Search results

This article responds to the call for more research on mobile work by exploring how the aspirations of these workers relate to job satisfaction through adaptation to the job characteristics they experience.

Based on aspiration theory and the literature on mobile work, the paper examines how mobile workers form aspirations and how this is related to their perception of job satisfaction. The empirical analysis uses a two-tier stochastic frontier analysis and the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey dataset.

Mobile workers formulate higher aspirations than the working conditions they experience and report lower levels of job satisfaction than other types of workers. They revise their aspirations downwards when they experience autonomy, discretion, performance-related pay schemes, relation-oriented leadership while they increase their aspirations when they experience work intensification and discrimination.

This paper provides new insights into the work perceptions of mobile workers and enriches existing research by highlighting the importance of the study of individual aspirations to advance understanding of the complex dynamics of mobile work.

In the literature, evidence is to be found of the positive effect of high-performance work systems (HPWSs) on innovation in firms. However, innovation is enabled by not only human resources but also digital technology, and scholars have called for further investigation into the interplay between digital technology and HRM systems. Drawing on signalling theory and HPWSs research, the purpose of this study is to explore the moderating role of digital technologies in the relationship between HPWSs and innovation in the firm and consider employee participation as an additional conditioning factor.

This study uses data from the European Company Suvery 2019 administered in a sample of more than 20,000 European establishments and applies logistic regression with a three-way interaction.

HPWSs underpin product and process innovation. Moreover, this study shows that in firms with low levels of employee participation, digital technology enhances the effect of HPWSs on innovation, while in firms with high levels of employee participation, this effect is reduced.

This study enriches the scholarly discussion about the link between HPWSs and innovation in the firm, by investigating in theoretical and empirical terms the moderating effect of digital technology, underlining that either positive or negative synergistic effects are possible. By adding employee participation to the analysis, the authors cast light on an important boundary condition for understanding when the synergic effects become more prominent. This intends to respond to recent calls from scholars and practitioners for more insight into the precise nature of the synergies between HPWSs and digital technology on innovation in the firm, with important implications for management.

The literature has recognized the key role of the human resource management (HRM) practices for enhancing firms’ innovative performance. At the same time, scholars have consistently demonstrated open innovation (OI) to be an effective approach for boosting companies’ innovative outcome. Nevertheless, academics have largely overlooked to investigate the complex relationship between HRM practices, OI and organizations’ innovativeness, while claiming further research on organizational antecedents on OI. Using the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework as analytical lens, this study investigates the direct and indirect relationship between AMO-enhancing practices and firms’ innovation capacity, hypothesizing a potential mediating role of OI.

Drawing from the European Company Survey 2019, a large-scale representative dataset of more than 20,000 establishments at European level and building on the “human-side” of OI, the study proposes two hypotheses regarding the relationship between AMO-enhancing practices and OI in fostering product and process innovation in European firms.

The results show that companies that invest in AMO-enhancing practices not only have higher probability to innovate, but also are more inclined to collaborate with external partners. Moreover, OI not only enhances the innovation capacity of the firm but also partially mediates the relationship between HRM and organizations’ innovativeness.

This is one of the first studies which empirically investigate how the AMO framework increases the likelihood of engaging in an OI process by firms, thereby, increasing their innovation capacity. The results shed further lights on both “the human side” of OI, as well as in the mechanisms linking HRM practices with innovation. Moreover, the analysis provides a deeper understanding about the organizational antecedents of the OI process, as well as corroborating the recent theoretical contributions on HRM and OI.

The purpose of this paper is to call for an in‐depth reflection on Weber's research approach based on the notions of adequate causation and objective possibility.

The paper illustrates the main characteristics and premises of the research approach. It further exemplifies its application through a qualitative study that investigates “How” and “Why” knowledge integration occurs in the creative processes of teams spanning over time and space. In so doing, it argues that Weber's epistemology could remain a valid point of reference to shift from the generation of empirical propositions through qualitative research to the quantitative analysis of empirical regularities recurring into a large number of empirical cases.

This paper shows how Weber's research approach could assist researchers in overcoming the dichotomy between rigour and relevance in qualitative research within organization and management studies.

The work offers new ways of looking at established ideas within organization and management studies, through new lenses as alternative ways of knowing social phenomena available to scholars, to produce theoretical knowledge relevant for and applicable into practice.

The aim of this special issue is to bring together contributions from diverse perspectives interested in challenging the quantitative/qualitative divide within organisation and management research.

The papers in this special issue explore at a methodological or paradigmatic level (rather than at the level of particular research methods) the possible ways in which different research methodologies converge, diverge and overlap. Rather that asking questions about the validity and intrinsic value of certain methodologies, we are encouraged to shift gear towards assessing how useful these methodologies are in terms of carrying us from the world of practice to theory and vice‐versa. If methodologies help us to progress our thinking and our practices, they are “true” in a pragmatist sense. If they stall our thinking and do not influence in any way our practices, then they are probably untrue.

It is hoped that the papers presented in this special issue help us process our ideas and experiences in a progressive way, towards finding better, more robust ways of approaching our research practices.

Of course, it is for the reader to decide if this project has made an impact on their own thinking and practical endeavour but we remain convinced that the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative methodologies is not productive and must be abandoned in favour of a heterodox and more pragmatic approach to methodology.