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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of leadership styles (paternalistic, authentic and democratic) with relationship-based employee governance and open service innovation.

Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 422 medical professionals working in the Malaysian healthcare sector.

Results of several statistical analyses showed that the three leadership styles positively influence relationship-based employee governance and open service innovation. Results also confirmed the mediating role of relationship-based employee governance in the relationships between the three leadership styles and open service innovation.

This research used a cross-sectional study design; use of a longitudinal research design in future research can provide a better interpretation of the underlying causality. A policy insight can be drawn from this research to generate awareness about effective leadership styles and the role of relationship-based employee governance in the successful implementation of open service innovation in the Malaysian healthcare sector.

This paper contributes to leadership, open innovation, and organizational governance literature by highlighting how leadership styles affect relationship-based employee governance and open innovation. It also offers policy insights to practitioners in the Malaysian healthcare sector on how to enhance open service innovation outcomes.

This paper aims to investigate the differential moderating effects of two types (internal/external) of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the relationship between distributive injustice and organization-directed revenge through the mediating role of negative emotions.

This paper conducts two studies. Study 1 was a vignette study based on a sample of 501 part-time master of business administration students in China aimed at testing the moderating effects of different levels of internal (external) CSR. Study 2 involved a laboratory experiment in which 108 postgraduate students were recruited to scrutinize the contrasting moderating effects of different types of CSR (internal vs external) and test the underlying mechanisms of negative emotions. The latest facial expression analysis technology (FaceReader 5.0 software) was used to detect participants’ emotional state.

Study 1 demonstrates that internal CSR buffers the relationship between distributive injustice and organizational revenge behavior through negative emotions. However, the moderating effect of external CSR is not significant. Study 2 reveals that compared with external CSR, distributive injustice induces fewer negative emotions in the presence of internal CSR and the mediating role of negative emotions detected by the facial expression analysis software is also verified.

The authors hope that the findings of this paper can provide theoretical references for enterprise managers to enhance their employee governance, develop more effective intervention policies and formulate corresponding coping mechanisms to prevent and mitigate workplace revenge behaviors.

First, this paper enriches the literature on the relationship between injustice and organization revenge by introducing CSR as an employee governance tool. Second, this paper reconciles prior inconsistent findings about employee response to CSR in the occurrence of negative events by distinguishing between external and internal CSR and examining the differential moderating effects of two types of CSR. Such distinction is derived from the heterogeneous justice perceptions arising from different CSR actions. In addition, the authors measure participants’ negative emotions through a multi-method approach integrating the latest technology for facial expression analysis and the PANAS scale, which represents a method advancement and provides implications for measuring emotions.

The chapter develops a typology of eight different expected employee communication roles based on literature in public relations (PR), corporate communication and related fields. As PR professionals are increasingly taking on a coaching and training role, and communication technology has made employees more visible and approachable, employees more and more take on active roles in the communication with external publics. While PR professionals’ roles are conceptualized fairly well, no framework exists that describes the many communication roles that employees play in contemporary organizations. In the chapter, it is found that employees externally (1) embody, (2) promote, and (3) defend the organization. In addition, employees use communication to (4) scout for information and insights about environmental changes, and (5) build and maintain relationships with stakeholders. Internally, employees use communication to (6) make sense of information, (7) initiate and stimulate innovation, and (8) criticize organizational behaviour and decisions. The typology highlights that employees increasingly fulfil the tactic communication roles as producers and executers of corporate communication as social media have made them more visible and approachable. The communication roles require considerable tactical skills and resources on the part of employees, which they may not always possess sufficiently. PR professionals can play a coaching role in terms of helping employees frame content and communicate in a manner appropriate for the organization, the context and the media. The chapter can help PR professionals and scholars understand the changed role of PR professionals, as well as the changed relationships between organizations and their environment, in the context of dissolving organizational boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to study the moderating role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the knowledge asset–firm financial performance relationship.

This paper first develops hypotheses based on multiple theoretical lenses and uses a sample of 3,030 US firms in 51 industries over 11 years to test these hypotheses.

It is found that CSR positively moderates the relationship between research and development (R&D) investments and the firm's financial performance, and the moderating effect declines when firms mistreat their employees.

This paper provides evidence that when firms allocate their resources, they should consider the synthetic effect among different activities such as R&D and CSR.

First, this study offers a new and alternate mechanism for the appropriability literature and also extends the boundary of CSR research. Second, this work shifts the CSR performance thought by considering CSR as an enabler rather than a driver for performance.

In the context of worker–firm complementarities, the extant literature has focused primarily on worker–firm dyads that generate additional revenue for the firm. However, we extend the study of worker–firm complementarities by examining matches that create value through the generation of additional nonpecuniary utility for employees. Through this lens, we hypothesize that mobile employees will receive lower wages to offset the benefits they receive from these nonpecuniary complementarities. Further, we hypothesize that star employees who create unique revenue-generating complementarities receive higher wages than otherwise predicted as they can capture a share of the additional revenue they generate. We test this conceptualization using panel data on all US National Basketball Association players from 2000 to 2009. We demonstrate that NBA players accept lower than predicted wages to play for their home teams which reflects worker utility-generating complementarities. We also show that superstars receive higher than predicted wages to play for their home teams, consistent with firm revenue-generating complementarities.

Firm-specific human capital (FSHC) has been an integral part of the vocabulary in the strategy field. Many scholars argue that FSHC inhibits employee mobility and drives employee retention at a discount, value appropriation, and firms' competitive advantage. FSHC also plays a central role in the resource-based view of the firm. In recent years, however, a significant debate has emerged on the validity and usefulness of the construct. The purpose of the chapter is to revisit this debate and discuss both challenges and opportunities related to FSHC. In a form of conversation, we take aim at FSHC from different angles and discuss its role as a mobility friction, in value appropriation of established firms, in the context of transitions between paid employment and entrepreneurship, and in the views of practitioners. While we agree that our understanding of the concept of FSHC must evolve, we continue to see its value in our theoretical toolbox.

Enterprise innovation depends on the innovative behaviour of employees. The relationship between leaders and employees has a significant impact on employees' attitudes and behaviours. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to explore how a good leader–member relationship (LMR) motivates employees' innovative behaviour.

Based on 316 questionnaires completed by the members of 53 organisations, SPSS 25.0, Mplus 8.0 and HLM 6.08 were used to analyse the internal mechanisms of LMRs and employees' innovative behaviour.

The study identified the following findings: first, LMR was positively correlated with employees' innovative behaviour; second, perceived supervisor support and followership behaviour played mediating roles between leader–member relationship and employees' innovative behaviour and third, organisational political climate was negatively correlated with employees' innovative behaviour and played a moderating role in the relationship between LMR and employees' innovative behaviour.

The results of this study have clarified the transmission mechanism between LMRs and employees' innovative behaviour while providing useful references for improving the effectiveness of human resource management in organisations.

Using data from a top-five global executive placement firm, the authors explore how an organization's financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory, they hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization years before the misconduct, these alumni experience a compensation penalty. The stigma effect increases in relation to the job function proximity to the misconduct, recency of the misconduct, and an employee's seniority. Collectively, results suggest that the stigma of financial misconduct could reach alumni employees and need not be confined to executives and directors that oversaw the organization during the misconduct.

In this paper, the authors argue that multicultural skills and relational leadership act as enablers for open innovation, and thereby examine the process through which teams can utilize multicultural skills to support the development of relational leadership and knowledge sourcing and sharing (KSS) through individual interaction and relationship building. The authors address the following research question: How does relational leadership enable open innovation (OI) among employees with multicultural skills?

This paper applies a multi-level approach (team and individual level) and builds on interviews with 20 employees, middle and senior managers with multicultural experiences, working in open innovation environments.

The authors’ findings shed light on the process through which social exchange relationships among team members (e.g. R&D teams) and knowledge exchange partners are enhanced by the use of multicultural skills and support the development of relational leadership to facilitate KSS and ultimately OI. The decision for participants to collaborate and source and share knowledge is motivated by individual reward (such as establishing network or long-lasting contacts), skill acquisition (such as learning or personal growth in decision-making) and a sense of reciprocity and drive for group gain. The authors encourage greater human resource (HR) manager support for relational leadership and the development and use of multicultural skills to promote KSS.

Despite the value of our findings, this paper is not without limitations. The authors explained that the focus of this study design was on the work activities of the participants and their skill development and not specific projects or organizations. It was outside the scope of this study to examine variations across organizations and individuals as the authors wanted to focus on multicultural skills and relational leadership as enablers for OI. The authors recommend that future studies extend our research by unpacking how various boundary conditions including relational leadership and multicultural skills impact KSS and OI over the life cycle of innovation teams within large multinational organizations, across countries and ethnicities.

The study’s findings provide managers with improved understandings of how to enable an individual's willingness and readiness to source and share knowledge through multicultural skills and relational leadership. Managers need to ensure that human resource management (HRM) practices celebrate multicultural skills and support relational leadership in innovation teams. The authors suggest managers engaged in OI consider the components of social exchange as described by Meeker (1971) and utilize reciprocity, group gain, rationality and status consistency to support the emergence relational leadership and KSS in innovation teams.

In this paper, the authors contribute to the dearth of literature on the boundary conditions for OI by examining the role of relational leadership and characteristics/skills of the workforce, namely multicultural skills and contribute to the scarce research on the role of employees with multicultural skills and their impact on OI and present multicultural skills/experiences and relational leadership as enablers for OI.

Resource reconfiguration enables firms to adapt in dynamic environments by supplementing, removing, recombining, or redeploying resources. Whereas prior research has underscored the merits of resource reconfiguration and the modes for implementing it, little is known about the antecedents of this practice. According to prior research, under given industry conditions, resource reconfiguration is prompted by a firm’s corporate strategy and by characteristics of its knowledge assets. We complement this research by identifying learning from performance feedback as a fundamental driver of resource reconfiguration. We claim that performance decline relative to aspiration motivates the firm’s investment in knowledge reconfiguration, and that this investment is reinforced by the munificence of complementary resources in its industry, although uncertainty about the availability of such resources limits that investment. Testing our conjectures with a sample of 248 electronics firms during the period 1993–2001, we reveal a clear distinction between exploitative reconfiguration, which combines existing knowledge elements, and exploratory reconfiguration, which incorporates new knowledge elements. We demonstrate that performance decline relative to aspiration motivates a shift from exploitative reconfiguration to exploratory reconfiguration. Moreover, munificence of complementary resources mitigates the tradeoff between exploratory and exploitative reconfigurations, whereas uncertainty weakens the motivation to engage in both types of reconfiguration, despite the performance gap. Nevertheless, codeployment, which extends the deployment of knowledge assets to additional domains, is more susceptible to uncertainty than redeployment, which withdraws those assets from their original domain and reallocates them to new domains. Our study contributes to emerging research on resource reconfiguration, extends the literature on learning from performance feedback, and advances research on balancing exploration and exploitation.