Knowledge that Transforms

AbstractNegative performance feedback is vital for stimulating employees to enhance their performance despite resulting in stress and adverse work outcomes. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI)‐enabled automated agents have gradually assumed certain functions led by human leaders, such as providing feedback. Drawing from regulatory focus theory, we propose that AI‐based feedback systems can serve as a “remediation” tool, effectively mitigating employees' apprehensions about receiving negative feedback. In two studies, we found that for employees who fear losing face, AI‐based negative feedback motivates promotion‐focused cognition—motivation to learn—representing a learning mechanism to promote job performance and impedes their prevention‐focused cognition—interpersonal rumination—reducing the depletion needed for job performance. These findings present novel perspectives on using AI in performance feedback.

AbstractUsing 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.

AbstractAlthough green training has been shown in past research to promote environmentally responsible behaviors at work, scholars have paid less attention to its influence on employees' eco‐friendly behaviors outside of work. This omission is critical because confining green training research to the work domain obscures its benefits in promoting employees' pro‐environmental behaviors beyond the workplace, and thus its role in supporting organizational efforts to conserve the natural environment. To address this gap, we examine the direct and indirect (via connectedness to nature) relationships between green training and employees' eco‐friendly behaviors outside of work, including consumption of eco‐friendly products, reuse of items and materials, and reduced consumption of resources such as water, electricity, and paper. We also examine the moderating influence of intrinsic spirituality on the direct link between green training and connectedness to nature, as well as the indirect link between green training and eco‐friendly behaviors beyond the workplace. Using time‐lagged, multisource data, we find support for our hypotheses. Our findings advance knowledge on the important yet largely overlooked role of green training in shaping employees' environmentally responsible behaviors outside of the workplace.

AbstractA major problem in employee selection coalesces around convincing decision‐makers (e.g., hiring managers) to use analytically derived models. Existing recommendations in the literature largely focus on convincing executives to adopt analytical models and then exert their top‐down influence on lower‐level hiring decisions. In contrast to these solutions, we explore end user modifiability (i.e., allowing decision‐makers to modify a statistical model before use) as a bottom‐up approach for increasing hiring managers' implementation of analytical recommendations. From a utility standpoint, we consider how incorporating end user modifiability into hiring decisions will result in a less statistically valid, but potentially more valuable, organizational selection process. We explore these ideas in two studies. In Study 1, we experimentally test whether model modification increases decision‐maker reliance on a statistical model, as well as how much decision‐makers need to modify a model in order to use it. In Study 2, we examine the extent that modifiability introduces implicit biases that might adversely affect marginalized groups. Results suggest that modifiability can increase decision‐makers' perceived usefulness of a model and, importantly, that only a small amount of modifiability is needed to elicit this effect. Further, end user modifications were statistically insignificant predictors of hiring rates across race‐based subgroups, though supplementary analyses suggest important cautionary nuance. Given that analytical models are rarely perfectly or wholly implemented, end user modifiability may offer a viable solution for organizations seeking to increase the implementation of algorithmic guidance in selection decisions, even if it deviates modestly from a statistical optimality.

AbstractIntimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health issue that negatively impacts organizations and their employees. Research suggests that organizations can play a supportive role to lessen this negative impact. However, it has been relatively silent on the conditions under which organizations choose to play such a role. Integrating social role and critical mass perspectives, we examine the extent to which organizations adopt human resource (HR) practices to support employees affected by IPV. Specifically, we argue that organizations are more likely to adopt IPV‐related HR practices when they are led by female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Top Management Teams (TMTs) with more female members. Furthermore, we argue that when women's representation reaches a critical mass plateau, appointing more women in TMTs has no incremental impact, and this non‐linear relationship moderates the CEO gender effect. Overall, we found support for our hypotheses based on a survey study of HR professionals from 414 Australian organizations (Study 1) and an archival study using 2 years of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency data from 4186 Australian organizations (Study 2). Theoretical and practical implications on the influence of gender configurations in leadership positions on the adoption of diversity, equity, and inclusion‐related HR practices are discussed.

AbstractThe theory of relational coordination holds that frequent, timely, accurate, and problem‐solving communication positively interacts with relationships of mutual respect, shared goals, and shared knowledge to support effective work coordination. With increasing numbers of employees working remotely, Advanced Communication Technologies (ACTs) are crucial for enabling the communication necessary for relational coordination. To investigate how organizations can maintain effective communication between employees in remote work settings, we conducted 47 interviews across multiple organizations. We find that users enact different affordances, that is, action possibilities, of the same material features of an ACT. Enacting these affordances supports frequent, timely, accurate, and problem‐solving communication when working remotely. Which affordances users enact varies systematically with job characteristics. Specifically, users whose jobs have high levels of task variety, autonomy, creative problem solving, and interdependence across teams enact more of the affordances that enable effective communication. Comprehensive ACTs that integrate all communication features into one technology and rules requesting the company‐wide exclusive interaction with this ACT strengthen the relationship between users' job characteristics and affordance enactment. Our findings show that it is important to involve HRM from the outset so that, in close cooperation with IT, a system can be found that—supported by suitable sets of rules—enables effective communication.

AbstractIn explaining the effectiveness of a human resource (HR) system within an organization, scholars have turned their attention to HR attributions, which capture employees' perceptions about the intentions behind their organization's HR practices, and have demonstrated that an HR system's content and process of communication drive employees to form specific HR attributions. However, current research has not yet explained why HR attributions differ among employees. We investigate the variability in HR attributions among individuals and the organizational factors that influence this variability. Using signaling theory and the concept of situational strength, we argue that employees' HR attributions vary less when signals sent by HR management are unambiguous and the conveyed information is consistent. Using an online scenario‐based experiment with 760 participants, our findings reveal that the configuration and the strength of an HR system as well as their combination have significant effects on the variability in HR attributions among employees, and these effects differ for the different HR attributions.

AbstractResearch on women in leadership positions has largely focused on the board or top management team (TMT) leadership level, showing that increased female representation at these levels can benefit organizational performance. However, the strategic implications of female representation at middle management have been largely neglected. The current study addresses this issue in relation to High Performance Work System (HPWS) improvement and organizational performance (profitability). By analyzing the multi‐wave (2009, 2011, and 2013) Workplace Panel Survey (WPS) data collected from 1101 organizations in South Korea, we found a gender diversity advantage at middle management; that is, a higher level of gender diversity of middle management translated into a higher level of organizational performance due to HPWS improvement. However, this advantage appeared only in the presence of a high level of subordinates' gender diversity. Our findings have important implications for gender diversity and strategic human resource management.

AbstractAnalyzing multiple data sources from a global information technology (IT) consulting multinational enterprise (MNE), this research unpacks the configuration of a digitalized HR ecosystem of artificial intelligence(AI)‐assisted human resource management (HRM) applications and HR platforms. This study develops a novel theoretical framework mapping the nature and purpose of a digitalized AI‐assisted HR ecosystem for delivering exceptional employee experience (EX), an antecedent to employee engagement (EE). Employing the theoretical lenses of EX, EE, AI‐mediated social exchange, and engagement platforms, this study's overarching aim of this article is to establish how AI‐assisted HRM fits into an organization's ecosystem and, second, how it impacts EX and EE. Our findings show that AI‐assisted applications for HRM enhance EX and, thus, EE. We also see increases in employee productivity and HR function's effectiveness. Implications for research and practice are also discussed.

AbstractEmployee proactive pro‐environmental behavior (PEB) has been increasingly emphasized as an essential behavior benefiting the environment and organizational sustainability. Nevertheless, both scholars and practitioners need a fuller yet nuanced understanding of the antecedents and boundary condition of PEB. Drawing from theories of cue consistency and proactivity, we advance an interaction perspective to explain how environmentally specific transformational leadership (ESTL) as guidance and green human resource management (GHRM) as normative practices interact to arouse employee PEB and how three fine‐grained proactive psychological states of green self‐efficacy, environmental self‐accountability, and environmental passion transmit these effects. Two lab experiments constructively offered causal support for our main hypotheses, and a multilevel, multiphase, and multisource field study verified our integrative model and enhanced the generalizability of conclusions. Results indicated that in addition to the direct positive effects, organization‐level GHRM, and individual‐level ESTL also showed a synergy effect in predicting employee PEB. Three differentiated proactive psychological states positively linked the underlying processes, especially in the high‐GHRM context. The findings highlight a multilevel antecedent framework of employee PEB and provide a useful attempt to answer the lingering debate about interactions between leadership and human resource management systems.