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This paper brings attention to the role of hybrid middle managers. In particular it explores the relationship of organisational purpose and role requirements.

The primary research question for the original research was: What does it mean to hybrid managers to lead and deal with imposed changes (restructuring) to services? A novel narrative approach based on a synthesis of Czarniawska, Gabriel and Boje was applied. Accounts from interviews were condensed into narratives by initially using the categories defined by Gabriel (2000) as epic, tragic, comic and romantic and then further categorised into stories, themes and a serial (Czarniawska, 1997). The final stage of the three-way synthesised narrative approach incorporated Boje’s (2001) notion of “antenarrative” to include pre-emplotment elements.

Four narratives are provided that give insight to the nature of the struggles the hybrid middle managers were in the midst of. A struggle to address incongruent demands being placed on them that cause tension with their sense of purpose, organisational goals and their hybrid clinical roles and management roles. In the midst of these struggles the narratives illustrate the dynamic of ethical resistance that seeks a way forward. However, this appears to come at a health and well-being cost to the middle managers.

The paper offers up the notion of an added third bind to the traditional double, that of “ethical resistance”, a struggle to align organisational purpose with clinical and management role requirements. Theorising this third bind provides a new insight into understanding the context and dynamics of the hybrid middle manager role and behaviour. Indeed, the idea of ethical resistance may cause a revision of how resistance is understood.

HRM decentralization and devolution have been highlighted as key HRM processes in organizations’ quest for increased flexibility. Although they have been extensively studied in the MNC and International HRM literature, they have mainly been examined on a separate basis, and their definition and operationalization have often been confused. Thus, we first clarify the difference between the two concepts by refining the definitions by Hoogendoorn and Brewster (1992), and then empirically examine how they are related.

The relationship between HRM decentralization and devolution is examined by means of a survey in a large multi-country sample of multi-unit organizations.

Regarding our clarification objective, we contend that devolution has to do with who takes responsibilities for HRM (i.e. line managers or HRM professionals) while decentralization refers to where HRM responsibilities are allocated (i.e. headquarters or increasingly local units). Regarding the relationship between the two concepts, the results show that higher levels of HRM decentralization are related to higher levels of devolution, but this association is attenuated in organizations with more powerful HRM departments.

The study contributes to theory and practice by disentangling, at the conceptual, operational, empirical and practical levels, two different but related HRM decisions (how much to devolve and how much to decentralize HRM) that organizations must make to efficiently cope with the characteristics of their own structure and competitive environment. It highlights the role of the relative power of HRM departments in how HRM responsibilities are ultimately distributed across the organization.

This study aims to develop and test a model of the antecedents, mediators and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon through public sector service organizations in Iran to explore more insights on gender inequality in managerial positions.

The current research was conducted based on a mixed-method approach, using both qualitative and quantitative research designs. First, the qualitative method includes content analysis by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 university professors and expert managers working in public sector service organizations in Iran. The outcomes of the qualitative phase lead to designing the conceptual framework and research hypothesis. Then, through a quantitative phase, 384 female managers working in public sector service organizations in Iran are selected using stratified random sampling and fill out the research questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis was used to verify the model. Moreover, structural equation modeling, using AMOS 24, was used to test the research hypothesis.

The findings of the qualitative phase were represented in three categories including antecedents (e.g. the characteristics of women’s leadership, the selection of women based on meritocracy criteria, women’s preferences and organizational factors), mediation effect (e.g. succession planning, personal development planning and support networks) and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon (e.g. positive and negative consequences). The results of the exploratory factor analysis show there are ten components, explaining 88.5% of variances. Moreover, the test of the structural model supports the direct effect of antecedents on the glass cliff phenomenon. The results also show the effect of the glass cliff phenomenon on consequences through mediation effects.

There are some limitations that can be addressed by other researchers. Accordingly, the limited number of female managers in Iran prevented larger quantitative research. Moreover, the current research only found casual and mediation consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon, and potential moderators were not considered in this study.

The present study’s innovations may include using a mixed-method approach to investigate the antecedents, mediators and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon in this study and examining the model constructs in some public sector service organizations. This research may provide a deep understanding of the antecedents, mediators and consequences of the glass cliff phenomenon by finding new factors using a mixed-method approach.

This study examines the effect of Human Resource Management (HRM) policies in respect to workplace flexibility and employee empowerment on two employee behaviour related outcomes (employee organisational commitment (EOC) and collegiality) and organisational resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data were collected using an online survey questionnaire managed by Qualtrics. The questionnaire was distributed to the lower, middle and senior managers of 1,000 Australian organisations with 337 responses used in the analysis.

The findings indicate that workplace flexibility exhibits a direct and indirect (through collegiality) significant positive association with organisational resilience, and employee empowerment exhibits a direct and indirect (through both EOC and collegiality) significant positive association with organisational resilience.

The results highlight the importance of implementing desirable HRM policies in respect to empowering employees and enhancing workplace flexibility due to their role in facilitating organisational resilience both directly and indirectly through their influence on employee behaviour related outcomes, specifically EOC and collegiality.

Staff shortages in the healthcare sector increase the competition for qualified staff. A magnet hospital is intended to attract, and retain healthcare professionals. This article aims to investigate the challenges related to implementation of a magnet hospital model, and given these challenges, to analyse the interplay between different organisational levels in a Swedish hospital.

The data collection followed the implementation of a magnet hospital model and consisted of 14 meeting observations, 31 interviews and 13 document analyses.

The model implementation was driven by a top-down approach, with accompanying bottom-up activities, involving healthcare professionals, to ensure adaption to the hospital’s conditions at different organisational levels. The findings revealed that the model was more appealing to top management, seeking a standardised solution to attract and retain nurses. Clinic managers preferred tailor-made solutions for managing their employee resourcing challenges. Difficulties in translating and contextualising the model to the hospital’s conditions created challenges at every organisational level. Some were contained within a level while others spread to the organisational level below and turned into something else.

Apart from unique empirical material depicting the implementation of a magnet hospital model as an effort to attract and retain healthcare professionals, the value of this study lies in the attention given to the challenges that arise when responsibility for implementing a management model is shifted from top management to change agents tasked with facilitating and executing the organisational change.

The key to preventing employees from engaging in deceptive knowledge hiding is fostering a responsible environment. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study aims to explore the factors that inhibit deceptive knowledge hiding and to construct potential pathways for enhancing individual moral cognition. This study further analyzes the moderating effect of leader–follower value congruence on these relationships.

Using data from 341 full-time employees in various service industries in China, this study conducted path analysis, the product-of-coefficients method and bootstrapping to test the hypotheses through a three-stage, time-lagged survey.

The empirical results show that responsible leadership is negatively associated with employees’ deceptive knowledge hiding. Employee moral reflectiveness mediates this relationship, whereas leader–follower value congruence moderates the indirect effect of responsible leadership on deceptive knowledge hiding through moral reflectiveness.

First, this study extends field research by introducing positive leadership factors to reduce deceptive knowledge hiding, whereas prior studies focused mainly on negative leadership antecedents. Second, this study sheds light on the underlying moral cognitive mechanisms and explains how responsible leadership can prevent implicit unethical behavior. Third, it reveals how leader–follower value congruence can enhance the impact of responsible leadership on moral reflectiveness, offering novel insights into the role of value-based fit in reducing deceptive knowledge hiding.

This paper aims to examine primarily the readiness for change at an individual level. Additionally, this study examines the impact of internal change factors on individual readiness for change as well as their effect across nations.

The research relies on a quantitative research approach. A survey was conducted among 241 managers across 33 countries. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) approach and multigroup analyses have been applied for hypothesis testing.

Our research contributes a novel perspective on individual readiness for change and unveils how employees' perceptions of context, process and intensity as internal change factors influence their readiness for change. The findings give support to the assertion that employees' attitudes toward change are altered by individual perceptions.

Our research explores the moderating effect of nationality used through a grouped variable and finds significant impacts of clusters of nationalities. Thus, nationality may serve as a proxy for culture that might be examined in future research studies in a more deeply focused way to include beliefs, values and societal norms.

The new understanding of the topic “individual readiness for change” opens up new research directions and enriches ongoing discussions about societal change and sustainable project management. This topic creates a link to situational leadership principles, considers cultural factors and, therefore, advocates for a people-centric approach to modern stakeholder management in order to achieve commitment toward change initiatives and consequent project success.

Considering that the path toward the successful implementation of any change project is highly contingent on personal dispositions to change, our research uncovers the potential impact of individual perceptions on employees' readiness for change.

Our major contribution is to highlight the importance of considering individual perceptual drivers of readiness for change and to acknowledge the moderating effect of nationality as a contextual factor altering the relationship between perception of change and individual readiness for change.

The use of enterprise social media (ESM) can promote knowledge sharing within project teams. However, the potential mechanism of ESM affordances influencing knowledge sharing has not been fully studied. This paper aims to develop a theoretical model to explore how individual psychological cognition and environmental factors affect ESM affordances.

An empirical research using ESM applications was conducted in China, and 214 valid responses were collected for data analysis. Partial least squares structural equation modeling method was performed to test the theoretical model and hypotheses.

The results suggest the following implications: (1) the visibility, persistence, editability and association of ESM affordances all have a positive effect on the effectiveness of knowledge sharing in project teams. (2) The psychological safety and psychological empowerment of team members have a significant positive influence on ESM affordances. (3) The project task complexity positively moderates the positive effects which the visibility and association have on the effectiveness of knowledge sharing, and negatively moderates the positive relationship between the editability and knowledge sharing.

Based on the social cognitive theory, this paper highlights the roles of psychological cognitive factors and project task context in the effect of ESM affordances having on knowledge sharing within project teams. Moreover, it provides valuable suggestions for project managers in project and knowledge management.

The present study is performed to identify the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect as well as examine the simultaneous impact of risks on supply chain (SC) performance.

A theoretical framework with many hypotheses regarding the relationships between SC risk types and performance is established. The data are collected from a large-scale survey supported by a project of the Japanese government to promote sustainable socioeconomic development for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, with the participation of 207 firms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the hypotheses of the theoretical framework.

It is indicated that human-made risk causes operational risk, while natural risk causes both supply risk and operational risk. Furthermore, the impacts of human-made risk and natural risk on performance are amplified through operational risk.

This study is one of the first attempts that identifies the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect and examines the simultaneous impact of risks on performance in construction SCs.

Although many studies on risk management in construction SCs have been carried out, they mainly focus on risk identification or quantification of risk impact. It is observed that research on the ripple effect of disruptions has been very scarce.

Middle-aged and elderly users become an important group on short-video platforms, however, the research on determinants of their video-creating intention is limited. Based on lifespan development theories, this study examines the impact of aging experiences on their video-creating intention, considering internal generative motivations as mediators and age as a moderator.

To test this study’s hypotheses, survey data from 321 Chinese middle-aged and elderly short-video users were collected and partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was used to analyze these data.

Middle-aged and elderly users' aging experiences of social loss and personal growth are positively related to their video-creating intention. Aging experiences (i.e. physical loss, social loss, and personal growth) are positively related to internal generative motivations (i.e. need to be needed and symbolic immortality), and need to be needed is positively related to video-creating intention. Via the mediation of need to be needed, physical loss and personal growth are indirectly positively related to video-creating intention. Personal growth strengthens the relationship between physical loss and symbolic immortality, but weakens the associations of social loss with need to be needed and symbolic immortality. Age weakens the relationship between symbolic immortality and video-creating intention.

This study is the first wave to introduce and integrate lifespan theories such as selective optimization with compensation model, socioemotional selectivity theory, and generativity theory to explore the impacts of aging experiences on middle-aged and elderly users' video-creating intention by considering generativity motivations as mediators and age as a moderator.