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Human resource management is becoming more and more complex as society develops. Seldom is it possible nowadays for a boss to behave like the old‐fashioned sergeant‐major whose subordinates jump to attention whenever a command is barked out. Moreover the answers to apparently simple questions, such as “Why do I work?” and “Why do others work?” , becomes increasingly complicated when the opportunities for meaningful work wax and wane with successive booms and recessions.

ONE OF the first branch librarians I worked under was a man after my own heart. I shall refer to him pseudonymously as Bill Brown—which won't prevent those who knew him from recognising him. He was a decent, taciturn chap who had been gassed during the first world war. He took his time over things and took frequent swigs from a bottle of dark linctus to soothe his lungs.

This paper seeks to identify and discuss a phenomenon with a hidden but severe impact on the conduct of research and teaching in marketing.

Solicited as a viewpoint contribution, with permission to think aloud.

Physics, as the archetypal “proper” science, has exerted an undue and malign influence within universities on perceptions of scholarliness in “soft” sciences such as marketing, and hence on the applicability of its research and teaching. But the anti‐science commentators may protest too much; the key question is how science is applied. Physics envy could therefore have a positive outcome, if debate is encouraged.

There are obvious implications for the structure of research and teaching in university departments and sub‐departments of marketing, in the UK and elsewhere.

A polemic, but one with a balanced conclusion.

Human resource management is becoming more and more complex as society develops. Seldom is it possible nowadays for a boss to behave like the old‐fashioned Sergeant‐Major whose subordinates jump to attention whenever a command is barked out. Moreover the answers to apparently simple questions, such as “Why do I work?” and “Why do others work”, become increasingly complicated when the opportunities for meaningful work wax and wane with successive booms and recessions.

This study investigates the dynamics of supervisor-subordinate relationship, commonly referred in leadership literature as leader-member exchange (LMX), in the context of envy, and its associated consequences. Building on the affective events theory, we hypothesize that employees who do not share a good relationship with their supervisors (low-quality LMX) will be envious of the peers that maintain great relationship (high-quality LMX) with the supervisor. As a result, they will restrict knowledge sharing, and engage in uncivil behaviors. Hierarchical regression was used to test hypotheses on data derived from a sample of 204 software engineers working across various information technology firms in India. The study found support for all of the proposed hypotheses and extends research in the field by demonstrating negative consequences of envy in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) performance and impact in contexts beyond their own internal objectives.

Based on an “eclectic” paradigm and the range of motivations, the framework is designed around three layers of evaluation: “efficiency” as static optimisation, “growth and development” as the dynamics of change on a purely economic view; political/economic sphere in terms of the outcomes of “distribution”, and “sovereignty” on the more purely political concern of how MNEs may undermine countries’ policy independence.

MNE and national economies have to use current sources of competitiveness efficiently while addressing the necessity to reinforce and refocus them through time. Within these broad agendas, significant interactions and outcomes reflect a range of contingencies conditioned by both MNE objectives and hosts’ competitive status.

The paper concerns economics and MNE role in globalisation. The paper defines a framework of four generic evaluative issues of MNE performance, which subsume a wider range of important but more niche concerns.

In our 10th volume of Research in Occupational Stress and Well Being, we offer eight chapters that examine the role of the economic crisis in occupational stress and well being research. The first three chapters are considered more general overviews, and each examines a different aspect of economic stress and well being. Our lead chapter, by Songqi Liu and Mo Wang, provides an in-depth review of perceived overqualification. They develop and present a multilevel model of perceived overqualification that explicitly addresses antecedents, consequences, as well as the intermediating linkages within the relationships. The second chapter by Mindy K. Shoss and Tahira M. Probst also takes a multilevel approach by examining outcomes of economic stress. Specifically, they discuss how employee experiences with economic stress give impetus to emergent outcomes and employee well being. In our third overview chapter, Aimee E. A. King and Paul E. Levy develop a theoretical framework for organizational politics in an economic downturn. Specifically, they propose an integrative model that examines the role of the economic downturn, politics, and well being.

Prior research that attempts to empirically correlate research activity and effective teaching generates conflicting results. These contradictory findings contribute to the scrutiny that currently threatens to undermine accounting education and to impact funds currently directed toward the support of accounting research. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of relevant research on students’ perceptions of effective teaching. This two-phase study incorporates both a between-subjects decision-making experiment and a ranking instrument to measure the importance of various faculty attributes of teaching effectiveness. The two factors of interest in this study are whether a hypothetical accounting professor (1) conducts and publishes relevant research and (2) incorporates relevant research into classroom lectures. The results of the first phase of the study experimentally demonstrate that students enrolled in accounting classes perceive the professor who does both (conducts and publishes relevant research and incorporates research into classroom lectures) to be significantly more effective than others. Specifically, the study identifies a statistically significant two-way interaction between the two factors of interest. This suggests that students perceive the professor's research to be a component of teaching effectiveness if, and only if, that research is incorporated into the classroom experience of the student. The second phase of the study finds that students generally rank both of the faculty research attributes lower in importance than other previously identified factors used to describe the professor.

EVERY so often somebody who claims to speak with the voice of authority or knowledge warns us that the inevitable result of advanced technology — or, rather, its adoption by employers, whether private or state — will be enhanced unemployment.

The paper's purpose is to investigate the relationships between pay communication and referent choice, pay satisfaction and pay equity perceptions.

A sample of 149 employed graduate business students from a variety of organizations were surveyed at two different times, first to assess dependent variables (pay satisfaction and pay equity perceptions), and second to measure perceived pay policies.

Contrary to predictions, increased pay communication was not associated with referent choice, and referent choice was unrelated to pay attitudes. Pay communication was also unassociated with pay satisfaction. However, increased pay communication was found to be negatively related to pay equity perceptions.

A two‐questionnaire survey methodology was designed to minimize the possibility of common method variance. Because few employers communicate about pay, there was restriction of range for this independent variable, perhaps constraining results. However, the use of multiple employers, even in this student population, constitutes a meaningful sample.

Employers should be cautious about what pay information they provide to their employees, since this study suggests that increased pay communication results in lower pay equity perceptions.

Research in this area is extremely limited and thus this paper provides a strong foundation for further investigation.