Knowledge that Transforms

This study examines the demographic, economic, and psychographic characteristics of 324 blue‐collar workers who were offered four options for either retirement or severance from the organization. Consistent with previous research, individuals who accepted retirement options have more organizational tenure and believed that the packages would provide stable financial futures. A key finding for those who accepted the nonretirement options is that comparable employment would be available. The study concludes with research limitations and suggestions for future research.

This interview examines Telefónica's projects and efforts in the area of corporate social responsibility. Telefónica is one of the world's largest multinational firms in the telecommunications sector. It is present in 25 countries, serves more than 260 million customers, and employs a staff of approximately 285,000 professionals. The company is still advancing and finding new opportunities to increase its capacity to innovate, improving ways of doing business, enhancing customer satisfaction, and helping educate customers. In this interview, Oscar Maraver (managing director of the human resources area), Jose Buqueras Dobato (director of HR planning), and Alberto Andreu Panillos (director of corporate reputation and identity and environmental affairs) explain and share their vision of policies developed both internally with employees and externally with customers. Their approach includes a strong emphasis on corporate social responsibility.

Occupational stress research has consistently demonstrated many negative effects of work stressors on employee adjustment (i.e., job‐related attitudes and health). Considerable literature also describes potential moderators of this relationship. While research has revealed that different workplace identifications can have significant positive effects on employee adjustment, it has neglected to investigate their potential stress‐buffering effects. Based on identity theories, it was predicted that stress‐buffering effects of different types of identifications (distal versus proximal) would be revealed when the identification type and employee adjustment outcome type (distal versus proximal) were congruent. Predictions were tested with an employee sample from five human service nonprofit organizations ( N = 337). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that main and moderated effects relating to identification supported the notion that occupational stress would be reduced when there was congruence of distal and proximal identifications and distal and proximal outcome types. However, stress‐buffering effects were also found for high identifiers and low identifiers that were not in line with hypotheses posing questions for the definitions of distal and proximal identifications. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.

Ethnic and cultural diversity is an increasing reality in the US workplace. The current study highlights the importance of acknowledging the culturally heterogeneous nature of ethnic groups, and the need to focus on social identity characteristics such as cultural values when assessing group differences. We demonstrate that cultural values (i.e., individualism) contribute to employees' experiences of work‐family conflict beyond the effects of ethnicity. Specifically, we introduce a model informed by social identity theory that explains why acculturation is related to work‐family conflict. The model was tested with a sample of 309 employed Caucasian and Hispanic Americans. An empirical test of our model provides evidence that individualism mediates the relationship between language‐ and social‐based acculturation and work‐family conflict, even when controlling for ethnicity. Additionally, alternative models further reveal that the effects of acculturation and individualism contribute to work interfering with family. As an implication of the current study, we suggest that researchers and organizational managers should consider the cultural values of their diverse workforce when implementing policies that affect conflict between work and family.

The interests of organizations and unions are often seen to be in competition. However, the union‐voice hypothesis suggests that unions can provide a distinctive mechanism to lower organizational costs by reducing exit behavior. This study looks at union citizenship behavior as a form of voice and examines its effect on employee absence. It draws on data from 367 branches of a large unionized banking organization to explore both the antecedents and outcomes of union citizenship behavior. Union citizenship behavior directed toward helping fellow members with workplace grievances was found to reduce branch‐level absenteeism, while union loyalty mediated the impact of a number of union‐related variables on union citizenship behavior. The implications for a balanced union‐management relationship are discussed in the article.

The aim of this longitudinal study was to explore reciprocal relationships between work/family pressure, work/family interference, and work/family satisfaction among Taiwanese employees (N = 310). All study variables were assessed three times. We found that within the work domain, earlier work pressure caused later work‐to‐family conflict (WFC), while earlier WFC reduced later job satisfaction. We also found that earlier WFC caused later work pressure, while earlier job satisfaction reduced later WFC. Similarly, we found that within the family domain, earlier family pressure caused later family‐to‐work conflict (FWC), while earlier FWC reduced later family satisfaction. We also found that earlier FWC caused later family pressure. In addition, family pressure and family satisfaction had reciprocal relationships over time. Together these longitudinal and reciprocal relations strongly support our hypothesized feedback loops linking pressure, work and family conflict, and role satisfaction, within each of the work and family domains. We made specific suggestions on breaking these vicious cycles to effectively manage both the work and family roles.

In this study, we empirically examine the consequences of devolving HR responsibilities to first‐line managers (FLMs) who make daily contacts with frontline workers. Drawing from HR strength theory, we propose that FLMs' involvement in HR enhances HR effectiveness. We also argue that the positive relationship between FLMs' HR involvement and HR effectiveness is compromised when a company employs an institutionally emerging HR system, and that this negative combinative effect will be alleviated by transferring HR knowledge to FLMs. We tested the hypothesized relationships using panel survey data from South Korea (N = 215). The results of our hierarchical regression analysis generally support our claims. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are also discussed.

Increasingly, researchers in human resource management are recognizing the impact of relational characteristics of work design on performance outcomes. In particular, complex task interdependencies associated with loosely structured teams call for an approach to work design that incorporates interpersonal relationships and informal communication to help individuals adapt to changing demands. Taking a social network perspective, we propose that position in the structure of informal communication networks shapes the opportunities and constraints to action for individuals and determines their informal roles. We present a multilevel model in which the relationship between position within a social structure and individual performance was examined within the context of team performance and team tenure. Hypotheses were tested using network data collected from nearly 300 employees in 30 sales teams. Results indicated that individuals close to the core of a team outperformed more peripheral individuals, but only to the extent that teams were high‐performing or had been together longer as a team. The article concludes with a general discussion of the implications for HR theory and practices targeted at improving individual performance outcomes.

In this article, we challenge the prevailing view that global staff transfers are a necessary cost of doing business globally by contending that such deployment is integral to successful strategic implementation. We use three scenarios—learning from failure, failure to learn, and lost opportunities—to illustrate how awareness of the consequences of decisions related to international staffing can facilitate their efficacy. Learning awareness therefore can lead to improved policies and outcomes for the management of global staff transfers and demonstrate the value HRM brings to the implementation process.

Organizations are increasingly concerned about retaining human talent, particularly within knowledge‐based industries where turnover is expensive. Our study employs a social network perspective to explore the influence of employees' formal and informal workplace relationships on their turnover intentions. We do this in a life sciences organization experiencing employee turnover at over twice the rate of the industry average. Drawing on extant work on the effects of distributive justice at work, we argue that employees who are heavily sought out for advice see themselves as being under‐rewarded for the time and effort that goes into providing advice, thus increasing turnover intentions. Additionally, we argue that employees see the ability to seek out advice as a form of social support that embeds them into the organization and decreases intention to quit. By exploring the network positions of individuals in the workflow and advice networks, we demonstrate that when employees are either providing advice to someone they are obligated to work with or are able to seek out advice from others who are not required to work with them, the relationship with turnover intentions is most intense. We conclude by discussing contributions to the theory and practice of human resource management.