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Sustainability initiatives are important considerations for twenty-first century institutions. Employees, customers and other stakeholders expect responsible business practices that focus on people, profit and planet in unison. Sustainability efforts require a strong advocate who can champion relevant business practices and embed new practices within the culture and across the entire organization. The purpose of this paper is to explain the tangible actions described as necessary by change agents in order to move sustainability initiatives forward in their organizations. This research employs the narrative provided by these agents in interviews – to inform the activities outlined in an established model of political skill and reputation building. This analysis enables the model to illustrate the sequential patterns and process of events, i.e. antecedents and consequences that are simply assumed in the existing variance models.

This research is based on in-depth qualitative interviews with the sustainability managers from a variety of organization and industry contexts (e.g. building products, hospitals, banking, energy, environmental and manufacturing).

The exploration of sustainability initiatives reveals the importance of the change agent’s reputation for building trust in their organizations. Reputation is fostered through political skill and persuasion, while leveraging social capital.

The research is rich in the depth of individual-level phenomena, thereby highlighting the skills necessary to enact change within a variety of industries. However, given the limited sample size, macro-level issues cannot be addressed.

Political skill is a teachable skill that is enhanced through mentoring and coaching. Sustainability initiatives and their organizations can benefit from leveraging persons with strong reputations to facilitate change. When lacking, persons with content knowledge can be groomed to grow their reputation, network, persuasion and political skills.

Sustainability is vital to the future of our earth and humanity. Business and society would benefit from the growth of this phenomenon.

The authors aim to help change agents achieve their objectives through consideration of not just the goals, but the process as well.

Organizations have viewed sustainability as a societal problem and unrelated to business. To recognize sustainability as an organizational issue requires companies to deal with the challenge of transforming into environmentally sustainable enterprises. This requires institutions to align mission statements with values. The purpose of this paper is to replicate previous research in sustainability and the cultural facets which impact the process.

A qualitative case study method was used to analyze 25 organizations within the US Midwest with various contexts to determine how their respective cultures impacted their change initiatives. Specifically, the authors spoke to sustainability change agents with regard to their leadership and culture, and the factors that are conducive to (or barriers to) implementing sustainability initiatives.

The original study demonstrated the presence of seven contextual conditions which are important in the process of imbedding sustainability within the institution. This research found the same dimensions to be present; however, they manifested differently 15 years later.

The original research offered a somewhat dark picture of the sustainability change initiatives within organizations. The current study however; offers a much more positive perspective which demonstrates organizations appear to have progressed with regard to sustainability.

This is a replication study whereby we discovered similar themes as to the nature of contextual factors that can hinder or advance sustainability initiatives; however, the findings 15 years later show a marked difference in the current state of affairs and the ability to implement sustainability initiatives.

A number of studies have explored the benefits (e.g. enhanced job performance and reduced strain), of being politically skilled. Within the framework of uncertainty management theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the benefits of high political skill to affective commitment, job satisfaction, and perceived job mobility, under conditions of distrust in management.

Sales representatives were surveyed and moderated multiple regression analyses were conducted to analyze the data.

The authors found that as distrust increased, affective commitment decreased for all persons, but was most pronounced for persons low on political skill. However, distrust in management had no impact on job satisfaction for those high on political skill, allowing persons high on political skill to enjoy their jobs despite high levels of distrust (an intrapsychic benefit of political skill). Finally, as distrust in management increased, persons high on political skill had increased perceived job mobility.

This study is cross-sectional, limiting conclusions about causality in the relationships studied and leaving open the possibility of reverse causation.

This research has important implications, such that, under conditions of distrust, persons low on political skill are less committed, more dissatisfied, and feel a sense of job immobility, which could lead to poor work outcomes, such as decreased job performance.

The study is the first to examine how being politically skilled benefits employee outcomes when the employee distrusts management.

The importance of involving subject matter experts (SMEs) in ERP implementations is well established. SMEs' knowledge of business and system processes are critical to conducting gap analyses and configuring enterprise systems. But what happens to SMEs on completion of the implementation phase? Prior qualitative research found that some organizations return SMEs to their old department, which can contribute to knowledge transfer; while other organizations retain the services of SMEs, to assist in ongoing efforts with support and enhancement of the systems. The purpose of this study is to understand post‐implementation organizational choices – when SMEs are retained and returned. The aim is to understand these choices relative to the goals of their project. Theoretically, organizations that return SMEs move toward a distributed or hybrid model, while organizations that retain SMEs employ a centralized functional‐support structure. In accordance with contingency theory, these structural choices should align with an organization's goals and measures of success.

This research conceptually builds on prior qualitative research, but is still exploratory in nature. The authors report on findings from an online survey conducted with 65 organizations. The sample included small, medium and large firms. Respondents were key decision‐makers in their organization's ERP initiatives (directors and managers) recruited from two user‐group associations (higher education and health care), primarily from the USA and Canada. Descriptive statistics and t‐tests (when appropriate) were utilized to analyze and report the findings.

The hybrid structure (neither completely centralized nor decentralized) was utilized most often (66 percent of the organizations in the sample). The organization's original goals and measures of success did not seem to dictate the final organizational structure, as would be predicted by contingency theory. The authors interpret this as an indication that the choice of structural form is not easily explained based on goals and objectives. They conjecture that devising a structural approach to supporting such a complex inter‐functional system such as ERP requires solving many complex simultaneous organizational problems.

This research involves a small sample of 65 organizations and is exploratory in nature; hence, it may not be projectable to a larger population. Future research should supplement this study with more industry user groups, expand the sample size, and utilize more advanced statistical methods.

Previous research has focused on successfully implementing ERP, neglecting post‐implementation design. This study contributes to a growing body of work with regard to post‐implementation design, taking into consideration SMEs and reporting structure, goals, and measures of success utilizing contingency theory as the backdrop.

The present study examined the relationships between P‐O fit, job satisfaction, perceived job mobility, and intent to turnover. It was hypothesized that job satisfaction mediated the P‐O fit‐intent to turnover relationship and that perceived job mobility moderated the job satisfaction‐intent to turnover relationship such that the combined effect of high job dissatisfaction and high perceived job mobility predicted intent to turnover.

Data were obtained utilizing a field survey from a sample of 205 full‐time employed adults working in two geographic regions in the USA. Participants completed an HTML‐based web survey that contained measures of the constructs of interest to this study.

Mediated and moderated regression analyses revealed statistical support for the hypothesized relationships, which were interpreted as evidence that P‐O misfit and job dissatisfaction do not necessarily lead to intent to turnover.

The potential for common method variability was present in the study, the impact of which could either attenuate or inflate estimated statistical relationships.

While P‐O fit researchers typically associate misfit with decreased job satisfaction and increased turnover, the present research suggests that intervening variables, such as job mobility, influence employee intentions to turnover.

The phenomenon of misfit is understudied in larger context of P‐O fit; thus this research represents one of the first studies in this area of research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between job tension (JT) and the use of intimidation in the workplace, as well as positive and negative affectivity as two potential personality trait moderators of this relationship.

The paper hypothesizes that employees would use more intimidation when they perceive higher levels of JT based on a fight response. Furthermore, it hypothesizes that when JT was high, people high in negative affectivity would use more intimidation in the workplace due to trait activation, whereas individuals high in positive affectivity would use less intimidation due to greater resource pools. The hypotheses was tested with a sample of 134 employees from a wide range of occupations and industries who completed an online survey measuring their levels of felt JT, usage of intimidation behaviors, and self‐reported affectivity.

Hierarchical moderated regression analyses revealed that JT was positively related to intimidation usage. The analyses also showed support for negative affectivity as a moderator, such that high levels of intimidation occurred when JT and negative affectivity were both high. Positive affectivity did not moderate the relationship.

Although persons high in negative affectivity are particularly vulnerable to the effects of JT, organizations must be aware of the potential for behaviors (e.g. intimidation) that can result from felt tension. Prior research has primarily viewed tension as an outcome variable; the research conceptualizes tension as an antecedent in the stressor‐strain‐outcome paradigm. Intimidation is shown to be an outcome of workplace tension – a behavioral reaction to psychological strain that is an attempt to protect valued resources.

The purpose of the paper is to introduce the special issue that brings together six papers exploring aspects of person‐organization fit.

This overarching paper contextualizes the theme and introduces the selected papers.

The findings in this paper vary according to the core theme of each of the six contributions.

Combined the papers explore new avenues of enquiry in the person‐organization (P‐O) fit domain and showcase international theoretical and empirical work on the P‐O fit construct.