Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT 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.

ABSTRACT Although prior research has focused on the negative effect of status incongruence, this paper offers an optimistic perspective as it relates to participative leadership. Status incongruence refers to a situation in which status characteristics of the supervisor and the subordinate are opposite to standard norms. Leaders who are younger, less educated, less experienced, or shorter tenured than their followers are status incongruent. Incorporating role congruity theory with the participative leadership literature, we argue that participative leaders in status incongruence will be able to boost subordinate affective commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors more than their counterparts with lower status incongruence. We further propose a moderated mediation model whereby the positive indirect relationship between participative leadership and subordinate organizational citizenship behaviors through affective commitment will be stronger for status incongruent dyads. By finding support for our hypotheses across two field studies, this work suggests role congruity theory to consider leadership style as well as multiple status indicators together in understanding how role (in)congruity arises for leaders with varying levels of status incongruence. Suggestions for how human resource (HR) managers should consider leadership style as part of their HR strategy for fostering participative workplaces are offered.

ABSTRACT Human resource management (HRM) practices and leadership (LS) both impact the functioning and experiences of employees at work, or, in other words, their well‐being (WB). Over the last two decades, the body of empirical research on employee WB that considers aspects of HRM and LS has been growing. There is a myriad of theoretical perspectives, such as job resource theories, social exchange theory, and HRM theories, that can serve as the foundation for empirical inquiry. In addition, the interplay between HRM and LS in impacting employee WB can be conceptualized in many different ways, for example, parallel effects, moderation, and mediation. This literature review takes stock of two decades of empirical HRM–LS–WB research, examines its theoretical and conceptual assumptions, and its temporal developments. We find that the field views the link between HRM, LS, and WB predominantly as an exchange between employee and employer, has a strong tendency to combine social exchange theory with other theoretical frameworks, and is shifting to theories that place the employees at the center of inquiry (e.g., motivational theories). In terms of the interplay between HRM, LS, and WB, we observe a shift toward conceptualizations that focus on the enabling potential of LS and HRM for each other as well as models that focus on the indirect—rather than direct—effects of HRM and LS on WB. We discuss the findings and implications for future research.

ABSTRACT The relationship between human resource management (HRM) practices and organizational performance has received considerable attention in the literature. Most extant studies, however, have taken a static view, while longitudinal aspects of the HRM‐performance link are less studied. We develop an integrative framework drawing on human capital resources theory that enables us to develop hypotheses on whether and how increases in dimensions of HRM practices within organizations over time lead to improvements in organizational performance. We test our hypotheses using a unique large high‐frequency panel dataset from the English adult social care sector and fixed effects instrumental variables (FEIV) estimation that allows us to address some biases in prior work. We find that increases in skill‐enhancing and motivation‐enhancing HRM bundles are significantly associated with increases in performance among organizations with low initial human capital resources stock. Our results suggest that the latter relationship is realized partly via a reduction in staff turnover, which, in turn, increases the organization's human capital resources stock. Overall, the article's contribution is to develop and test a dynamic extension of human capital resources theory that considers the processes of human capital resources stock depletion and accumulation over time and the path‐dependent relationship between investments in HRM practices and performance.