Increased interest in reduced‐load (part‐time) work among professionals who want to have a life beyond work has led to new challenges for managers who must sustain productivity while also supporting employees. However, to date, little attention has been focused on exactly how managers facilitate effective implementation of these alternative work arrangements. This study presents findings from an interview study of 83 cases of reduced‐load professionals in 43 organizations in the United States and Canada. Analysis of the interviews with both professionals and their managers surfaced recurrent themes that led to identification of five clusters of behaviors and five clusters of dispositions that capture the nature of managerial support in implementing reduced‐load work. The ten categories of behaviors and dispositions expand on existing notions of supervisory support and provide new insight into the role of managers in fostering inclusiveness. Additional quantitative analyses found significant relationships between the success of the reduced‐load arrangements and specific managerial behaviors and dispositions.

This study develops and tests a model of the underlying mechanisms linking transformational leadership and employee creativity using a sample of 240 matched middle‐level manager and front‐line supervisor dyads from a large foreign joint‐venture company in China. We propose that personal control and employee creative personality serve as a unique psychological mechanism and an important boundary condition to simultaneously influence the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. Results of moderated‐mediation analyses provided support for our conceptual model, showing that transformational leadership was positively related to personal control, which also had a positive impact on employee creativity. Furthermore, creative personality was found to moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and personal control, which in turn, mediated the joint effect on employee creativity. Findings of this study provide insights into the research on leadership development and work design in HRM, which can inform human resource managers to design effective strategies and systems that can increase employees' creativity.

This study addresses organization‐based self‐esteem ( OBSE ) development by examining the role of perceptions of employer psychological contract fulfillment, and the self‐regulatory processes by which OBSE evolves and produces its effects. Self‐regulatory theory helps reveal why psychological contract fulfillment relates to OBSE , how OBSE mediates its effects, and the ways in which OBSE might interact with perceived employment opportunities to affect job satisfaction, performance, and turnover intentions. The results show that OBSE is related to and mediates the relationships between relational contract fulfillment and employee job satisfaction and performance, but OBSE is not related to transactional contract fulfillment. Nor does OBSE mediate the relationships between transactional contract fulfillment and the dependent variables. Perceived employment opportunities moderate the relationships of OBSE with job satisfaction and turnover intentions. This study concludes with recommendations of ways managers can increase their sensitivity to the types of messages they communicate to employees.

Using an institutional lens, we investigate the isomorphic effects of both external and internal contexts on human resource management (HRM) systems. Our analysis uses data from 4768 organizations across 34 countries to focus on the similarities in HRM systems. By employing distance matrices, a commonly adopted method in geographic science, we find that both external and internal contexts affect (dis)similarities in HRM systems. Organizations in similar environments exhibit more similar HRM systems. Furthermore, we find that the devolvement of HRM activities from HRM to line management reduces the similarity of HRM systems across organizations. By contrast, a strong strategic position of HRM does not yield a comparable effect. Our study's main contributions include elucidating the multifaceted relationship between context and HRM, highlighting the HRM department's role in this relationship, clarifying the context–HRM connection via the concept of isomorphic pressures, and illustrating the use of distance matrices as tool with great explanatory power for the analysis of similarities among HRM phenomena.

This study advances research on high‐commitment work systems (HCWSs) and organizational innovation by examining how the configuration of middle managers' work–family issues (i.e., work–family conflict and work climate for sharing family concerns) shape the relationship between HCWSs and innovation performance. Using a matched sample of senior management team members, middle managers, and frontline employees from 113 Chinese manufacturing firms and two waves of survey, we found that HCWSs are associated with enhanced levels of middle managers' innovative behavior, an association that improves innovation performance. The results also show that high levels of work–family conflict weaken the relationship between HCWSs and innovative behavior, but can be attenuated when a work climate better facilitates the sharing of family concerns. The study contributes to the knowledge of the role of HCWSs and contextual conditions of their effects in enhancing organizational innovation performance, with specific implications for the Chinese context.

While previous studies have increased our knowledge of how employees’ perceptions of development practices influence employee outcomes, the role of potential contingencies in this relationship remains relatively unexplored. In the present study, we set out to contribute to this research by exploring whether congruence or lack of congruence between perceived employee development practices and the perceived motivational climate at work influence employee performance and turnover intention. A field study among 169 employees from a Norwegian financial organization revealed that lack of congruence may be detrimental in terms of work performance and turnover intention. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

This study explored whether the relationship between perceived training intensity and knowledge sharing is prone to combined moderating influences. We operationalized perceived training intensity as a challenge stressor, in accordance with the challenge‐hindrance framework of work stressors. The results of a study of 129 employees from three Norwegian service industries revealed a positive relationship between perceived training intensity and supervisor‐rated knowledge sharing for employees reporting high levels of perceived job autonomy and high levels of perceived supervisor support. In contrast, we found a negative relationship between perceived training intensity and supervisor‐rated knowledge sharing for employees reporting high levels of perceived job autonomy and low levels of perceived supervisor support. These findings suggest that supervisors are of vital importance in facilitating knowledge sharing among employees in settings where developmental challenges are prevalent and perceptions of job autonomy are high. Implications for future research and practice are also discussed.

Prior research provides evidence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)‐supportive corporate policies are related to important human resource functions, such as enhanced recruitment and retention. In addition, prior research indicates that investors view the adoption of such policies positively. We examine the firm‐performance mechanisms underlying favorable stock‐market reactions based on an integration of perspectives from corporate social responsibility and the business case for diversity. Specifically, we estimate a hierarchical linear model (HLM) to account for the nested nature of our data (firms nested within states) and find that (1) the presence of LGBT‐supportive policies is associated with higher firm value, productivity, and profitability; (2) the firm‐value and profitability benefits associated with LGBT‐supportive policies are larger for companies engaged in research and development (R&D) activities; and (3) the firm‐value and profitability benefits of LGBT‐supportive policies persist in the presence of state antidiscrimination laws. In supplemental analyses, we find that firms implementing (discontinuing) LGBT‐supportive policies experience increases (decreases) in firm value, productivity, and profitability. We are among the first to link LGBT‐supportive policies specifically to financial performance outcomes as well as to develop and test a multilevel model of these relationships. Our results have important implications for theory and research on LGBT issues in organizations, human resource managers, and policymakers.

Given the ubiquity, time investment, and theoretical relevance of meetings to work attitudes, this study explored whether organizational science should consider employee satisfaction with meetings as a contemporary, important, and discrete facet of job satisfaction. Using affective events theory, we postulated that meetings are affect‐generating events that meaningfully contribute to overall job satisfaction. Two surveys queried working adults: Study 1 used a paper‐based survey (n = 201), while Study 2 used an Internet‐based survey (n = 785). Satisfaction with meetings was positively related to and significantly predicted overall job satisfaction (p < .05) after controlling for individual difference variables (e.g., participant background variables, negative affect), traditional job satisfaction facets (e.g., work, supervision, pay), and other conceptually relevant constructs (e.g., satisfaction with communication, organizational commitment). Exploratory (Study 1) and confirmatory (Study 2) factor analyses provided evidence that meeting satisfaction is a distinct facet of job satisfaction. Finally, as hypothesized, the relationship between meeting satisfaction and job satisfaction depends in part upon the number of meetings typically attended. The relationship was stronger (more positive) when meeting demands were higher and weaker when meeting demands were lower. Implications for assessment, leadership development, on‐boarding, and high potential initiatives are discussed.

The present study examined factors predicting employee participation in employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs). Despite the plausible benefits of ESPPs for participating employees, many employees do not participate in ESPPs even when they are eligible. To shed light on this puzzle, we investigated key variables related to the plan (i.e., discount rates), the firm (i.e., stock price movements), and an external event (i.e., COVID‐19 pandemic) in relation to employees' participation in ESPPs. Using a unique proprietary dataset on employee stock purchases from 40 publicly traded companies with a total of 1,005,300 employees, we found that discount rates and past stock price increases, on their own, were not associated with higher participation. However, these relationships became significantly positive when past stock prices displayed stability rather than volatility during certain pre‐participation periods. In addition, we observed that the firms in our dataset had significantly higher ESPP participation rates during (vs. before) the pandemic. These findings offer various research and practical implications, extending the compensation and employee ownership literature that has paid little attention to the predictors of employees' ESPP participation.