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The employee-organization relationship (EOR) has increasingly become a focal point for researchers in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial relations. Literature on the EOR has developed at both the individual – (e.g. psychological contracts) and the group and organizational-levels of analysis (e.g. employment relationships). Both sets of literatures are reviewed, and we argue for the need to integrate these literatures as a means for improving understanding of the EOR. Mechanisms for integrating these literatures are suggested. A subsequent discussion of contextual effects on the EOR follows in which we suggest that researchers develop models that explicitly incorporate context. We then examine a number of theoretical lenses to explain various attributes of the EOR such as the dynamism and fairness of the exchange, and new ways of understanding the exchange including positive functional relationships and integrative negotiations. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed on the EOR.

In recent years, theory and research have been increasingly devoted to understanding organizational behavior in cross-cultural and global contexts, with particular attention being paid to the appropriateness of various human resources management (HRM) practices because practices that may be effective within one cultural context may not be effective in other cultural contexts. This chapter argues that a multi-level perspective is needed to explain the interplay between HRM practices and employee responses across cultural contexts. Specifically, the multi-level framework developed in this chapter elucidates the importance of fit between HRM practices, individual values, organizational values, and societal values. Societal values play a key role in the adoption of HRM practices, and the effectiveness of these HRM practices will depend largely on “fit” or alignment with the values of the societal culture in which the organization is operating. HRM practices also shape the collective responses of employees through organizational climate at the organizational level and through psychological climate at the individual level. For positive employee attitudes and responses to emerge, the climate created by the HRM practices must be aligned with societal and individual values. Building on these notions, the strength of the societal culture in which the organization is operating serves as a mechanism that links relationships between climate, value fit, and attitudes across levels of analysis. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for future research and implications for practice.

The purpose of this paper is to addresses the impact of organizational ethical context (ethical climate and ethical culture) and Machiavellianism on organizational‐professional conflict (OPC) and affective organizational commitment (OC) among Chinese accountants. The paper also aims to test for interactive effects of ethical context and Machiavellianism.

The paper is based on a field survey of 89 professional accountants employed by companies operating in Mainland China.

Two aspects of the organizational ethical culture, expectations of obedience to authority and strong ethical norms/incentives, emerged as the dominant influences on both OPC and affective commitment. Strong negative correlations are observed between OPC and OC, and between Machiavellianism and OC. Contrary to expectations, the organizational ethical context had the greatest impact on OC among high Machiavellians. For low Machiavellians, OPC fully mediated the relationship between ethical context and OC, but no such mediation effects are found for high Machiavellians.

This is the first study of the relationships among ethical context, OPC and OC among industry accountants in China, and the first study of the effects of Machiavellianism on these relationships. The results generally support our contention that organizational ethical context will be a key determinant of OPC and OC. The fact that weaker ethical cultures were strongly associated with increased conflict and decreased commitment suggests that managers of accounting/auditing departments should take a proactive approach to developing and nurturing positive or supportive cultures. The differences in results for high and low Machiavellians also raise interesting questions that should be addressed in future research.

This paper seeks to examine how foreign subsidiaries of MNCs can acquire new local knowledge by focusing on two intra-organizational factors of learning mechanisms and formative organizational context.

A mail survey was carried out with top managers among manufacturing subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) located in Hanoi, Vietnam and Guangdong province of China. In total 123 completed questionnaires from MNCs in Hanoi and China were received.

The results suggested that training and mentoring and formative organizational context has positive association with knowledge acquisition. However, three interaction terms between learning mechanisms (experimentation, socialization, training and mentoring) with formative organizational context are significantly related to knowledge acquisition. Besides, the authors also found a positive and significant association between knowledge acquisition and subsidiary performance.

Building a formative organizational context directly promotes knowledge acquisition and increases the effectiveness of more informal learning mechanisms. Besides, a learning mechanism may work differently in different contexts, and foreign managers need to be aware of when to apply what mechanisms.

The paper argues that the alignment between organizational context and organizational learning mechanisms can help the foreign subsidiaries acquire new knowledge and improve subsequent performance. Local knowledge acquisition in MNCs should be conceived as a deliberate and managed act, requiring a careful selection of both formal and informal mechanisms supported by appropriate contextual conditions in foreign subsidiaries.

The purpose of this paper is to validate an instrument for the Ghoshal and Bartlett model and operationalize its four attributes into a multidimensionality instrument questionnaire. This study operationalizes the four attributes, namely, discipline, support, trust and stretch, into a multidimensionality instrument questionnaire and tests this instrument's validation using data from 317 Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor-status companies.

This paper follows the procedures of building a scale measure. This was carried out in three main stages. The first stage is the generation of scale items. The purpose of this stage is to identify and analyze items based on intensive literature review. The second stage is the assessment of face validity to ensure the correspondence between the individual items and the constructs intended to measure. The final stage is the statistical validation, which includes the assessment of validity and reliability of the introduced instrument.

The paper introduces 23 multidimensional questionnaire items, which contribute to organizational context dimensions. The statistical analysis that followed the conceptual development shows that the presented instrument has good psychometric properties. The validity and reliability of the scale were presented and discussed.

This paper suggests that these organizational context dimensions can be investigated with a high degree of confidence, especially when applied to organizations with different climate. To improve the robustness of the model, additional testing in different contexts and cultures may be necessary. Future research may also test the validity of the instrument using larger sample data.

The measure offers researchers a comprehensive and flexible approach to the assessment of organizational context and collective learning from a managerial action perspective. This measure may be useful for a broad range of research interests, enabling researchers to investigate some theoretical propositions related to managerial action, such as the relationship between organizational climate and organizational performance. The measure also helps to establish the relationship between organizational context and collective learning in the organization.

This study helps to fill the gap in the development of the organizational climate through both conceptual and empirical work. There is therefore a need for a measured, testable instrument to facilitate the empirical evaluation by the modern organization. This measure also contributes toward a better understanding of the managerial role. This managerial role has an imperative role in crafting the behavior of the organization’s members, developing collective learning through distributed initiatives and mutual cooperation.

Institutional theory is becoming one of the dominant theoretical perspectives in organization theory and is increasingly being applied in accounting research to study the practice of accounting in organizations. However, most institutional theory research has adequately theorized neither the institutionalization process through which change takes place nor the socio‐political context of the institutional formations. We propose a social theory based framework for grounding and expanding institutional theory to more fully articulate institutionalization processes. Specifically, we incorporate institutional theory and structuration theory and draw on the work of Max Weber in developing a framework of the context and the processes associated with creating, adopting and discarding institutional practices. We propose that the expanded framework depicts the socio‐economic and political context better and more directly addresses the dynamics of enacting, embedding and changing organizational features and processes. Expanding the focus of the institutional theory based accounting research can facilitate a more comprehensive representation of accounting as the object of institutional practices as well as provide a better articulation of the role of accounting in the institutionalization process.

The purpose of this study is to examine how context shapes leaders' caring approach in ways that influence organizational learning and the cultivation of professional capital.

This exploratory study draws on case study data from two schools. Within each school, the authors draw primarily on semi-structured interviews with teachers and leaders.

The authors found that school context and the accompanying leader beliefs shaped the structures and practices where organizational learning occurred, and thereby influence the diffusion of organizational learning in the school and the flexibility by which organizational lessons can be applied.

This research demonstrates that the context and place in which schools are situated influence how problems are apprehended and addressed. Leaders' relational approach, bounded by this context, influences how members of the school develop professional capacity. Larger scale studies would help clarify the nature of these effects.

Although context has been shown to influence leadership, no study has examined the links between context, leaders' relational approach and organizational learning.

For the past several decades, the field of global leadership has made noteworthy theoretical and empirical progress. The role of a global follower, however, has not been addressed to date. This chapter focuses on global followers and global followership as vital elements of a global leadership process supporting a traditional followership view that “leadership can only occur if there is followership” (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014, p. 83). Two assumptions ground the arguments: global leaders and global followers are engaged in a partnering process of global leadership, and followers and global followers have distinctive characteristics influenced by their specific environments. To explore those assumptions, we start by introducing the followership theory and relevant followership characteristics. Subsequently, we address the role of context in global leader–follower dynamics, extrapolate global followership characteristics from relevant multidisciplinary literature, and offer an example of a global leader–follower partnership. Next, we examine mentions of global followers and global followership in academic and nonacademic literature, and define a global followership construct. The conceptual framework, global followership model, research agenda, and practical implications conclude the manuscript.

Several comprehensive reviews are united in drawing the conclusion that the cumulative research evidence on work team diversity is equivocal. Rather than review the extant state of diversity research, in this paper we redirect attention to the context of workplace diversity as a possible explanation for these mixed findings. We discuss how diversity context may be conceptualized, specify various aspects of this context at multiple levels of analysis, and consider how contextual variables can shape the outcomes of work team diversity. We present findings from a literature review (1999–2006) to identify key trends and patterns of results reported in recent research as well as contextual factors that have received attention to date. This paper also considers how the non-significant, positive, negative, and curvilinear effects of diversity reported in studies can be explained by the contextual factors outlined. Implications for future research are also discussed.

Cross-cultural studies suggest that while organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and organizational justice have received considerable attention in Anglo-Saxon contexts, the same cannot be claimed in non-Western, Arab Middle Eastern contexts. The purpose of this paper is to attend to this knowledge gap by exploring OCB in the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its relationship with organizational justice.

In cognizance of the extant literature, the study explores the perceptions of Saudi Arabian managers of the five conceptually different dimensions of citizenship behaviour – conscientiousness, sportsmanship, civic virtue, courtesy, and altruism. It also explores their perceptions of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. In addition, the current study investigates the relationship between organizational justice and OCB. Using the survey questionnaire method, data was collected from more than 250 Saudi managers at different levels of the managerial hierarchy and working in a wide range of organizations and industries.

The results indicate that Saudi Arabian managers reported exhibiting OCB at work. They also suggest the salience of various forms of organizational justice in Saudi Arabian organizations as motivated by Arab cultural values and Islamic teachings. In regards to the relationship between the two constructs, our results indicate that interactional justice is most frequently associated with various dimensions of OCB for various reasons, including the emphasis that Islam and Islamic teachings give to demonstrating respect and courtesy in dealings with others.

The literature on OCB and organizational justice is thin in the Arab world. With that in mind, the current study is the first to explore OCB in Saudi Arabia. It is also the first to investigate the relationship between citizenship behavior and justice in Saudi organizations. The findings of this study highlight the need for academics and human resource experts to account for the role of socio-cultural factors and Islam when examining these constructs in the Arab world. The implications of the findings for academics and practitioners are discussed.