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While current human resource management (HRM) research on the relationship between HRM and employee well-being has focused on performance-oriented HRM (e.g. high-performance work practices), scholars have called to broaden the perspective and to explore HRM practices that are indeed well-being-oriented. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the empirical diffusion of well-being-oriented HRM configurations, the conditions in which these are used, and their associations with health, happiness and relational well-being.

Analyses are based on a probabilistic subsample of 1,364 employees in Germany. Employee data are used, since individual employees' perceptions of HRM practices are crucial for understanding the effects of HRM on employee well-being. Configurations of well-being-oriented HRM practices are identified using latent class analysis.

Findings show that (1) employees experience diverse configurations of well-being-oriented HRM practices, which differ in their investment levels and the specific practices used; (2) these configurations are contingent on organizational-level and individual-level characteristics and (3) these configurations have diverse associations with different well-being dimensions. Importantly, configurations characterized by higher investments are not always associated with higher well-being, and the highest well-being is associated with a configuration based on high investment in well-being-oriented HRM focused on support from supervisors.

This exploratory paper is the first to analyze configurations of well-being-oriented HRM practices. By focusing on well-being-oriented HRM it complements previous research which usually addresses how HRM systems designed to enhance performance affect employee well-being.

This research introduces the combined use of partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) that enables researchers to explore and validate hypotheses following a sufficiency logic, as well as hypotheses drawing on a necessity logic. The authors’ objective is to encourage the practice of combining PLS-SEM and NCA as complementary views of causality and data analysis.

The authors present guidelines describing how to combine PLS-SEM and NCA. These relate to the specification of the research objective and the theoretical background, the preparation and evaluation of the data set, running the analyses, the evaluation of measurements, the evaluation of the (structural) model and relationships and the interpretation of findings. In addition, the authors present an empirical illustration in the field of technology acceptance.

The use of PLS-SEM and NCA enables researchers to identify the must-have factors required for an outcome in accordance with the necessity logic. At the same time, this approach shows the should-have factors following the additive sufficiency logic. The combination of both logics enables researchers to support their theoretical considerations and offers new avenues to test theoretical alternatives for established models.

The authors provide insights into the logic, assessment, challenges and benefits of NCA for researchers familiar with PLS-SEM. This novel approach enables researchers to substantiate and improve their theories and helps practitioners disclose the must-have and should-have factors relevant to their decision-making.

This paper points out that common human resource manageement (HRM) research and practice have overlooked employee's class of origin. Workers' class of origin can be seen as “the elephant in the room” in current HRM, being that it significantly affects organizational decision-making with negative social (increased class-based inequality) and organizational (inefficient allocation of human re-sources) effects.

The paper summarizes the partial, fragmented and multi-disciplinary literature on HRM and employees’ social class of origin.

The paper shows how recruiting, selection, training and development practices systematically reinforce class-based inequality by providing high-class employees with more resources and opportunities compared to low-class employees.

The paper provides sustainable HR practitioners, educators and researchers with recommendations on how to address employees' social class of origin, improving organizational competitive advantage and reducing class-based inequality at the societal level.

The paper focuses on a topic which, in diversity management, is an elephant in the room (i.e. workers social class of origin).

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how characteristics of the HR department and HR work, which relate to resource availability and resource needs, influence HR outsourcing. The study examines the subject of human resource (HR) outsourcing.

The potential influence of firms' characteristics on HR outsourcing is analysed theoretically and empirically. The dataset (n=1,021) covers a broad spectrum of personnel services and is based on computer‐aided telephone interviews with chief executives and human resource managers of German firms.

Generally, we find that firm size and previous reorganization activities significantly raise the probability of an HR outsourcing. In contrast, there is no overall significant influence of central characteristics of HR work or the HR department on HR outsourcing in general.

Although there is a trend toward the outsourcing of work, little research is being done on the relationship between the expected effects of outsourcing, the make‐or‐buy decision of decision makers, and the firm's characteristics themselves. This study sheds some more light on the relationship between HR outsourcing and firms' characteristics and finds some interesting relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of employers' motives behind outplacement activities, the relationship between these motives, and the specific activities of firms in outplacement.

Theoretical assumptions were tested on a sample of 431 German firms, differentiating between specific outplacement activities and asking in detail about motives and rationales of outplacement. Factor analysis and Mann‐Whitney U‐Tests are applied.

Different types of motives can be identified and related to theoretical approaches. The relative importance of different motives is influenced by several situational and structural factors. The types of motives have an impact on the termination benefits offered to redundant employees.

Termination benefits are increasingly gaining importance, but the theoretical and empirical knowledge about the incidence, structure, motives, and effects of outplacement is still limited. This paper extends previous studies by shedding more light on the economic motives of employers to invest in outplacement activities, the determinants of these motives and the relationship between motives and specific bundles of activities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and characterize different work value patterns empirically. Furthermore, it is analyzed how these patterns are distributed in different countries and how they change in the course of time.

Latent class analysis as an advanced clustering procedure was applied. The empirical analysis is based on data from the International Social Survey Program from three time periods (1989, 1997 and 2005), covering five countries (USA, Great Britain, West Germany, Norway and Hungary).

The analysis reveals four distinct work value patterns among employees: “moderate demanders”, “high demanders”, “post modern demanders” and “income and security demanders.” The affiliation to these patterns depends on gender, generational membership, education, occupation and nationality. The historical analysis reveals considerable variety in cross-national developments.

The work value patterns identified have implications for recruitment, employee motivation and international HRM strategies. Management needs to be aware of work value patterns in the workforce in order to avoid mismatches and their negative consequences. If mismatch is unavoidable, the paper highlights the need to proactively manage mismatches between work value patterns and workplace situation.

The authors argue that different work values are not independent of each other. Instead, they seem to have systematic interrelations and exist in specific patterns. Accordingly different segments within the labor force can be characterized by specific combinations of work values. This is highly relevant because it could help to customize HR instruments and incentives.

Power distance describes a central facet of national culture, because it influences the acceptance and endorsement of job characteristics related to status and power. This has major implications for international human resource management, because the importance of different situational job characteristics for employee job satisfaction should differ across cultures. The purpose of this paper is to analyse if and how national power distance levels moderate different situational job characteristics’ influence on job satisfaction.

The authors refer to three approaches to culture: the frameworks of Hofstede and GLOBE as well as to current scores provided in a meta-analysis. The empirical findings are derived using regression analyses on a sample covering 16 nations.

The results are convincing regarding the basic job satisfaction driver model not involving culture. However, the results on power distance’s impact as well as its moderating role are strongly dependent on the culture concepts utilised. The authors provide an analysis of differences along the measurements behind the different concepts.

The authors can conclude that national differences in job satisfaction, as found in various studies, are a result of differences in situational dispositions to work life rather than a result of different cultural surroundings in terms of power distance. The question is whether this is due to power distance’s lack of impact or due to other factors, such as the difficulties of measuring culture. The authors discuss the differences which are due to different measurements. For ultimately confirming power distance’s moderating role and for advancing theorizing in this field, further research, which can build on the framework offered in this paper, is needed that directly measures the individual power distance facets in addition to the job characteristics and satisfaction values.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality by focusing on motivational and incentive aspects.

The paper applies a game‐theoretic model of procurement decisions allowing for variable degrees of vertical integration and confronts the implications of its analysis with HR outsourcing data on a large sample of German firms.

The paper presents evidence for HR service quality being generally higher when procured from an external instead of an in‐house provider. Furthermore, the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality is considerably stronger if the provided services are complex and if the potential for monitoring an internal provider is low.

The findings have immediate practical implications concerning the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services: the more complex the HR service under consideration and the lower the potential to monitor its in‐house provision, the more attractive is the external provision of HR services.

While most of the literature on HR outsourcing is based on transaction cost theory or follows a resource‐based approach, this paper uses a game‐theoretic model to analyse the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services, allowing the incentives of an internal or external provider to deliver high‐quality services to be focused on. Furthermore, for the empirical analysis the paper uses an original data set comprising more than 1,000 German firms.

The purpose of this paper is to differentiate the ambidextrous leadership concept into direct and indirect types to provide an alternative when the requirements of direct ambidextrous leadership cannot be met.

Desk research is used in this paper to relate the ambidextrous leadership concept to the roles of leader and manager to more comprehensively determine the requirements for being a direct/indirect ambidextrously leading executive than is possible by referring only to opening and closing leadership or exploration and exploitation.

Special requirements in the context of ambidextrous leadership can be transferred from the top executive/chief executive officer to third parties, for example, some control tasks in the area of exploitation can be distributed among the top management team, enabling the top executive to focus on tasks such as developing an organisation-wide vision and its strategic implementation. Indirect ambidextrous leadership exists if the top executive distributes exploitation tasks to third parties. Direct ambidextrous leadership exists if the top executive assumes leadership in both the exploration and exploitation areas. This means that the demands on the top executive are different in direct ambidextrous leadership and in indirect ambidextrous leadership.

The literature has not yet focused on the differentiation between direct and indirect ambidextrous leadership. This paper contributes towards closing this gap. The potential for indirect ambidextrous leadership can be essential for a company’s success because in addition to direct ambidextrous leadership, it represents the possibility of creating a sustainable organisation in a changing market.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the influence of individual gender role specifications on objective career success (measured by gross yearly income) in the context of different gender job contexts whilst controlling for human capital and working time variables. Typical economic, sociological and psychological variables are combined to improve explanations of the gender wage gap.

Starting from Eagly and Karau's role incongruity theory, the paper derives hypotheses on the influence of gender role specification, gender job context and biological sex on gross yearly income. These hypotheses are analysed by logistic regressions with a data set from Germany. The paper presents results of a quantitative empirical survey of employees on wages, gender role-related self-descriptions and human capital variables.

The paper results show that even in this highly qualified sample, male biological sex, masculine gender roles and non-female job context have a positive effect on individual income. The results hold true when the paper controls for human capital, working time, professional experience and jobs in the public sector.

Because of the limited size of the data set and some problems with selectivity, the research results lack generalizability. Researchers are thus encouraged to test the propositions with other data sets.

The paper includes implications for wage design and for reaching wage equality in firms. An important implication for policy and practice is that under a gender and equal opportunity perspective, ensuring non-discriminating behaviour with regard to women may be only one (albeit an important) element of equal opportunity activities. Equal wage policies should further consider the gender characteristics of the job context, which may influence job-related roles and thus role incongruities. Additionally, individual interpretations of gender roles might have effects on wages. Human resource (HR) managers could support such policies by shaping job descriptions carefully with regard to gender role aspects, by influencing the gender composition of job contexts and by paying attention to the individual development of gender role interpretations in HR development programmes.

The paper fulfils an identified research need to study simultaneously the influence of human capital variables and gender roles on wages. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study, which studies the influence of gender roles as defined by Born (1992) on income in a German context of highly qualified individuals while controlling for human capital, working time and professional experience. The existing lack in the literature with regard to empirical analyses on the combined influence of economic, sociological and psychological variables is mitigated.