect the variation in continuance commitment.

Integrating expectancy theory and attribution theory, this research addresses inconsistent findings about i-deals’ effect on continuance or affective commitment by revealing the critical factors that lead to the variation in the two types of commitment. The proposed model offers new theoretical rationale for why i-dealers may not reciprocate the goodwill of i-deals to their organizations. This study suggests i-dealers will engage in attributions rather than being passive recipients of their coworkers' negative reactions, which challenges previous view that the effectiveness of i-deals is ultimately determined by coworkers' acceptance. This research also extends the i-deal dynamics literature by depicting how i-deal valence changes arise and influence continuance or affective commitment.

This study intends to investigate how an employee's proactive personality and a supervisor's idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) relate to their subordinates' affective commitment (AC) and occupational well-being (OWB), in light of the mediating role of subordinates' i-deals, using proactive motivation theory and the job demand–resource (JD-R) model as theoretical foundations.

The study consisted of 342 employees working in the hospitality industry. To examine the proposed model, the researchers used the structural equation modelling approach and bootstrapping method in AMOS.

The results affirmed the influence of subordinates' proactiveness on AC and OWB, but no direct influence of supervisors' prior i-deals on subordinates' AC and OWB was established. When investigating the mediational role of subordinates' i-deals, a partial mediation effect was found between subordinates' proactive personality with AC and OWB, whereas full mediation was established between supervisors' i-deals and subordinates' AC and OWB.

These findings shed light on how i-deals improve AC and OWB for both groups of supervisors and subordinates. In an era of increasing competition amongst organizations operating within the hospitality industry, i-deals serve as a human resource strategy to recruit, develop and retain talented individuals.

The novelty of this research lies in its specific investigation of the combined influence of proactive personality as an individual factor and supervisors' i-deals as an organizational factor on subordinates' i-deals within the context of the hospitality industry. Furthermore, it aims to analyse the potential impact of these factors on AC and OWB.

Transformational leadership (TFL) has been suggested to create positive changes in employees with the goal of developing them into leaders. The authors integrate this well-established leadership style with recent research on idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). The authors suggest TFL as a predictor of task and development-based i-deals, and propose i-deals as a mediating mechanism linking TFL to employee outcomes (job satisfaction, job stress and manager-rated performance).

The authors used a time-lagged research design, and collected four waves of data from 140 employees and 78 leaders.

TFL was found to be an important predictor of i-deals. I-deals predicted job satisfaction and job stress; and it mediated the relationship between TFL and these two employee outcomes. Yet, i-deals were not associated with employee performance and did not mediate the relationship.

First, it shows that transformational leaders who consider employees' unique skills and support their professional growth are more likely to grant personalized arrangements. Second, drawing from social exchange theory, it illustrates that i-deals may act as a linkage between TFL and employee outcomes. The paper bridges leadership and i-deals literature to identify key leverage points through which leaders can enhance employee satisfaction, well-being and performance.

This study aims to examine the effect of several types of ex post idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) on work–life balance and work well-being, focusing on the mediating effect of work–life balance on the relationship between ex post i-deals and work well-being as well as the moderating effect of gender on the relationship between ex post i-deals and work–life balance in the hospitality industry.

This study uses a questionnaire survey of 642 hotel managers from developed cities in China and analyze the data with structural equation modeling. This study also conducts on-site interviews among 20 hotel managers to support conclusions of the survey.

The results indicate that task i-deals as well as career and incentives i-deals significantly promote work–life balance, thereby indirectly improving work well-being. However, the impact of flexibility i-deals on work–life balance and work well-being is insignificant. The influence of career and incentives i-deals on work–life balance for males is slightly stronger than that for females.

This study has practical implications for hotel employers in terms of using various ex post i-deals to motivate and retain hotel managers by improving personal work–life balance and work well-being.

As one of early attempts to highlight the potential of i-deals to serve as solutions for work–life conflicts and unhappiness issues among hotel managers, this study provides novel insights into the mediating process between ex post i-deals and work well-being from the work–life balance perspective as well as distinct influences of various ex post i-deals on work–life balance for male and female managers.

As a new human resource management practice, developmental idiosyncratic deals (developmental I-deals) play an important role in attracting, retaining and motivating employees to promote creativity. Based on the social cognitive theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of developmental I-deals on team creativity through team creative-efficacy and the moderating role of error management atmosphere in this process.

To reduce the effects of common method biases and causal lag effect, this study was divided into three stages for data collection, with a time interval of a month. A total of 365 employee samples (72 team samples) from seven internet enterprises in Shanghai and Wuhan were selected, and Bootstrap method and Johnson-Neyman method were used to test the hypothesis.

The results of this study show that developmental I-deals positively affect team creativity, and team creative-efficacy mediates the relationship between developmental I-deals and team creativity. Error management atmosphere strengthens the impact of developmental I-deals on team creative-efficacy and further strengthens the indirect effect of developmental I-deals on team creativity through team creative-efficacy.

Based on the social cognitive theory, this study examines the impact of developmental I-deals on team creativity through team creative-efficacy and the moderating role of error management atmosphere in this process. First, the study of I-deals category was further refined. The existing research defines the concept of I-deals in a general way and does not classify it in detail. Second, the internal mechanism of I-deals is revealed. Third, it expands the multi-level research of I-deals.

Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) have been shown to influence several employee outcomes positively. To extend the research, the authors examine the effect of i-deals on employees’ perceptions of organizational justice, in particular, how the relationship between employees’ own i-deals and organizational justice is affected by employees' job performance as well as their perceptions of coworkers’ i-deals.

The authors tested the theoretical model using survey data from 182 hotel employees.

Results show that i-deals are positively related to employees’ perceptions of organizational justice and that such effects are stronger among high performing employees. The effect of i-deals on organizational justice was also more pronounced among employees who viewed coworkers as having successfully negotiated i-deals.

The authors' findings suggest that organizations can benefit from providing i-deals through employees’ enhanced perceptions of organizational justice. The paper thus recommends that organizations understand the impact of providing more flexible human resources (HR) practices and customized work arrangements that are aligned with individual goals and needs. This may be particularly relevant to high performers. Furthermore, the findings suggest that organizations may want to make i-deals available to employees more widely than to just a few selected individuals.

This study is one of a few attempts that empirically investigate the relationship between i-deals and organizational justice. The findings of this study shed light on the possibility that employees develop positive justice perceptions toward employeesʼ organization based on the appreciation of the customized work arrangements granted to both themselves and others.

The purpose of this paper is to rely on the sponsored-mobility perspective of career success (Turner, 1960) to explore the antecedents and consequences of development idiosyncratic deals (i-deals). The authors position career planning as an antecedent of development i-deals, and subjective and objective measures of career success as an outcome.

The authors led a two-wave study among a sample of 325 engineers to test the research hypotheses.

Results support the hypotheses. Development i-deals are positively related to three objective measures of career success (e.g. promotions, hierarchical level, and salary) and one subjective measure of career success (e.g. career satisfaction).

The results offer new perspectives to practitioners who want to better manage the careers of their talented employees by highlighting the positive effects of development i-deals on career success.

This paper relates i-deals to the field of careers.

Cultural intelligence is the capacity to decode and harmonize with another culture for cultural synergy effects. This paper aims to examine whether cultural intelligence can activate idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) through trust as a mediator and HR localization as a moderator.

Cross-sectional data from respondents from joint ventures or 100 per cent foreign-invested firms in Vietnam business setting, which were tested through the structural equation modeling, provide the evidence for the research model.

Research results confirmed the positive effect of cultural intelligence on identity-based trust and knowledge-based trust, which in turn influence i-deals. HR localization was also found to play a moderating role on the relationship between identity-based trust or knowledge-based trust and i-deals.

Cultural intelligence literature, from this study, is further deepened through its role as a trigger for the path from cultural intelligence to i-deals.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize ex ante idiosyncratic deals (or i-deals) as a way to foster individual perceptions of a positive employer image by offering customized additional instrumental benefits.

A survey is led among 182 engineers in demand on a local labor market to test whether ex ante i-deals combine to a more global and external perception of a good employer, measured by perceived external prestige (PEP), to explain turnover intentions.

The results validate all research hypotheses, and show that the moderating effect of ex ante i-deals in the PEP-turnover intention relationship is significant during the first years spent in the company.

This research contributes to the literature on employees’ attraction and retention by building bridges between the literatures on employer image and i-deals.