Knowledge that Transforms

Finding ways of breaking the gender‐based glass ceiling is an important human resource issue in companies today. Employing a sample of over 200 retail stores, we explore multiple moderating and mediating factors to explain when and why women store leaders perform better, equal to, or worse than men. Results reveal that (a) women are assigned to lead stores that are positioned closer to competitive rivals than men and (b) women receive unfair distributive pay outcomes in that they are generally paid less than their male counterparts. When accounting for these factors, performance (i.e., productivity) differences between stores with men and women leaders diminished. Further, organizational tenure and store‐unit size (i.e., number of employees) were positively associated with sales performance among stores with women leaders. The findings unveil why some store‐units led by women underperform but also offer contingency factors that delineate when women‐led and men‐led stores excel in sales productivity. Implications for recruiting and retaining both women and men in leadership are considered.

Scholars have identified that interviewers prefer applicants who are both emotionally restrained and exuberant. To reconcile these inconsistent results, we investigated how the magnitude of applicants' expressed enthusiasm influences interviewer perceptions of job suitability. In two experimental studies with recruiters in China, we show that expressing intense as opposed to mild enthusiasm reduces applicants' chances to be perceived as suitable for the job (Study 1). We further demonstrate that expressions of intense enthusiasm do not always undermine their perceived job suitability but can also lead to a positive interview outcome. We find that the negative consequences of intense enthusiasm are explained by interviewer perceptions of decreased appropriateness, whereas the positive consequences are driven by interviewer perceptions of the applicant's attraction to the organization (PAAO; Study 2). We also report how interviewer trait information processing motivation (IPM) influences the way applicants expressing intense enthusiasm are evaluated. Only interviewers with low trait IPM interpret applicants' intense enthusiasm as less appropriate. We propose to incorporate the social signaling character of emotions in future theorizing and research on nonverbal communication in job interviews.

The article focuses on decisions to exercise and hold company stock at the maturity of a broad‐based employee stock options plan. It investigates why some participants choose an uncertain and risky future reward when an immediate and certain increase in wealth could be secured at exercise. It draws on and expands the “mixed gambles” perspective in behavioral agency theory, utilizing a combination of stock price data and employee survey data from British companies with tax‐approved stock option plans. It is found that the decision to take a gamble is influenced (negatively) by the extent of stock price lows (relative to prices at exercise) in the year prior to exercise, and by the risk preferences of the option holder. The findings contribute to further development of the “mixed gambles” perspective as an explanation of stock option behavior, showing that individual characteristics as well as some stock price movements affect behavior.

With the growing importance of relational coordination in today's multidisciplinary, interdependent work environment, practitioners are faced with challenges in designing and implementing relationship‐oriented HR practices. We aim to identify key mechanisms either enabling or inhibiting the functional interplay between HR practices and relational coordination. Through an inductive qualitative study of a newsroom organization in Korea before and after the changes in its HR practices, we compared and contrasted functional and dysfunctional dynamics among HR practices, interpersonal relationships, and relational coordination. Before the changes, reporters coordinated across levels and functions as HR practices integrated formal and informal interactions and supported the shared notion on which professional behaviors and values are expected of a reporter. However, with the changes in HR practices, relational coordination among reporters dismantled as they experienced segregation between formal and informal interactions and upheld two different notions of journalistic values. Reporters were divided into two separate informal groups which rarely overlapped with formal work groups and these segregated interactions prevented reporters from sharing knowledge across levels and functions. Further, with the conflicting notion of journalistic values, reporters constantly debated over specific goals of practicing journalism and expressed disrespect toward those who held a different set of journalistic values. These findings redirect research by highlighting the fragility of relational coordination and the importance of designing HR practices which reflect formal and informal relational dynamics among employees and consolidate members under the same shared notion of professional values.

Employee “water cooler conversations” with coworkers, as well as interpersonal interactions outside of one's employing organization, are key sources of information about the labor market. Although the value of network ties for job search is well recognized, research to date has tended to focus on how network ties relate to job search outcomes, providing little insight into what types of network ties offer information that shape job seeker perceptions and behaviors throughout the job search process. Drawing from Steel's (2002) evolutionary search model and social network research, we assert that different types of network ties—those that are weak versus strong and those internal versus external to the organization—offer different types of labor market information, which impacts employees' labor market perceptions, propensity to search for employment, and job search effectiveness. Using a time‐separated research design in a sample of healthcare workers, we find weak external ties are associated with more optimistic perceptions of the labor market, increased marketability, and early‐stage job search, and strong external ties are associated with greater marketability and propensity to engage in an early‐stage job search. Strong internal ties (SITs) have dual, opposing influences on employee job search: SITs are associated with less early‐stage job search, but they are also associated with increased concrete prospects when employees are more actively seeking alternative employment. Taken together, this study provides more nuanced insights into how network ties influence employee job search processes, clarifying ambiguities in this literature.

Research in HR has devoted little attention to the practice of scheduling shift workers into times and places to conduct their work. Relying upon the growing literature related to relational HR, we propose a relational view of scheduling that focuses on how employees' social contexts—particularly their being co‐scheduled with higher performers—relate to changes in performance over time. We apply resource dependence and social learning theories to describe how employees' performance over time depends upon their working alongside higher performers. Higher performers consume limited resources (thereby constraining peers' performance in the short term), yet also provide instructive role models for learning new skills (thereby elevating peers' performance over the longer term). We further hypothesize these effects are stronger for employees who are newer to the firm in contrast to those with more experience. We analyze scheduling and performance data from 7,893 retail sales representatives over a 1‐year period. Results show co‐scheduling with higher performers has an immediate negative effect on employee performance, but is positively related to employee performance over time. Unexpectedly, co‐scheduling effects were present for all employees and not only for those new to the organization. Our study points to the need for HR research on employee scheduling to better understand how shift workers' schedules provide the relational context for their work. The research offers several theoretical contributions in understanding the peer effects of higher performers, and we offer practical implications for managers seeking to design employees' schedules to encourage organizationally advantageous relationships between coworkers.

Although substantial research has been devoted to describing the challenges people with disabilities face in the workplace, much less attention has been focused on the processes that can bring about change. This article explores a proactive process, representative‐negotiated idiosyncratic work arrangements ( i‐ deals), that can create the conditions for long‐term employment for people with disabilities. Specifically, we explored the factors associated with the development and success of representative‐negotiated i‐ deals for people with disabilities. Using focus groups and interviews with employers and job developers, we identified nine factors and two prevailing conditions that explain the contexts in which representative‐negotiated i ‐deals will be successful. In doing so, we identified the negotiation stage during which these factors and prevailing conditions influence the i‐ deals negotiation process. Representative‐negotiated i‐ deals offer insights into how employees with disabilities can find more meaningful work. Together, these findings underscore how the representative i ‐deals negotiation process is only viable if the facilitating factors are present and supported, while the absence of these factors can hinder and lead to failure.

Leadership coaching—a relational process by which a professional coach works with a leader to support their development—is a common component of learning and development portfolios in organizations. Despite broad agreement about the importance of the coaching relationship, relational processes remain undertheorized, failing to account for the growth and intertwining of coach‐leader self‐concepts as they engage in a generative and co‐creative coaching process. To address these shortcomings, we reconceptualize the relational process within coaching as one of relational self‐expansion and theorize that the communication channel and communication quality impact relational self‐expansion which, in turn, influences coaching effectiveness. Our hypotheses are tested in a field experiment featuring random assignment to experimental conditions (communication channels) in which a coaching intervention was deployed in five organizations. Using structural equation modeling, we demonstrated that communication quality and relational self‐expansion during the coaching process positively predicted coaching effectiveness. Contrary to expectations, communication quality did not differ by channel (phone, videoconference, face‐to‐face) nor did it predict relational self‐expansion.