Knowledge that Transforms

In the gig economy, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in managing human resource functions such as task allocation and performance management is increasingly significant. However, there is limited understanding of how the reliability of these functions, as experienced by workers, impacts their trust and engagement. Grounded in the transactional model of stress and coping, this study examines the influence of experienced algorithmic reliability on gig workers' trust in their platforms and their subsequent work engagement. We further explore how occupational stigma consciousness moderates this mediated relationship. Through a time‐lagged survey of 332 gig workers, our findings indicate that reliable algorithmic management experiences significantly enhance trust and subsequently work engagement. Moreover, this relationship is complicated by occupational stigma consciousness, which can diminish the positive effects of algorithmic reliability on trust and engagement. This study deepens our understanding of technology‐mediated work environments, emphasizing the critical role of workers' experiences with AI‐driven HRM functions in enhancing engagement and well‐being.

Quiet quitting (QQ) has emerged as a prominent topic in both popular press and academic research, reflecting shifts in employees' engagement, effort allocation, and responses to contemporary work pressures. This review synthesizes findings from 11 papers published in a recent Special Issue on The Disquiet of Quiet Quitting . We integrate conceptual, empirical, and methodological insights from these papers and other recent literature to clarify what QQ is and what it is not. We highlight the multidimensional nature of QQ, distinguishing deliberate and passive forms, reactive versus value‐driven motivations, and variations in scope and behavioral expression. We then propose a 2 × 2 typology of quiet quitters (Protesters, Faders, Boundary Setters, and Indifferent Drifters) constructed along two key dimensions, intentionality and motivational basis, to capture the heterogeneity of behaviors and underlying motives. Finally, we discuss implications for theory, measurement, and practice, emphasizing how QQ signals broader dynamics in employment relationships, including fairness, well‐being, and sustainable engagement, and we identify directions for future research, including longitudinal, multi‐level, and cross‐cultural investigations.

Although formal accommodations are required by law across many jurisdictions, many employees seek informal adjustments to their work conditions. These individualized work arrangements are not rooted in legal compliance but are instead provided at managers' discretion. Employees without disabilities routinely ask for changes to their work conditions (e.g., flexible work arrangements), and these changes often mirror those requested by employees with disabilities. Using Social Exchange Theory as our conceptual lens, we examined the critical role of managers' decision‐making on informal accommodation requests through three policy‐capturing studies. As hypothesized, managers were more likely to grant informal accommodations to employees with longer tenure, stronger task performance, and more citizenship behaviors. Moreover, tenure consistently had the strongest influence on accommodation intentions. Managers were also more likely to grant informal accommodations for disability reasons than for family‐related reasons, contrary to our expectations. Our research offers novel insights into how managers view informal accommodation requests from employees with and without disabilities. This study provides crucial theoretical contributions to the human resource management literature and informs practical considerations on issues faced by managers and organizations.

The rapid expansion of telecommuting during the COVID‐19 pandemic created novel disputes over remote‐work conditions that existing laws did not clearly regulate. This study investigates the configurational determinants of employee victory in these disputes. Drawing on resource‐based and institutional theories of litigation outcomes, we propose an analytical framework comprising three categories of determinants: employee resources (income, tenure, and legal representation), employer resources (enterprise size and maturity), and institutional factors (dispute type and government policy invocation). Using fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on 287 first‐instance telecommuting labor‐dispute judgments from China in 2020, we identify five equifinal pathways to employee success. These pathways reveal that no single factor guarantees victory; instead, success depends on specific synergies, such as high‐income employees leveraging policy support in individual disputes or long‐tenured employees utilizing collective action against strong enterprises. These findings offer a configurational perspective on how resources and institutional factors jointly shape remote‐work litigation outcomes.

The aging workforce demands evidence‐based human resource practices that lengthen working lives. Building on the Conservation of Resources theory (Hobfoll 1989), we investigate which organizational practices are indispensable for expanding older workers' occupational future time perspective (OFTP)—people's perceived opportunities and remaining time at work (Zacher and Frese 2009). A necessary condition analysis of survey data from 3077 workers aged 50+ in nine countries tests nine domains of the Later Life Workplace Index (LLWI) as potential minimal viable practices . All domains exhibited statistically significant necessity effects; however, using the conventional threshold (Dul et al. 2023), only later life supportive leadership and adaptive work design reached the level considered meaningfully necessary . The remaining domains showed smaller, near necessity effects, suggesting a pattern of partial necessity across HRM practices. Exploratory analyses along the Tightness–Looseness cultural continuum suggested that necessity thresholds tended to be higher in culturally Tight than Loose societies, highlighting the importance of context‐sensitive HRM. This study refines theorizing on career sustainability, introduces necessity logic to the work and aging literature, and offers managers evidence‐based tools to prevent insurmountable shortcomings. Failure to meet the identified LLWI thresholds will typically result in suboptimal OFTP.

To decide about retirement, employees assess and react to their work environment, including age‐inclusive HR practices. Age‐inclusive HR practices ensure equal access to key HR functions for all employees—regardless of age, for example, training and development for all age groups, unlike age‐specific HR practices, which target older workers exclusively, for example, development opportunities for older workers. In this study, we uncover why age‐inclusive HR practices are effective in retaining older employees. Using a conservation of resources theory approach, we explain that age‐inclusive HR practices can enhance older employees' employability (i.e., perceived ability to realize job opportunities within and between employers) and reduce their job insecurity (i.e., perceived risk of a decline in job quality, including working conditions, career prospects, and salary). Employability, conversely, weakens employees' retirement intentions, while job insecurity strengthens these intentions. We use a three‐wave design with 758 older employees and path analysis, controlling for age‐specific HR practices, to demonstrate the unique effect of age‐inclusive HR practices on employees' retirement intentions. Findings showed that age‐inclusive HR practices (beyond age‐specific HR practices) were indirectly linked to employees' retirement intentions via job insecurity but not employability, emphasizing their importance for resource loss prevention as a means for older employees' retention.

We examine how gender diversity and employees' internal pay position interact to explain gender differences in pay raises. Integrating equity theory and institutional theory, we argue that pay raises are guided by equity‐based reward allocation policies. Further, we expect a decoupling between these policies and their implementation if other gender diversity goals, such as a balanced ratio of female and male employees at the work‐unit level, are achieved. Specifically, gender diversity at the work‐unit level provides legitimacy that corporate diversity goals are being pursued. This makes the implementation of reward allocation policies aimed at increasing gender pay equity less salient in work units with high levels of gender diversity. We test our hypotheses using a multilevel moderated mediation model on a longitudinal sample of 9,246 observations from 4,003 employees in a large German company. Our results show an indirect effect of gender on pay increases over 3 years via compa ratio (i.e., the relative pay position for a given job grade). In support of equity theory, the results show that women receive higher pay increases than men over time to compensate for a lower compa ratio. Moreover, in work units with high gender diversity, the indirect effect of gender on pay raise is weaker, suggesting a decoupling between equity‐based reward allocation policies and their implementation. Our results offer valuable insights into the interaction of equity and institutional theory‐based explanations of reaching corporate diversity goals.

We note that while the institutional environment determines the actions and structures of constituent organizations, there are still limited insights available in the literature on the nature and process of interactions between key stakeholders in ambulance services, especially as they respond during a significant crisis. This study specifically examines how a positive social exchange between senior leadership, managers, and frontline staff, accompanied by changes to the leadership style and HR practices, resulted in significant service transformation. An in‐depth qualitative case study design was used to interview 52 frontline staff and leaders from the UK National Health Service's (NHS) Ambulance Service over a prolonged period of 8 months (October 2020 to May 2021). Interviews and secondary data were abductively analyzed, showing how changes to HRM and leadership practices shaped service transformation's content, process, and logic. The findings suggest that an iterative social exchange between the key social actors in the Ambulance Trust led to adaptations to the nature of HRM and leadership practices, which positively impacted the changes to service delivery, leading to service transformation and improved health and well‐being of paramedics. Our conceptual framework contributes to the literature by integrating how the use of agency, new HRM, and leadership practices in the context of institutionalized structures can result in service transformation. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.

Between employee burnout and growing recruitment challenges, a systemic crisis confronts the service industry. One reason lies in the scope of received human resource management (HRM) approaches, which often emphasize organizational performance metrics at the expense of the emotional, social, and material experiences of doing frontline service work. As a result, many HRM solutions do not fully address the experiential realities that shape employee wellbeing, engagement, and retention. This paper calls for a stronger focus on how service workers interpret, inhabit, and appropriate the everyday realities of their work. Through a problematizing review, we build on an emerging, inter‐disciplinary body of research that builds rich, grounded accounts of frontline service experiences. We propose a new experience‐centric framework—a set of theoretical tools and a conceptual vocabulary that put forth a more holistic understanding of the lived experience of service work. We conclude by offering a set of recommendations that can help foster more resilient, engaged, and people‐centered service environments.

Human Resource Management (HRM) research focused on social care is sparse. This gap is surprising given the scale of the social care workforce in many countries, its vital role in meeting the increasingly complex needs of vulnerable community groups, and the persistent challenges in recruiting and retaining staff. Framing the special issue of articles on HRM in social care, we suggest the relative neglect stems from difficulties: defining the boundaries of the social care sector; scoping its workforce; capturing the diverse range of organizational service providers; and in a crowded research space, clarifying how HRM researchers might make a distinctive scholarly and practical contribution to the literature. The six articles comprising the special issue, together with literature from HRM and related fields, are explored through the organizational, systems, and stakeholder perspectives that underpinned the original call for articles. We develop a substantive characterization of HRM in social care comprising various parts. First, systemic features of the sector, including service fragmentation and light touch state regulation, are presented as pushing social care organizations towards opportunistic, low‐cost workforce management approaches that stakeholders—particularly employees and less directly service users—often experience negatively. Second, providers, nonetheless, retain some discretion to pursue alternative management strategies, with recent policy shifts towards networked care delivery models creating opportunities for more strategic, developmental HRM approaches. Third, leadership behavior and intrinsic employee satisfaction with care work can moderate the often‐degraded employment experience, albeit within limits, suggested by the sector's ongoing recruitment and retention difficulties. Synthesizing these insights through the systems, organizational, and stakeholder themes, we present a multi‐level analytical framework for the study of HRM issues in social care. Accompanying research questions aim to support the exploration of workforce issues by policymakers, practitioners, and HRM scholars.