Search results

This study aims to analyze the effect of cognitive load and social value orientation on managers’ preferences when they face with two types of restructuring choices in financially distressed firms: the first belonging to the family of organizational restructuring (massive layoffs) and the second to the family of financial restructuring (debt increases).

The authors investigate experimentally the impact of managers’ cognitive load and social value orientation on the decision to restructure leveraged buyout (LBO) firms in financial distress by using either massive layoffs or debt increases.

By investigating the impact of managers’ cognitive load and social value orientation on the restructuring decision of an LBO firm in financial distress, the research reveals that, on average, cognitively loaded managers prefer massive layoffs over increased debt levels. The massive layoffs seemingly provide a relatively easier way to avoid conflict with influential, residual claimants. In contrast, social value–oriented managers actively avoid massive layoffs and prefer to increase debt.

These results imply that the performance mechanisms emphasized to improve agency relations, for example, in LBOs, have their own limitations during periods of financial distress. This study shows that one of these limits is related to cognitive distortions and personality traits.

In this research, the originality lies in understanding how managers’ internal factors affect their restructuring decision-making, in the case of LBO firms in financial distress.

This study investigates the mediating role of wage and workforce adjustments, along with the moderating influence of collective bargaining system and employees’ localization, in elucidating the relationship between the COVID-19 shock and workplace employee relations (ER) tension.

Survey data from 1,483 enterprises across 21 prefectural cities in China’s Guangdong Province are collected. The hypotheses are tested by logistic regression.

The study reveals a positive correlation between the COVID-19 shock and workplace ER tension across crisis-hit enterprises, irrespective of their size or industrial sector. Wage reduction and mass layoffs emerge as significant mediators, while the collective bargaining system (CBS) and employees’ localization act as moderators.

The measurement of ER is limited in a single-item scale. Representation of China is also limited since the study exclusively focuses on Guangdong province. The study offers some contributions that firm-level data reveal the pathway through which COVID-19 creates ER tension.

On the one hand, the authors recommend the establishment of an effective communication system between employers and employees. On the other hand, managers should consider the role of informal institutions. Furthermore, the authors suggest implementing tailored strategies at the enterprise level.

Intense external shocks result in widespread layoffs and increased wage reductions within workplaces, and under such circumstances, formal or informal institutions may be insufficient to alleviate ER tension. In this case, the state authorities – including governments and other public agencies or bodies – are necessary to intervene in to organize tripartite dialogue.

While numerous emerging studies on COVID-19 explore how different countries manage industrial relations tension at the national level, few focus on ER at workplace level, particularly in developing countries. Understanding how workplace ER evolve during external shocks and identifying institutional measures to mitigate their negative impact is crucial for future crisis management.

This study aims to investigate the impact of job insecurity (JI) on employee work performance (WP) and service innovation behavior (SIB). It further examines the mediating role of affective commitment (AC) and the moderating role of organizational cynicism and financial job dependence (FJD).

By using a three-wave approach, the hypotheses were tested by collecting data from 473 full-time employees and their supervisors in the Thai hotel industry.

The results demonstrated that JI negatively affected WP and SIB. AC mediated these relationships. FJD moderated these relationships such that at high levels of job dependence, the negative relationships were weaker.

Human resource managers may reduce the negative effects of JI by creating a supportive and caring work environment through open communication. They may communicate openly with employees about the challenges the organization is facing, and involve them in planning, decision-making and implementation to mitigate the negative effects of JI. They may also provide training and development opportunities to help employees build their skills and increase their value to the organization.

Research on the behavioral consequences of JI is scant in the hospitality sector. Drawing on job–demand resource theory, this study attempts to fill this gap.

This case study attempts to sensitize the impact of restructuring on the organization’s employer brand. The students shall learn to appreciate the criticality of maintaining a balance between being an employee-centric organization and building a sustainable business model, to analyze the alternative people management strategies in emerging start-ups.

This case study illustrates the innovative human resource (HR) policies adopted by the start-up Meesho. Meesho was started as “Fashnear” by two Indian Institute of Technology graduates Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey in the year 2015, with the headquarters located in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. It was a social commerce platform wherein the local apparel sellers or manufacturers could register themselves on the app and sell their products online to nearby consumers and the product would be delivered to their homes. Later, it was renamed Meesho (Meri E-Shop) with an improved business model. The innovative people-centric policies got Meesho recognition as one of the most employee-friendly start-ups and an innovative employer. However, later as part of the restructuring exercise, it had to lay off employees, which had a counter impact on its reputation and image as a desirable employer. This case study captures the dilemma faced by start-ups like Meesho who were in the process of sustaining their growth and optimizing their workforce and, at the same time, have to manage their employer brand in the process.

This case study can be used at the postgraduate level of management and in executive management programs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS6: Human resource management.

This study aims to explore how coping strategies (CS) mediate the relationship between job insecurity (JI) and subjective well-being (SWB) leading to presenteeism among millennials. This study has been tested based on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001) and the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). In India, employees in the information technology (IT) and business process management sectors have been facing increased job insecurity over the last couple of years. The advent of technology has increased job insecurity among millennials, specifically in the IT sector. The Indian IT and information technology–enabled service (ITES) sector witnessed mass retrenchments by companies in 2016–2017. Instead of reskilling, the companies decided to lay off their employees. During the pandemic, the IT and ITES industries witnessed a massive culture shift in terms of technology and work engagement. Postpandemic, the recession is looming large on these industries. In 2022, tech layoffs have witnessed 135,000 employees impacted globally and many may lose their job in the coming year. This study chose Indian millennials because they form a large part of the Indian workforce, especially in the IT and ITES sector.

In this study, cross-sectional design is used where different individuals are part of the study at the same point in time. A sequential mixed method of research is adopted for this study, owing to the kind of research questions and the requirement to include critical realism. A qualitative study was carried out post the quantitative study, to corroborate the results from the quantitative study. Quantitative methodologies address questions about causality, generalizability or magnitude of outcome, whereas qualitative research methodologies explore why or how a phenomenon occurs, describe the nature of an individual’s experience during the study relevant to the context and/or develop a theory (Fetters et al., 2013). Because the study is about the millennial workforce in IT and the ITES sectors, the sample population comprised employees in Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) of Delhi in northern India. Out of a total of 374 ITES companies listed in the national association of software and service companies (2018), 103 are based out of Delhi/NCR; hence, companies from Delhi/NCR were chosen for the study. The other reason for opting for companies based in Delhi/NCR was that many millennials from second- and third-tier cities also are employed in these companies bringing in varied cultural perspectives. This study included 588 employees working in ITES organizations based in the National Capital Region of India. Mediation analysis for statistical verification was carried out with regression-based analysis in SPSS macro process (version 4).

The impact of job insecurity on the positive and negative affects of the subjective well-being of millennials was found to be substantial. Coping strategies moderated the relationship and it was seen that both engaged and disengaged strategies of coping had an impact on the positive affect of subjective well-being but did not have any impact on the negative affect of subjective well-being. The positive affect of subjective well-being was negatively related to presenteeism, and the negative affect of subjective well-being was positively related to presenteeism.

This study is carried out only in the ITES industry and on millennials. With the advent of technology, other industries are going through challenges concerning layoffs even though the severity of the same might be less. In times to come, for strategizing employee engagement, it is necessary to understand how the workforce copes with various work-related stress factors. The positive affects and negative affects of well-being and responses have been studied from an employee perspective only. Further research should be conducted to explore responses from both employers and employees to establish presenteeism and the antecedents of presenteeism in conjunction with positive and negative affects of well-being. There is further scope to study the impact of job insecurity on adaptive presenteeism in older generations and various industries given the current job scenario and talent-reskilling issues.

This study brings forth original insights into the impact of constant job threats on millennials employed in the IT and/or IT service sectors. The key findings contribute to literature knowledge and help managers recognize the unfavorable consequences of continuous job threats on the well-being of employees. There is an immediate need for managers to recognize the problem and devise various policies and communication strategies to enable millennial employees to cope with the constant changes in the organization, owing to various technological, political and environmental factors. Organizations should be mindful of this impact, which can subsequently have serious consequences on the productivity of the employees, resulting in decreased overall performance and health of the organization.

This study of job insecurity as a job stressor, triggering coping strategies in Indian millennials working in the ITES and IT industry, presents original insights. This study explores and presents how the impact of job insecurity may increase presenteeism as a result of coping. This study brings value to practitioners and this study may help organizations improve the overall well-being of their employees, thus improving productivity. On the contrary, it also opens opportunities for exploring the impact of job insecurity as a challenge stressor.

We enquire whether short-time work (STW) avoids firings as intended by policymakers and is associated with unintended side effects by subsidising some establishments and locking in some employees. Additionally, where it was feasible, establishments used working from home (WFH) to continue working without risking an increase in COVID-19 infections and allowing employed parents to care for children attending closed schools.

Using 21 waves of German high-frequency establishment panel data collected during the COVID-19 crisis, we investigate how STW and WFH are associated with hirings, firings, resignations and excess labour turnover (or churning).

Our results show the important influences of STW and working from home on employment dynamics during the pandemic. By means of STW, establishments are able to avoid an increase in involuntary layoffs and hiring decreases significantly. In contrast, WFH is associated with a rise in resignations, as can be expected from a theoretical perspective.

While most of the literature on STW and WFH is unrelated and remains descriptive, we consider them in conjunction and conduct panel data analyses. We apply data and methods that allow for the dynamic pattern of STW and working from home during the pandemic. Furthermore, our data include relevant establishment-level variables, such as the existence of a works council, employee qualifications, establishment size, the degree to which the establishment was affected by the COVID-19 crisis, industry affiliation and a wave indicator for the period the survey was conducted.

The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have engendered heterogeneous effects on individuals’ labour market prospects. This paper focuses on two possible sources of a heterogeneous exposition to labour market risks associated with the pandemic outbreak: the routine task content of the job and the teleworkability. To evaluate whether these dimensions played a crucial role in amplifying employment and wage gaps among workers, we focus on the case of Italy, the first EU country hit by Covid-19.

Investigating the actual effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of teleworkability and routinization, using real microdata, is currently unfeasible. This is because longitudinal datasets collecting annual earnings and the detailed information about occupations needed to capture a job’s routine task content and teleworkability are not presently available. To simulate changes in the wage distribution for the year 2020, we have employed a static microsimulation model. This model is built on data from the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (IT-SILC) survey, which has been enriched with administrative data and aligned with monthly observed labour market dynamics by industries and regions.

We measure the degree of job teleworkability and routinization with the teleworkability index (TWA) built by Sostero et al. (2020) and the routine-task-intensity index (RTI) developed by Cirillo et al. (2021), respectively. We find that RTI and TWA are negatively and positively associated with wages, respectively, and they are correlated with higher (respectively lower) risks of a large labour income drop due to the pandemic. Our evidence suggests that labour market risks related to the pandemic – and the associated new types of earnings inequality that may derive – are shaped by various factors (including TWA and RTI) instead of by a single dimension. However, differences in income drop risks for workers in jobs with varying degrees of teleworkability and routinization largely reduce when income support measures are considered, thus suggesting that the redistributive effect of the emergency measures implemented by the Italian government was rather effective.

No studies have so far investigated the effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of routinization and teleworkability in Italy. We thus investigate whether income drop risks in Italy in 2020 – before and after income support measures – differed among workers whose jobs are characterized by a different degree of RTI and TWA.

This study investigates whether a firm that has experienced an environmental accident (EA) is less likely to conduct a product recall. If true, it would indicate that EAs tempt firms to hide operational problems that need to be revealed. The logic is that both events are operational failures that damage a firm's reputation and share price. Following an EA, a firm may avoid a discretionary product recall to avoid providing additional evidence of operational incapability and social irresponsibility and thereby triggering amplified reputational and market penalties.

The dataset is compiled from several public and private sources and includes 4,355 product recalls, 153 EAs and 120 firms from the industries that often recall products, including automotive, pharma, medical device, food and consumer products. The study timeframe is 2002–2013. Empirical models are evaluated using hazard modeling.

Results show that EAs reduce the probability of a product recall by 32%, on average. Effect sizes are larger when accidents are more frequent or more severe and when recalls are less severe. Through post hoc analyses, the study finds support for the proposed mechanism that firms avoid recalls due to reputational concerns, provides evidence that EAs can have a lengthy impact on recall behavior, and shows that firms are more likely to avoid recalls managed by the CPSC and NHTSA than recalls managed by the FDA.

Prior studies in operations management (OM) have not examined the impact of one negative event on another. This study finds that EAs tempt firms to hide operational problems that need to be revealed. While recalling fewer defective products is of concern to consumers and regulators, should EAs influence a broader set of discretionary operational decisions, such as closing/relocating a production facility, outsourcing production or conducting a layoff, study implications increase significantly.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, quality of life and the labour market outcome across North and Southern Nigeria.

Data was obtained from staff laid off in selected tertiary institutions in North East and South West Nigeria using a self-administered questionnaire with a total sample size of 185. Findings are shown using the heteroscedastic linear regression and descriptive statistics.

The results showed a significant negative effect of unemployment during the pandemic on mental health and quality of life. Less than half of those laid off are reabsorbed into the labour market with the majority in the South than the Northern region and most are in self-employment.

The coronavirus pandemic negatively affected the human race, with a huge socio-economic impact linked to health and well-being. This reality calls for attention to the role it played on mental health and the quality of life as well as how it has influenced the labour market. Labour empowerment during a pandemic is key to cushion the effect of pandemics on health and the labour market. This can be in the form of skill empowerment and increased access to funds for business start-ups to enable self-employment that typifies the labour market after a pandemic. This in turn will reduce mental health challenges and low quality of life associated with pandemics.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the literature that provides empirical evidence of the effect of unemployment during the pandemic on well-being captured using mental health and the quality of life in Nigeria. Findings on labour market outcomes due to the pandemic and across regions in Nigeria are also scarce in the literature.

This public-sourced case describes the latest restructuring efforts by Deutsche Bank (DB) and gives a short history of prior restructuring efforts from the decade before. In July 2019, Christian Sewing, the new CEO of DB, announced a series of measures that included, among others, the elimination of global equity trading, the layoff of 18,000 employees, the creation of a “bad bank” to transfer noncore assets, and the suspension of dividends until 2022. The case describes key decisions a bank CEO makes when a bank needs to change course to return to profitability and growth. The case offers an opportunity to debate these key decisions, as well as discuss some of the prior ones during earlier restructuring efforts, and put the students in the CEO's shoes: What would you do and why? The case also describes key banking performance metrics (e.g., ROE, ROA) and other critical variables such as those reflecting capital health (Tier 1 ratio), as well as gives an overview of the bank business model and factors impacting bank profitability and value.