Search results

An effective firm strategy is key to sustained financial performance, while interactions between strategy, employee retention and top talent retention have been seldom explored. We test hypotheses using New Zealand SMEs which are defined as having up to 250 employees. We initially explore firm strategy using Porters competitive advantage model predicting employee retention (including top talent), with study 1 (n = 208) using firm size as a moderator, finding a direct significant relationship from firm strategy toward employee retention. Next, we explore firm strategy predicting firm performance with employee retention mediating and include firm size as a moderator, testing a moderated mediation model in study 2 (n = 474) and study 3 (n = 300, with time-lagged performance).

There are no open databases holding NZ firms’ performance data and thus data was sourced from a Qualtrics survey panel. Such panels have become more common (e.g. Haar et al., 2021a, b) and a recent meta-analysis by Walter et al. (2019) showed that this type of panel data was no different from data sourced through conventional means (i.e. mail survey). We focused on NZ private sector SMEs using senior managers across a range of industries and geographic locations. Because the influence of firm strategy on employee retention remains unknown in the literature, we conducted study 1 (n = 208) to test the initial part of our overall model. Study 2 (n = 474) and study 3 (n = 300) tested the full model (with organizational performance), with study 3 having organizational performance time-lagged by one month.

All direct effect hypotheses are supported, although firm size interacted significantly with firm strategy showing smaller not larger-sized firms leverage firm strategy to achieve superior retention benefits. This was against hypothesis 5a in all three studies. Studies 2 and 3 supported the moderated mediation hypothesis, with firms of larger size having a stronger indirect effect from firm strategy on firm performance while employee retention mediated the influence of firm strategy on firm performance. Finally, dominance analysis found that a quality differentiation strategy was the key strategy across all studies and outcomes. We discuss the implications for organizations.

The first managerial implication from the study is that small and medium sized firms would benefit both from developing a deeper understanding of the strategic alternatives open to them and placing a greater emphasis on the implementation of their selected strategic approach. A second managerial implication relates to findings indicating that retention generally, and top talent retention specifically, is positively related to firm strategy and firm performance. Given the importance and challenges of staff retention, particularly in the current environment where there are significant skill shortages, these results suggest that small and medium sized business would benefit from considering how strategy can create an organizational environment that is attractive to employees and support stronger retention outcomes as a mechanism for driving both retention and performance.

The study makes three major contributions. First, it examines firm strategy and extends the focus on firm performance by including not only employee retention but also top talent retention, responding in part to the call to develop and refine performance measures (Lieberman, 2021). Second, beyond using retention as a mediator, firm size is included as a moderator and a moderated mediation model is ultimately tested. Third, we conduct dominance analysis to identify the key firm strategy that influences firm performance and retention. Ultimately, this paper asks: what is the role of firm strategy on New Zealand SME performance, and what influence does retention and relative firm-size play.

Previous research has suggested high levels of unaddressed mental health needs among male-dominated work settings. The mining industry has been a recent focus internationally. This paper aims to critically examine research regarding organizational mental health interventions for people working in mining industries.

The narrative review used a systematic standardized search strategy in six databases and grey literature from 1990 to 2019.

Of the 418 studies identified, seven studies (five quantitative and two qualitative studies) met the inclusion criteria. Analysis of these studies revealed the organisational interventions available to address mental health needs of miners. Interventions were categorised into organisational and individual-focused approaches. Evidence shows there is great potential in conducting workplace mental health programs, yet further research is required to create a strong evidence base for substantiated policy and practice implications.

Mental health interventions and programs should be available in mining industry to enhance mental health. Organisations can also improve mental health by implementing significant changes in the work environment and identifying workplace factors that induce strain and contribute to psychological distress in employees. Attempt can be made at restructuring safety policies and practices to include mental health, addressing organisational structures such as work schedules and providing training for managers and supervisors.

This review focuses on the unique characteristics pertaining to male-dominated mining industries and workplace mental health interventions which are aimed at supporting employee mental health.

Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend sociological knowledge about how movements (sometimes) diffuse and amplify insurgent actions, that is, how movements move. We extend movement diffusion theory by drawing a conceptual analogue with military theory and practice applied to the case of the organized and highly disciplined nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We emphasize emplacement in a base-mission extension model whereby a movement base is built in a community establishing a social movement school for inculcating discipline and performative training in cadre who engage in insurgent operations extended from that base to outlying events and campaigns. Our data are drawn from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of the Nashville civil rights movement. The analytic strategy employs a variant of the “extended case method,” where extension is constituted by movement agents following paths from base to outlying campaigns or events. Evidence shows that the Nashville movement established an exemplary local movement base that led to important changes in that city but also spawned traveling movement cadre who moved movement actions in an extensive series of pathways linking the Nashville base to events and campaigns across the southern theater of the civil rights movement. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.

SINCE LEAVING NORWICH, where I had lived and worked for eight years, I have been interested to read Philip Hepworth's periodic bulletins in NLW, the latest being Defeat (NLW, January, pp 7–9). I have come to the conclusion that it must quickly have become a far wickeder and less hospitable place than I remember it. I don't recall the world of librarianship in that fine city being a battlefield, with winners and losers. Indeed, unless I am mistaken, PH was always quick to imply that county library services were very much second rate affairs, and am somewhat surprised that he subsequently became very keen to join one—not like him at all.

Over the past two decades, the hub location domain has witnessed remarkable growth, yet no prior study reviewed and synthesised problem formulation and solution methodologies to address real-life challenges.

The current study conducts a comprehensive bibliometric literature review to develop a thematic framework that describes and presents hub location problems. The work employs cluster, bibliometric, and social network analyses to delve into the essential themes.

Key themes include cooperation, coopetition, sustainability, reshoring, and dynamic demand, contributing to the complex challenges in today’s hub location problems. As the first work in this field, the study serves as a valuable single-source reference, providing scholars and industry practitioners with key insights into the evolution of hub location research, prominent research clusters, influential authors, leading countries, and crucial keywords.

Findings have significant implications since they highlight the current state of hub location research and set the stage for future endeavours. Specifically, by identifying prominent research clusters, scholars can explore promising directions to push the boundaries of knowledge in this area.

This work is a valuable resource for scholars in this domain and offers practical insights for industry practitioners seeking to understand the hub location problems. Overall, the study’s holistic approach provides a solid foundation for advancing future research work in the hub location field.

The 1990s literature portrays the corporate personnel/HR function as in decline due to the decentralisation and delayering of large organisations. As a result personnel’s presence on boards of directors and participation in the formation of corporate business and HR strategies cannot survive. This paper challenges this view arguing that strategies do not originate at main board of director level but at the CEO executive group level in most cases. Research has shown the personnel/HR function’s involvement at this level to be higher than on main boards. Other recent evidence has accorded personnel a higher strategic role in MNCs, especially regarding the staffing and development of an international cadre of managers. This evidence however supports the view that personnel’s corporate presence declined from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s before picking up, whereas the paper’s argument favours a steady growth thesis from the early 1970s. Additionally the dominant perspective contains an overly top down view of strategy formation whereas this paper argues for a counter‐balancing bottom up influence on strategy formation.

This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.

The design uses embodied hermeneutic phenomenology. The data comprise 10 participant interviews and visual “body maps” produced in response to guided questions.

The findings about student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships include a core theme of nurturing a trusting learning community and five related themes of attunement to mentees, commonality of experiences, friends with boundaries, reciprocity in learning and varied learning spaces.

The study contributes original insights by highlighting complexity, shifting boundaries, liminality, embodied social understanding and trusting intersubjective relations as key considerations in student peer mentor relationships.

How do transnational social movements organize? Specifically, this paper asks how an organized community can lead a nationalist movement from outside the nation. Applying the analytic perspective of Strategic Action Fields, this study identifies multiple attributes of transnational organizing through which expatriate communities may go beyond extra-national supporting roles to actually create and direct a national campaign. Reexamining the rise and fall of the Fenian Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, which attempted to organize a transnational revolutionary movement for Ireland’s independence from Great Britain, reveals the strengths and limitations of nationalist organizing through the construction of a Transnational Strategic Action Field (TSAF). Deterritorialized organizing allows challenger organizations to propagate an activist agenda and to dominate the nationalist discourse among co-nationals while raising new challenges concerning coordination, control, and relative position among multiple centers of action across national borders. Within the challenger field, “incumbent challengers” vie for dominance in agenda setting with other “challenger” challengers.

The research examines the impact of corporate and industrial relations strategies on company performance as measured by changes in labour utilisation, based on a study of Scott Lithgow, a shipbuilding and offshore construction yard.