Knowledge that Transforms

In this paper, we examine the career histories of the chief executive officers (CEOs) affiliated with the 500 largest organizations in Europe and the 500 largest in the United States. Our purpose is to determine whether frequent career moves across employers, a phenomenon we label an “external labor market strategy,” brings greater career rewards than moves inside the same organization. The results reveal that an external labor market strategy is negatively related to career success. On both continents, CEOs who have spent a smaller fraction of their career in their current organization or have changed employers more often have taken a longer time from the start of their career to be promoted to the most influential corporate positions. The labor market institutions in the 22 countries sampled do not influence the relationship between an external labor market strategy and career success, while the specific geographic region in which the employers are located has a limited impact on this relationship.

In this introduction to this Special Issue, we briefly describe the knowledge perspective that has emerged in management research over the last two decades, discuss its current and potential future relations to Human Resources Management (HRM) research, and summarize the papers in this issue.

In the current career climate characterized by change and turbulence, employees may demonstrate limited psychological attachment to their employers. Rousseau (1998) suggested that organizations can elicit psychological attachment from employees by reinforcing perceptions of organizational membership and demonstrating care and support for them. The effectiveness of these strategies, however, may depend on individuals' personality traits. In this study, we examined the moderating effect of locus of control in the relationship among four valued aspects of the work environment—information sharing, job significance, opportunity for learning, and availability of rewards for performance—and employees' intentions to stay. In two empirical studies, we found that information sharing, job significance, and locus of control interacted to positively affect intentions to stay and that opportunity for learning, availability of rewards for performance, and locus of control also interacted to increase intentions to stay. Implications of these results for theory building and practice are discussed.

Overemphasis on financial performance criteria to award incentives for CEOs has often been mentioned as one of the main culprits behind recent corporate scandals. In response, there is a growing chorus for inclusion of social performance criteria in the design of executive compensation schemes. To date, however, very little is known about the true benefits of this practice. This article critically discusses the potential advantages and pitfalls of this recommendation.

To date, research has largely neglected individuals who become expatriates on their own initiative and outside the boundaries of multinational corporations. This study, which focused on 206 non‐Saudi expatriate nurses employed in a Saudi Arabian hospital, investigated the relationship of job satisfaction and turnover intentions with four factors: cross‐cultural training, protégé experience, peer support, and the cultural clusters of the home and host countries. The study also examined the role of gender in the relationship of work attitudes with protégé experience and peer support. Protégé experience had the most consistent relationship with job satisfaction and turnover intentions, while attendance of cross‐cultural training before expatriation was not involved in any of the identified relationships. In most conditions, protégé experience and peer support were associated with higher job satisfaction for expatriates of Arab origin. Finally, gender did not play a moderating role in the relationship of work attitudes with mentoring or peer support. These results shed light on the factors that help determine the success of non‐corporate‐sponsored expatriates and have implications for practice and future research.

Using gift exchange theory to explain the growing trend of employers offering employer‐supported volunteering (ESV) benefits, this article discusses the creation of exchange relationships between the employer and employee and between the volunteer organization and employee. Hypotheses derived from the employee's perspective are tested with a nationally representative sample of volunteers (n=3,658). Findings suggest that ESV benefits are positively related to hours volunteered by the employee. Volunteer hours predict employee perceptions of skill acquisition, and such perceptions are positively related to perceptions of job success and employer recognition. We discuss the implications of these findings for business, employees, and volunteer organizations, with an emphasis on human resource management policy and practice.

Firms use different structural arrangements to carry out their internal work, and interunit interactions that take place in the context of these arrangements may have different consequences for knowledge sharing. We explore four contexts of such interunit interaction—interunit meetings, project groups, cross‐border teams, and expatriate/ repatriate interactions—and we examine the extent to which they are associated with social capital and knowledge sharing. Data from structured interviews with multinational corporation (MNC) managers, which we explored using MANCOVA/ANCOVA and regression analysis, showed that cross‐border and expatriate/repatriate interaction contexts are associated with more interpersonal trust and shared cognitive ground than interunit meeting and project group ones, and the expatriate/repatriate context with more shared cognitive ground than all other contexts. The regression results show a significant relationship between the cross‐border team and expatriate/repatriate contexts and knowledge sharing. We also find that affective and cognitive social capital mediate the relationship between cross‐border team and expatriate/repatriate contexts and knowledge sharing.

The objective of this paper is to test how human resources management (HRM) practices and employees' knowledge influence the development of innovative capabilities and, by extension, a firm's performance. Results confirm that HRM practices are not directly associated with innovation unless they take into account employees' knowledge. Specifically, our analyses establish a mediating role for the uniqueness of knowledge between collaborative HRM practices and innovative activity, a positive influence of knowledge‐based HRM practices on valuable knowledge, and a positive contribution of innovations to the company's profit. We tested hypotheses in a sample of firms from the most innovative Spanish industries through structural equation modeling.

Shift work is a fact of life for many workers. Almost one in six full‐time hourly and salary employees works a shift outside the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. window that researchers use to define the temporal bounds of the traditional workday. Almost half of those working in restaurants and bars work such alternate shifts, as do more than a quarter of workers in hospitals and manufacturing facilities. Drawing on interviews and observations in a Midwestern auto parts plant, this study explores how individuals in this predominantly male workforce talk about fulfilling family responsibilities in the face of relatively inflexible shift schedules. Interviews and observations reveal how the time pressures of shift work, particularly the afternoon‐evening shift, affect the ability of fathers to participate in their children's activities, especially organized sports. Without formal options for scheduling flexibility, workers turn to a variety of informal approaches, such as ad hoc arrangements with sympathetic supervisors or the assistance of coworkers in covering for absences. In extreme cases, workers may engage in independent actions, often placing their jobs at risk. These findings contribute to the literature on work‐family conflict and the gender dynamics of work‐family life programs. By emphasizing the importance of including fathers in the work‐family equation, they have practical implications for both employers and policymakers concerned with addressing the challenges of helping a contemporary workforce strike an equitable balance between work and family life.