Knowledge that Transforms

The article considers the reasons for employees holding large proportions of their financial savings and investments in company stock, drawing on explanations proposed in the behavioral finance literature. Utilizing data from a survey of employees participating in the United Kingdom Save as You Earn stock options and savings scheme, it is found that substantial proportions of stock owners hold sizeable concentrations of employer stock. Several explanations for this risky behavior are tested, with familiarity, reciprocity, and inertia found to be associated with portfolio concentration. Organizational commitment and “naïve extrapolation” from recent stock prices are not. The implications for theory and practice are considered.

Prior research indicates that the influence of alcohol use, at work or at home, on employees' personal and professional lives is often harmless, but that it can be detrimental under certain circumstances. Alcohol's prevalence in and around some workplaces suggests that some employees value it, and that companies seeking to hire and retain these employees perhaps see a competitive advantage in embracing permissive workplace drinking norms. In this article, we draw from signaling theory and the fit, applicant attraction, and political skill literatures, to propose that during the recruitment process, organizations that promote workplace drinking norms are likely to attract applicants with high levels of political skill while turning off those with low levels of political skill. We conducted two studies and found that new labor market entrants with lower levels of political skill perceived lower levels of fit with companies that promote the acceptance of alcohol use at work‐related events during the recruitment process compared to companies that do not signal the presence of workplace drinking norms in their recruitment activities. In turn, these lower fit perceptions related to reduced organizational attraction.

The moderating effect of pay dispersion on the relationship between employee share ownership (ESO) and labor productivity is examined in an unbalanced panel sample of 533 organizations (1,156 organization‐year data points) in Korea. Pay differential between job levels (vertical pay dispersion) is theorized to negatively moderate the ESO–productivity relationship. On the other hand, pay differential within a job level (horizontal pay dispersion) is theorized to positively moderate the ESO–productivity relationship. These predictions are partially supported. Consistent with the prediction, vertical pay dispersion negatively moderates the ESO–productivity relationship in that the relationship is more negative when vertical pay dispersion is high. However, we found no support for the moderating effect of horizontal pay dispersion in this relationship. The results challenge the simplistic view that pay dispersion per se can be detrimental to the ESO–productivity relationship.

How might organizational inducements influence the mentoring behavior of senior executives? In a multisource study of senior executives ( n = 239) and their direct reports ( n = 1,098), the researchers found mixed results—relational inducements (e.g., investments in career development) were positively associated with mentoring whereas transactional inducements (e.g., compensation) were negatively associated. Results are explained from signaling and self‐determination theory wherein inducements communicate organizational priorities that either uphold or undermine mentoring behavior. While prior research has examined the benefits of inducements on job performance, this study reveals that inducements can have differential and unintended consequence on prosocial and relational behavior such as mentoring. It is the first study to examine the unintended and differential consequence of inducements on mentoring behavior. In addition, the findings challenge assumptions about the trickle‐down benefits of organizational rewards and suggest that the consequences of human capital investments extend far beyond the focal leader.

A growing reliance on agency workers can lead to significant risks for client organizations, especially in core organizational roles. It has been suggested while these risk can be mitigated through investments in human resource management (HRM) directed at agency workers, in reality these will be hard to implement. This article draws upon Lepak and Snell's (1999) HR architecture model and uses a comparative case study method to explore this issue, focusing on agency working in core nursing and qualified social worker roles. The findings illustrate how client organizations can become more involved in the management of agency workers than has previously been acknowledged. Our analysis also identifies the conditions that shape this client‐side involvement, including the nature of agency worker contracts, the role of temporary work agencies, competing organizational cost‐control priorities, and perceptions of the regulatory context. These conditions are brought together in a general model for understanding the largely neglected role that client organizations play in the HR management of agency workers.

The question of whether academic research should emphasize scientific rigor, practical relevance, or both simultaneously has been hotly debated in HRM research and other related disciplines for much of the past century. That said, empirical investigations of whether these values are mutually exclusive or compatible are surprisingly rare. Moreover, the perspective of the end consumers of research—practitioners—as to what research is relevant has been almost completely ignored. In the present study, we adopt an institutional logics perspective to assess the perceived relevance of common management research findings with two samples of 298 and 143 practicing managers, respectively. Further, we examine whether objective indicators of rigor and manager‐rated relevance impact academic legitimacy. The results indicate a positive relationship between rigor and relevance. Interestingly, practitioner ratings of relevance were stronger predictors of academic legitimacy than methodological rigor. Finally, research findings that deal with leadership topics are rated as most relevant to practitioners, whereas job characteristics, demographics, and human resource practices are seen as the least relevant to managers. The contributions of this study and implications for future research conclude the article.

Drawing on arguments from institutional theory, this study examines how social norms—specifically, local religious social norms—affect the motivational impact of equity‐based incentives. We test our model using longitudinal data on local religious norms, CEO equity incentives, and firm value. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find that local religious social norms attenuate the impact of CEO option incentives upon firm value. Furthermore, we find that the attenuating impact of local religious social norms increases with managerial discretion. These findings provide valuable insight for human resource professionals aiming to design compensation contracts for employees that are aligned with firm goals. Our findings also contribute to research on the motivational effect of equity incentives by demonstrating the importance of considering the social context in which executives are embedded.

Despite the increased use of seasonal employees by organizations, few studies have been completed on the attitudes and service quality of seasonal office workers. Using Lautsch's classification model, we analyzed the organizational context in which the standard and seasonal workers in this study were employed. Hypotheses were developed based upon the organizational analysis and social exchange theory. Results from archival data obtained from a web‐based organizational survey of 205 clerical and professional workers indicated contrary to expectations, standard and seasonal employees did not significantly differ in terms of perceptions of overall job conditions, perceived organizational support (POS), or job engagement. However, seasonal employees did report significantly fewer opportunities to work on challenging tasks, less comfortable physical working conditions, and less job security than the standard workers. As predicted, standard employees reported significantly higher levels of service quality performance than seasonal employees. Additionally, job engagement mediated the relationship between POS and service quality for both the standard and seasonal employees. Implications for managing seasonal employees are discussed.