abstractThis multi‐level study analyses the ‘black box’ of HRM in an Australian cinema chain, a standardized service environment. Management's espoused goals for the casual workers who run the cinema service include attempts to build customer‐oriented behaviour, both directly and via empowerment, and also efforts to ensure compliance with company policies and to enhance employee commitment. Our analysis of an employee survey and supervisory performance ratings shows that it is behavioural compliance that is positively associated with rated performance rather than customer‐oriented behaviour. While customer service is an important value, it is willing engagement with a highly scripted, efficiency‐oriented work process that makes it happen, not a more empowering form of work design. On the other hand, the management process also fosters a level of employee commitment, which has some value in a tight labour market. The study demonstrates the way in which actual models of HRM can contain a complex and ‘contradictory’ set of messages, consistent with critical accounts of the labour process and suggesting that notions of ‘internal fit’ need to recognize such tensions. It underlines the importance of identifying the multiple goals in management's espoused theories of HRM and then assessing their links via managerial behaviour and employee responses to performance outcomes.

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.

Drawing upon positive psychology and a social relational perspective, this article examines the relationship between well‐being‐oriented human resource management (HRM) practices and employee performance. Our multilevel model examines relationships among collectively experienced well‐being‐oriented HRM practices, social climate (characterized by trust, cooperation, and shared codes and language that exist among individuals within the organization), employee resilience, and employee (in‐role) performance. Based on the two‐wave data obtained from 561 employees and their managers within 62 bank branches in 16 Chinese banks, our multilevel analyses provide support for our four hypotheses. First, we found a positive relationship between well‐being‐oriented HRM practices and social climate. Second, social climate mediated the relationship between well‐being‐oriented HRM practices and employee resilience. Third, we found a positive relationship between resilience and employee performance. Finally, employee resilience mediated the relationship between social climate and employee performance. This study is one of the first to unpack the social mechanisms through which well‐being‐oriented HRM practices increase development of resilience and subsequent employee performance at the workplace, namely through influencing group feelings of social climate.