Why should an employer hire a former welfare client?What human resource management practices can help employers retain former welfare clients? This study addresses these questions against the backdrop of changes in welfare legislation in the United States that have lessened support to welfare clients and their families and emphasized movement into the workplace. We conducted a large‐scale empirical study of the effectiveness of a wide range of HRM practices and found that higher wages, better financial and health benefits, and development opportunities were positively associated with job retention. Unexpectedly, supervisory training had no relationship to retention, and appraising supervisors on providing a supportive and inclusive work environment showed a negative relationship. We provide suggestions to employers for improving the job retention of former welfare recipients along with directions for additional research.

The authors 1 adopted a family resource view of nonwork obligations and examined these obligations' relationships to dimensions of employees' organizational commitment. Complex interactions were found between employees' marital status, number of children, and having relatives nearby as related to the continuance dimension, but not the affective dimension, of commitment. In particular, results were strongest when the focus was on employees' perceptions of whether they would experience a high personal sacrifice if they were to leave their organizations. These findings are discussed in the context of developing family‐friendly human resource programs that may help employees feel less “trapped” in organizations.

Quiet quitting is a relatively new phenomenon that has quickly caught the attention of both practitioners and academics. With the world of work becoming increasingly interconnected, we contribute to the discourse by approaching quiet quitting from the novel perspective of understanding how others in the workplace perceive those who engage in quiet quitting. To do so, we first provide a formalized definition of quiet quitting and differentiate coworkers' perceptions of quiet quitting from similar psychological constructs (Studies 1–3). We then examine employee responses to coworkers engaging in quiet quitting with a qualitative study (Study 4) and vignette design (Study 5), finding that as an employee's perception of coworker quiet quitting increases, supportive behaviors decrease and workplace incivility behaviors towards the coworker increase. The effect on workplace incivility behaviors is moderated by self‐rated quiet quitting, such that employees who had higher self‐rated quiet quitting were more likely to engage in incivility towards a coworker regardless of whether their coworker was quiet quitting. Overall, by exploring quiet quitting observed by a coworker, we provide a different perspective on this construct and extend past research to show how employees feel about and react to a coworker's quiet quitting behaviors.

Understanding how employees respond to HR systems is a critical question in the strategic HR literature and the need for more nuanced theoretical frameworks explaining who responds differentially to HR systems persists. Drawing on a contingency perspective and the theory of purposeful work behavior, we present a theoretical framework that suggests that employee motivational goal strivings interact with commensurate HR bundles (communion‐enhancing HR bundles, status‐enhancing HR bundles, and achievement‐enhancing HR bundles) to predict employee job performance. Based on survey data collected from 362 employees in 84 service units, our findings reveal that the effects of communion and status strivings on job performance are more positive and stronger for employees in units with higher levels of communion‐enhancing HR bundles and status‐enhancing HR bundles, respectively. In contrast, the effect of achievement goal strivings on job performance is weaker in units with higher levels of achievement‐enhancing HR bundles. These findings have significant implications for both theoretical and practical perspectives, shedding light on the role of employee motivations in shaping the effectiveness of HR bundles on employee performance.

Both men and women who violate gender stereotypes incur backlashes, or penalties, for these transgressions. However, men who engage in warm, communal behaviors occasionally receive a boost (or benefit) for this female‐stereotyped behavior. To understand how and why warmth and gender interact to predict backlashes or boosts, we integrate uncertainty reduction theory with the stereotype content model and examine warmth by gender interactions. In our first study (a field examination of job seekers), we find that men receive a boost in hireability (i.e., an increased likelihood of obtaining a job offer) for exhibiting gender incongruent (i.e., high) levels of warmth, but women do not receive a backlash in hireability for exhibiting gender incongruent (i.e., low) levels of warmth. In our second study (a laboratory experiment), we replicate and extend these findings by elucidating why they occur: warmth reduces relational uncertainty for male, but not female, applicants. In our third study (another laboratory experiment), we again replicate and extend our findings by identifying when these effects are stronger: in male‐dominated roles. Our investigation suggests that the valence of the gender stereotype violation matters when it comes to hiring decisions. Indeed, we find that displaying warmth appears to promote, rather than impede, career outcomes for men.

Research indicates that relationship‐oriented HR practices can increase organizational knowledge, yet we know little about the effects of relationship‐oriented HR practices on employee knowledge management behaviors. Drawing from affective events theory, we examine the indirect effect of participation in one type of relationship‐oriented HR practice (i.e., organizational social activities) on three knowledge management behaviors (i.e., knowledge sharing, knowledge hiding, and knowledge manipulating) via positive affect, as well as the conditional indirect effect of intrinsic motivation for organizational social activities on these relationships. Utilizing a time‐separated field study ( n = 163), our analysis reveals positive affect fully mediates the relationship between participation in organizational social activities and (a) knowledge sharing and (b) knowledge hiding, and partially mediates the relationship between participation in organizational social activities, and (c) knowledge manipulating. Most interestingly, we unexpectedly found a positive direct effect of participation in organizational social activities on knowledge manipulation, even though the indirect effect via positive affect was negative. The results also indicate that, for individuals with high intrinsic motivation for social activities, there is a significant indirect effect of participation in organizational social activities on all three knowledge management behaviors.

Flexibility in a manufacturing firm is a strategic choice that advances the firm's superior performance. This is especially true in the emerging supply chain, which makes the firm's environment particularly turbulent. This paper examines the critical relationships between a manufacturing firm's human capital, the firm's flexibility, suppliers' flexibility, and the firm's competitive advantages. Based on questionnaire responses from 201 senior supply chain management professionals in several manufacturing industries, this study establishes direct links between a manufacturing firm's human capital and the firm's superior flexibility, and between a manufacturing firm's flexibility and its competitive advantages. In addition, this research finds that the firm's flexibility mediates the relationship between the firm's human capital and its competitive advantages, as does the connection between the suppliers' flexibility and the firm's competitive advantages.

We address repatriate retention from a career advancement perspective by developing a model that analyzes the effect of expatriate experiences and organizational career support on repatriates' career advancement upon return to the home country. Career advancement, in turn, is expected to affect the repatriate's perceived underemployment and turnover intentions. We collected data from a sample of 84 recently repatriated employees. Results revealed a curvilinear relationship between the number of international assignments and career advancement upon repatriation. Results also showed that developmental expatriate assignments were positively related to career advancement while the acquisition of managerial skills was negatively related to career advancement. Acquiring cultural skills, completing assignment objectives, and organizational career support did not relate to career advancement. In terms of outcomes, we found that perceived underemployment mediated the relationship between career advancement and turnover intentions. A lower level of organizational career support also resulted in greater turnover intentions.

This research was driven by the question, “In empowered work groups, who should be responsible for determining disciplinary actions in response to group member poor performance: the formal manager, a single group member, or the group as a whole?” Results in a study of 231 group members representing 41 groups from four diverse organizations showed that the severity of disciplinary actions made by formal managers is equivalent to actions taken by groups through consensus decision‐making. Selecting one member of the group, however, to handle a poorly performing member resulted in relatively lenient disciplinary actions. Consistent with this finding, the attitude survey results revealed that individual group members are reluctant to assume responsibility for disciplining a poorly performing group member.