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Following Bakhtin, organizational discourse scholars have examined ways in which organizational actors draw on and negotiate historical texts, weave them with contemporary ones, and transform them into future discourses. This paper examines how this practice occurs discursively as members in a high‐tech corporation conduct an organizational change.

This paper interprets discourse excerpts from meetings of a project team in the western US. Through participant‐observation and discourse analytic methods, the data gathered consists of field notes, over 33 hours' worth of team meeting conversation and five hours of interview data.

Through the use of represented voice, organizational members work out how an action or practice has sounded in the past as spoken by another member, and they articulate how proposed organizational changes might sound in the future. By making these inferences, members are able to discursively translate between a single situated utterance and organizational practices.

The analysis suggests that organizational change occurs when people temporarily stabilize the organization through the voicing of current practices (as references to what “usually happens” via what is “usually said”) and new practices (as references to what might be said in the future). It is when these practices are solidified and made real through these translations between identity, voice, and organizational practices that members are able to draw comparisons and transformations between “past” and “future” language, and thereby experience and achieve organizational change.

The paper furthers our knowledge of how organizational members discursively negotiate meanings during the process of organizational change through a specific discourse pattern.

This study aims to explore the impact of the availability of work life balance (WLB) practices on organisational outcomes in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) mediated by the existence of a culture that supports WLB.

An empirical study was performed with a sample of 229 SMEs representing the metal industry sector of Southeast Spain.

The findings show that a WLB supportive culture mediates the effect of the availability of WLB practices on organisational performance.

Among the limitations of this study the authors highlight the transverse nature of the research and the data collection based on self‐reports.

Companies interested in increasing organisational outcomes should introduce WLB practices. Moreover, practitioners should enhance an organisational culture positive towards employees' balance, communicating their support towards WLB initiatives.

The availability of WLB initiatives in the organisations generates not only positive outcomes for employees (e.g. reduction of inter‐role conflict, higher satisfaction, etc.), but also increases the organisational results for employers.

This research focuses on SMEs and the results have implications for practitioners and academics.

Evidence suggests that the notion of diversity in employment has failed to meet expectations of increased inclusion and organizational competitiveness in an ever‐changing and globalizing economic context. This paper aims to consider the use of language of diversity in an organizational context.

Using discourse analysis, the paper examines data obtained from semi‐structured interviews conducted with human resources managers and personnel managers. Participants' descriptions of diversity in relation to one particular group of (potential) employees, namely older jobseekers, are analysed for their function and effects in relation to organizational knowledge and practices.

Diversity in employment provides organizational managers with a resource that can more usefully be viewed as linguistic than as knowledge based. Its use offers organizations a means of accounting for existing practices and should not be taken to signal commitment to organizational change.

Work that has treated discourse of diversity as evidence of efforts to promote inclusion and competitiveness has failed to consider fully the effects of language use. A focus on language as action in its own right shows how diversity in employment as used accomplished outcomes that are totally divergent from the usually assumed benefits of diversity.

Sustainability is seeking for a new approach to bolster organisational success as it is expected to be mobilised through collaborative efforts of employees and management. The present study aims to examine the moderating role of sustainability practices between self-efficacy and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB).

A total of 527 full-time executives employed in Indian public and private manufacturing industries were surveyed. Harman’s single-factor test was carried out using analysis of moment structures (AMOS 20.0) to test the bias associated because of common method variance (CMV). Moderated regression analysis was used through hierarchical models to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive relationship between self-efficacy and OCB. The significant moderation effect was observed in the interaction graph, as the simple slope analysis indicated relatively high level of sustainability practices and self-efficacy and they were found to be positively associated with OCB.

The cross-sectional sample of executives employed in Indian manufacturing organisations limits the generalisation of the findings. The study has not figured the temporal effects and hence longitudinal studies have also been proposed for the assessment of causality.

Organisations are expected to foster inclusiveness and open channel of communication with their employees to execute best sustainable practices. HR department need to create awareness among their employees and establish an ongoing feedback mechanism to promote such psychological drives.

The proposed model and the subsequent findings of the study extend the literature on the relationship among self-efficacy, OCB and sustainability practices. The outcome of this work can be used by HR functionaries and senior management practitioners while formulating and implementing the sustainability strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to extend job embeddedness research by investigating employees’ perception of human resource (HR) practices as the predictors of organizational job embeddedness, and its mediating role between HR practices and quit intention. It also assesses the moderating effect of job satisfaction on the job embeddedness-turnover relationship.

Data were collected through a questionnaire survey from 1,028 accountants in various disciplines from one of the largest corporations in Thailand, including its numerous subsidiaries and joint ventures. Hypotheses were tested and analyzed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regressions, and a bootstrapping procedure.

The results reveal that all HR practices except training are positively related to organizational job embeddedness. Analysis also provides support for the mediating effects on quit intention of two HR practices, namely rewards and career development, through organizational job embeddedness. In addition, the interaction effect shows that the negative relationship between organizational job embeddedness and quit intention reduces when job satisfaction is high.

The current research took place among accountants. Replicating the study in a variety of business sectors, professions, or cultures would be useful for the generalizability of the findings.

Several HR strategies and tactics can help improve employee loyalty. Particularly effective are attractive rewards that reflect work values, and a promising career roadmap. Organizations might need to consider work conditions that sustain job satisfaction for turnover prevention in the short-term, and continuously manage long-term retention through embeddedness.

This study extends current research by investigating the relationships of so far untested theorized antecedents that clarify how employees become embedded in the workplace in order to keep them from quitting.

The purpose of this paper is to present a degendered organizational resilience model challenging current and dominant conceptualizations of organizational resilience by exploring how gendered organizational power structures, language and practices of everyday organizational life interplay and limit inclusive constructions of organizational resilience.

The degendered organizational resilience model was developed using Acker’s (1990) model of gendered organizations, Martin’s (2003) gendering practices, Lorber’s (2000) degendering and other feminist research on gendered organizations. The purpose of the model is to explore power structures, practices and language within the organizational context during conditions requiring organizational resilience.

A conceptual model for analyzing the theoretical development of organizational resilience is presented. The model analyzes the following three different aspects of organizations: power structure, to identify which resilient practices receive status based on established gendered organizational hierarchies and roles; actions, to identify how resilience is enacted through practices and practicing of gender; and language, to identify how and what people speak reinforces collective practices of gendering that become embedded in the organization’s story and culture.

The degendered organizational resilience model offers a process for researchers, managers and organizational leaders to analyze and reveal power imbalances that hinder inclusive theoretical development and practices of organizational resilience.

The degendered organizational resilience model can be used to reveal power structures, gendered practices and language favoring normative masculine organizational practices, which restrict the systemic implementation of inclusive democratic practices that incorporate and benefit women, men and other groups subject to organizational subordination.

This paper offers an original perspective on the theoretical development of organizational resilience by proposing a degendering model for analysis. A feminist perspective is used to reveal the gendered power structures, practices and language suppressing the full range of resilient qualities by restricting what is valued and who gives voice to resilient processes that lead to resilient organizations.

Knowledge management (KM) is associated with higher performance and innovative culture; KM can help the public sector to be fiscally lean and meet diverse stakeholders’ needs. However, hierarchical structures, bureaucratic culture and rigid processes inhibit KM adoption and generate inertia. This study aims to explore the nature and causes of this inertia within the context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) public sector.

Using an in-depth case study of a UAE public sector organisation, this study explores how organisational inertia can be countered to enable KM adoption. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with 17 top- and middle-level managers from operational, management and strategic levels. Interview data is triangulated with content analysis from multiple sources, including the UAE Government and case organisation documents.

The results show transformation leadership, external factors and organisational culture mediate the negative effect of inertia on KM practices adoption. We find that information technology plays a key role in enabling knowledge creation, access, adoption and sharing. Furthermore, we uncover a virtuous cycle between organisational culture and KM practices adoption in the public sector. In addition, we develop a new model (the relationship between KM practices, organisational inertia, organisational culture, transformational leadership traits and external factors) and four propositions for empirical testing by future researchers. We also present a cross-case comparison of our results with six private/quasi-private sector cases who have implemented KM practices.

Qualitative data is collected from a single case study.

Inertia in a public section is a result of bureaucracy and authority bounded by the rules and regulations. Adopting a qualitative methodology and case study method, the research explores the phenomena of how inertia impacts KM adoption in public sector environments. Our findings reveal the underlying mechanisms of how internal and external organisational factors impact inertia. Internally, supportive organisational culture and transformational leadership traits positively effect KM adoption, which, in turn, has a positive effect on organisational culture to counter organisational inertia. Externally, a progressive national culture, strategy and policy can support a knowledge-based organisation that embraces change. This study develops a new model (interactions between internal and external factors impacting KM practices in the public sector), four propositions and a new two-stage process model for KM adoption in the public sector. We present a case-comparison of how the constructs interact in a public sector as compared to six private/quasi-private sector cases from the literature.

Organizational processes that create conditions to facilitate employee innovativeness have become topical due to the constant demand for organizations to renew themselves. Research shows that human resource management (HRM) practices can been used to create such conditions, but also the important complementary role of organizational trust has been highlighted in this context. In particular, earlier studies have mostly focused on the concept of interpersonal trust. However, impersonal trust (the individual employee’s expectations about the employer organization’s capability and fairness) has recently been suggested to be an equally or even more relevant facilitator supporting the effect of HRM practices on organizational innovativeness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The hypotheses were tested with two large-scale quantitative studies from the forestry and information and communication technology industries in Finland. Structural equation modelling (with LISREL) was used to test hypothesis.

This study shows that effective HRM practices indeed facilitate organizational innovativeness, and that this effect is partially mediated by impersonal trust in the organization. This result contributes to the existing literature and practice of HRM and the management of organizational innovativeness.

Future studies could include also interpersonal trust in order to study trust-innovativeness linkage. The study also examined this phenomenon only in Finnish context and this sets some limitations to the generalizability of the results. In addition, single respondents were used to assess all the variables used in the study. Further studies could improve on this by utilizing more objective measures of organizational innovativeness.

The results suggest that organizations should pay attention to designing HRM practices so that they facilitate the building of impersonal organizational trust. In order to improve innovativeness through organizational trust, it is crucial to develop an organization-wide HRM system, since practices that are inconsistently used can lead to unwanted or inefficient results. Strategic and managerial actions related to HRM could increase employees’ trust in the organization and subsequent conditions for providing continuously innovative solutions.

The authors add to the literature by identifying the connection of HRM practices to contributing to behavioural, process and strategic innovativeness through the mediation of impersonal trust. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is one of few studies and the first systematic large sample study that examines impersonal trust and its relationship between HRM practices and different types of organizational innovativeness.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural consequence of ever-increasing entropy seems to directly contradict the major institutional thesis, namely, that over time isomorphic forces increase and, as a result, possibilities for deinstitutionalization decrease culminating in the impossibility of abandoning in highly institutionalized fields.

This paper is conceptual in nature. Oliver’s 1992 paper on deinstitutionalization is taken as a key text on the subject and as a starting point for building an alternative theory of deinstitutionalization. More broadly, institutional theory and organizational literature on diffusion/adoption are reviewed and synthesized.

The authors argue that possibilities for deinstitutionalization have been overestimated in institutional literature and offer a revisited account of deinstitutionalization vs institutional isomorphism and institutionalized vs highly diffusing-but-not-institutionalized practices. A freedom for choice between alternative practices exists during the pre-institutional stage but not when the field is already institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices are immutable to any sort of functional and political pressures and they use to persist even when no technical value remains, thus deinstitutionalization on the basis of a functional dissatisfaction seems to be a paradox.

By revisiting the nature and patterns of deinstitutionalization, the paper offers a better conceptual classification and understanding of how organizations adopt, maintain and abandon organizational ideas and practices. An important task of this paper is to reduce the scope of application of deinstitutionalization theory to make it more focused and self-consistent. There is, however, still not enough volume of studies on institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. The authors, therefore, acknowledge that more studies are needed to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory and the framework.

The authors offer a solution to this theoretical inconsistency by distinguishing between truly institutionalized practices and currently popular practices (highly diffused but non-institutionalized). It is only the latter that are subject to the norms of progress that allow abandoning and replacing existing organizational activities. Deinstitutionalization theory is, thus can be applied to popular practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of optimal practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Finally, the authors revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model to explain the possibility and likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization.

This paper aims to examine a model that uses customer service quality as an intervening mechanism in the relationship between customer relationship management (CRM) practices and organizational performance in two different banking structures: conventional and Islamic. The study focuses on organizational and technological practices of CRM, as both have been demonstrated to be critical to CRM success.

The analysis is based on responses from 247 managers from conventional banks and 141 managers from Islamic banks operating in Morocco using a self-administered questionnaire. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique is employed for data analysis.

Findings demonstrate that customer service quality plays a mediating role between CRM practices (organizational and technological) and organizational performance in both conventional and Islamic banks. Our results confirm the positive impact of CRM practices on organizational performance in the two banking structures.

This study enhances our understanding of how CRM practices contribute to improving customer service quality and organizational performance in both conventional and Islamic banks. Bank managers, who aim to deliver superior service quality and achieve customer satisfaction and retention, should capitalize on the benefits of implementing CRM organizational and technological practices.

The present paper bridges a gap pertaining to key practices and factors that impact CRM success in the banking industry. It is the first of its kind to investigate the effect of CRM practices on organizational performance with customer service quality as a mediating variable. The study also contributes to the field of CRM literature, as CRM has rarely been addressed in an Islamic banking context.