Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACTThis article presents a contemporary review of human resource management (HRM) research on algorithmic technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. By connecting these recent advancements to the long‐standing scholarly tradition of HRM‐technology relations, this review examines current knowledge on how algorithmic technologies are reshaping three key areas: (1) work structures and design, (2) HR delivery activities, and (3) the management of technology workers. Using a threefold conceptualization of technology—the tool view, proxy view, and ensemble view—this review explores how organizations employ algorithmic systems to enhance productivity, how the human agency interacts with and resists these technologies, and how broader social, cultural, and institutional contexts shape the use of algorithms in HRM. Additionally, this article offers suggestions for future research, highlighting the unique opportunities algorithmic technologies provide to HR scholars for making enduring contributions to the broader conversations on HRM and technology.

ABSTRACTIncidents of workplace violence are commonplace against nurses and personal care assistants (PCAs) employed in aged care facilities. This article examines ways in which managers and human resource (HR) departments manage workplace violence. In this context, understanding anti‐violence human resource management (HRM) practices and other ways in which incidents of violence are managed may have important implications for workforce sustainability. Greenwood and Freeman's [Greenwood, M., & Freeman, R. E. (2011). Ethics and HRM: The Contribution of Stakeholder Theory. Business & Professional Ethics Journal, 269–292.] conceptual model of employee engagement and “ethical” HRM underpins this study by focusing on stakeholder engagement and stakeholder agency. We take a qualitative approach to examine workplace violence in aged care facilities in Australia by conducting semi‐structured interviews with 60 participants. We report on narratives of participants highlighting the unethical use of HRM as evidenced by a lack of anti‐violence HRM in aged care facilities. To encourage greater workforce sustainability, we argue that HR departments and managers need to behave ethically and better support the management and mitigation of workplace violence against workers in aged care facilities. Our paper provides new theoretical and practical insights into understanding the role of stakeholder engagement and stakeholder agency, and the moral treatment of employees through the development of anti‐violence HRM within the aged care context.

ABSTRACT As a growing number of organizations are leveraging emerging technologies to optimize their operations to stay competitive, digital transformation has fast become an integral part of employee experience at the intersection of their psychological states and the workplace. However, employee experience with digital transformation is heterogeneous given the different approaches organizations take toward this initiative. We hence simultaneously consider both the nature of the digital transformation (i.e., automation versus augmentation) and the presence versus absence of employee voice mechanisms. Drawing from psychological reactance theory, we argue that employee experience of automation‐driven transformation will be more likely to engender psychological reactance, which in turn impacts important employee job attitudes, represented by job satisfaction, employment security, and turnover intention. We also argue that employee voice moderates this mediated relationship. Using data from two studies with different samples and research designs (an experimental design in Study 1 and a field survey in Study 2), the findings support our hypothesized relationships. The two‐study approach helps to enhance the validity of the research and demonstrate the generalizability of findings, thereby strengthening our contributions to the literature. Overall, the studies theoretically extend understandings of how employees respond to digital transformation by offering new insights into the psychological reactance mechanism. We also provide practical implications for business and practitioners seeking to manage digital transformation in ways that enhance desired employee job attitudes.

ABSTRACTA key question in the literature is how human resource management (HRM) practices influence quiet quitting (QQ), emphasizing the need for a more nuanced theoretical framework to explain its antecedents. This research applies the conservation of resources (COR) theory to delve into how high‐performance work systems (HPWSs) influence QQ through psychological conditions (i.e., psychological meaningfulness and availability). Based on a sample of 422 participants, the study reveals that HPWSs, psychological meaningfulness, and psychological availability each have a negative relationship with QQ. In addition, psychological meaningfulness and availability serve as mediating pathways through which HPWSs can mitigate QQ. The findings pave the way for further research on effective interventions and management practices that can create more fulfilling and productive work environments.

AbstractAlthough much research has sought to understand how employees come to align themselves with the social norms and routines of their workgroups, management theory has largely overlooked the possibility that such alignment might be fundamentally at odds with what it means to be autistic. Autism, which accounts for a large share of organizational neurodiversity, is associated with seeing and processing the world differently from the non‐autistic societal norm. In the workplace, autistic employees often experience barriers to inclusion, in large part due fundamental dissimilarities in how they interact with and connect to others. To identify the barriers to autistic employees' workgroup inclusion, we develop a multilevel framework centered around relational incongruence, or differences in patterns of interrelating across (autistic and non‐autistic) neurotypes. We propose that non‐autistic workgroup norms (e.g., for the use of imprecise language) exacerbate relational incongruence, which in turn hinders experiences of authenticity and belonging for the autistic workgroup member. Finally, we identify managerial practices (e.g., relational job crafting) that are likely to protect against the negative consequences of relational incongruence, by fostering workgroup climates of normalized variance in patterns of interrelating and shared understandings across neurotypes.

ABSTRACTGrowing recognition of neurodivergence amongst individuals poses challenges for career counselors and human resource practitioners when advising, guiding, and supporting the careers of this diverse group. Despite the potential for neurodivergent individuals to contribute to organizations, career guidance for these individuals is a relatively new area. We conducted a multidisciplinary project comprising a scoping review and stakeholder consultation to generate evidence‐based recommendations for identifying and supporting career paths that lead to positive employment outcomes for neurodivergent individuals. The scoping review included 78 articles on career guidance and associated employment issues (e.g., facilitators and barriers to employment) for neurodivergent individuals, while stakeholders, including neurodivergent individuals, counselors, and others, provided insights into their employment experiences. Our scoping review yielded nine themes: career guidance practice, predictors of employment, employment interventions, different forms of employment, work barriers and facilitators, strengths and challenges, person‐job fit, occupation and industry fit, and employment outcomes. The stakeholder consultations complemented the scholarly themes. Results were interpreted using the Stone and Colella theoretical model of factors influencing the treatment of people with disabilities. The model was extended across educational and work contexts, and to include the nature of occupations and industries. Building on this project and our overarching theoretical model, we map a future research agenda for the study of careers amongst neurodivergent individuals. Specifically, we highlight persistent methodological limitations of the literature before turning to theoretical implications across career stages. We conclude with practical implications for career counselors and human resource practitioners. Ultimately, our review calls for researchers and practitioners to help promote sustainable, high‐quality, and fulfilling careers for neurodivergent individuals.

ABSTRACT This study explores quiet quitting—a distinct form of workplace withdrawal—in the Greek context, adopting a multilevel approach to understand how cultural, institutional and individual factors shape this emerging phenomenon. Drawing upon relevant literature, we investigate the macro, meso‐organizational, and micro‐individual level factors that shape the emergence and persistence of quiet quitting. Through a qualitative, interview‐based methodology, we engage with a diverse sample of Greek Human Resource (HR) managers to capture their perceptions and lived experiences of the factors that contribute to quiet quitting. Our findings highlight the complex interplay between societal shifts, cultural norms, organizational practices, and individual coping mechanisms that give rise to and sustain quiet quitting behaviors. We propose a conceptual framework that situates quiet quitting within the unique socio‐cultural, economic, and institutional realities of the Greek context. This framework reveals how quiet quitting manifests as a dynamic process, initiated by psychological contract breaches and perpetuated through cycles of emotional exhaustion and identity rationalization. By providing a holistic understanding of the quiet quitting phenomenon, this study contributes to the advancement of contextualized Human Resource Management (HRM) research and offers valuable insights for practitioners navigating the challenges of the modern workplace.

ABSTRACTRecently scholars across a range of fields have noted the importance of the issue of quiet quitting in term of both pervasiveness and profundity of impact. Our study views quiet quitting as employees intentionally opting actively to manage their work/working lives to adhere to contracted duties/hours while avoiding voluntarily taking on additional responsibilities, tasks, or roles. To date, almost universally, existing studies assume that quiet quitting is a single, monolithic, homogenous phenomenon which relentlessly generates ‘bad’ outcomes for firms and ‘good’ outcomes for perpetrators. This current study addresses these important assumptions with a key aim of our research is to supply grounded evidence of the nature of quiet quitting and to examine the outcomes of such actions for perpetrators' longitudinally. To facilitate this, we adopt the concept of commitment as our conceptual lens for explicating how employees' quiet quitting is manifested and utilize a longitudinal, qualitative research design to gauge outcomes. After outlining existing research in the area, we detail our research design and methodology, before presenting the insights gained during data collection and analysis. Our paper concludes with a discussion of a series of contributions to both theory and practice.

ABSTRACT A Google search of “quiet quitting” yields over 350 million results, which is remarkable given that the term is only a few years old. Although quiet quitting is a relatively new trend, the concept it describes—an employee's conscious decision to do the bare minimum in their job rather than going above and beyond—is familiar to researchers who have investigated organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). However, for those interested in the effective management of human resources, what is important—yet unknown—is how managers respond to employees who engage in quiet quitting. Therefore, in this conceptual paper, we use attribution theory to explore supervisor responses to employees who engage in quiet quitting and subsequently withhold OCB. We propose that supervisors will generally have negative reactions to employees' withholding OCB, but we further explain how evaluations of locus, controllability, and stability and principles of discounting and augmenting influence supervisor attributions. Finally, implications for human resource theory, research, and practice are discussed.

ABSTRACTThe human resource management (HRM) function has witnessed the rapid integration of algorithms into incumbent processes; however, significant employee resistance and aversion to algorithmic decision‐making have also been reported. Research on algorithmic HRM practices indicates an underlying duality of perceptual responses by HRM professionals towards this technology. We seek to understand how HRM professionals experience algorithmic HRM use and determine if there are bright sides to its organizational integration. We undertake a qualitative, open‐ended study based on written responses to open‐ended questions from 58 respondents in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The data were thematically analyzed using grounded theory, which revealed four themes representing HRM professionals' overarching perspectives on why algorithmic HRM precipitates aversion or appreciation. The first two themes highlight HRM professionals' perceived subjective uncertainty regarding algorithmic HRM and its perceived negative effects on the organization. The third theme acknowledges the positive effect of algorithmic HRM, and the final theme discusses three critical coping strategies (embrace, avoid, and collaborate) that HRM professionals adopt to counteract their experienced fears. Our findings suggest that HRM professionals adopt a cautiously fearful rather than a wholly adverse outlook towards algorithmic HRM, wherein aversion and appreciation appear to emerge simultaneously. We contend this existence of a duality of perceptual responses to algorithmic HRM may be a precursor to setting a harmonious collaboration between humans and algorithms in the HRM domain, contingent on appropriate levels of oversight and governance. Implications for theory and managerial practice are also discussed.