Search results

The article asks how to lead the world in work–life balance (WLB) societal rankings, identifies the major WLB challenges in contemporary societies and rethinks how we conceptualise and measure WLB.

This study employed a case-study of Denmark, a world leader in global WLB-rankings. Expert-insider interviews were carried out with 12 experts who work in the field of WLB. The participants were engaged day-to-day in the field of interest, exerting real-world influence.

We affirm the importance for WLB of battling over-long hours in the workplace. We provide evidence too that having sufficient hours of work, and being financially secure, are as significant for WLB as is avoiding overwork.

The article interrogates international WLB-rankings and offers original insights into a global WLB-leader. It makes the case for improving how we conceptualise and measure WLB to also progress policies and practice. Rather than viewing WLB as largely about avoiding a time-squeeze, the article argues that it is fundamentally about the conditions under which people work.

Despite the plethora of scholarship outputs on masculinity showing it as a fertile research domain, there are noteworthy lacunae on the topic especially in relation to its dynamics among ethnic minority groups. Accordingly, this paper aims to address masculinity and symbolic consumption among Black African consumers in the UK.

The study is interpretive in nature with the use of in-depth interviews conducted with 20 participants in London and the data analysis follows the grounded theory orientation.

It shows masculinity-oriented categorisations of market offerings but with an incidence of cultural tension. It suggests the prevalence of symbolic consumption among participants as demonstrated in their quest for admiration and commendation about their consumption and how masculinity is communicated. A new masculinity typology emerged from the study which depicts men in this context as falling into four categories of gay, conservative, contemporary and men on acme.

The study unpacks issues around masculinity, and multiculturalism, and proposes a novel typology on the topic vis-à-vis the discourse on segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy.

This paper confirms and expands upon the implicit and explicit personality model of Bing et al. (2007) by replicating earlier findings and conducting an exploratory test of the three-way interactive effects of implicit and explicit aggressive personality on positive work behaviors by including the situational context of justice perceptions.

In total, 186 hospital employees completed a survey of implicit and explicit aggression and organizational justice perceptions. Supervisors rated the employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors directed at the organization (OCBOs) and individuals (OCBIs), and the number of commendations employees received was obtained from the hospital. The data were analyzed with multiple regression analysis.

Our exploratory results showed that all prototypes tended to withhold OCBOs when justice perceptions were lower. Specifically, when procedural justice was higher, manifest aggressives (higher implicit/higher explicit aggression) had the lowest levels of OCBOs, and prosocials (lower implicit/lower explicit aggression) had the highest levels of OCBOs. Overcompensating prosocials (lower implicit/higher explicit aggression) generally had the highest number of commendations across the three justice dimensions. Nonsignificant interactions were found for interactional justice and OCBIs.

This study can assist researchers and practitioners in understanding how organizations should pair enhanced employee selection with improved organizational support for the best results.

This study confirms and extends previous work on the interaction of implicit and explicit personality by conducting an exploratory test of the role of situations (i.e. justice perceptions) in predicting positive (vs negative) outcomes.

Synthetic biology begins with the underlying assumption that life and life forms can be divided into parts and reassembled or redesigned according to the whims of their creators. Therefore, synthetic biology needs to be at the centre of ethical thinking since it engages the very concept of life and radically changes it. In this paper, we will investigate the phenomenon of synthetic biology through an ethical analysis of the unfulfilled promises and potential perils surrounding this technology. The paper consists of four parts. In the first part, we will deal with the problem of defining synthetic biology since it is a field in which many scientific disciplines meet and intertwine. The second part will present a brief history of systemic biology and the groundbreaking creation of Synthia, the first synthetic organism. The third part focuses on synthetic biology's potential benefits and some prominent ethical issues. In the fourth part, we will point out the problem of synthetic biology regulation. In conclusion, we will highlight the essential ethical remarks on synthetic biology and provide the impetus for further ethical debate.

The use of the concept of “agency,” in the sense of action that is to some extent free of “structural” constraints, has enjoyed enormous and growing popularity in the sociological literature over the past several decades. In a previous paper, we examined the range of theoretical rationales offered by sociologists for the inclusion of the notion of “agency” in sociological explanations. Having found these rationales seriously wanting, in this paper we attempt to determine empirically what role “agency” actually plays in the recent sociological literature. We examine a random sample of 147 articles in sociology journals that use the concept of “agency” with the aim of identifying the ways in which the term is used and what function the concept serves in the sociological explanations offered. We identify four principal (often overlapping) uses of “agency”: (1) purely descriptive; (2) as a synonym for “power”; (3) as a way to identify resistance to “structural” pressures; and (4) as a way to describe intelligible human actions. We find that in none of these cases the notion of “agency” adds anything of analytical or explanatory value. These different uses have one thing in common, however: they all tend to use the term “agency” in a strongly normative sense to mark the actions the authors approve of. We conclude that “agency” seems to serve the purpose of registering the authors' moral or political preferences under the guise of a seemingly analytical concept.

We integrate trait, individual differences and substitutes for leadership theories to examine how leader trait anger influences leader vision and follower trust in the leader across high versus low levels of organizational formalization.

We obtained data from two independent multi-source samples from different occupations and countries. Sample 1: leader–follower dyads (n = 179) collected over three measurement periods from the Philippines; Sample 2: cross-correlational sample of leaders (n = 166), their manager (n = 166) and their followers (n = 610) from Australia.

We tested our hypotheses using PROCESS (Hayes, 2018) and found that leader trait anger influenced follower trust in the leader both directly and indirectly through leader vision (Samples 1 & 2). We also found that organizational formalization neutralized the effect of leader vision on follower trust in the leader (Sample 2).

While we used a time-lagged design in Sample 1, we cannot make strong causal claims as might be the case in an experimental study, for example.

Our results highlight the adverse effect of leader trait anger on perceptions of leader vision and follower trust in the leader, which we suggest should be considered in recruitment and promotion decisions. Our findings also suggest that high levels of organizational formalization may undermine the motivational effect of leader vision on followers, which should be considered in relation to organizational rules and procedures.

This research enhances our understanding of a previously unexplored boundary condition (i.e. organizational formalization) that appears to neutralize the motivational effect of leader vision. In addition, it highlights the ubiquitous effect of trait anger, in this case undermining the effectiveness of leader vision and trust in the leader, from two different observer perspectives (i.e. leaders’ followers and managers).

The current study investigates the significance of ethics-oriented HRM systems (EHRMS) and ethical leadership in addressing the unethical behavior of Machiavellians in professional services firms.

Our study used a multi-source, multi-wave design to investigate the impact of EHRMS and ethical leadership on the unethical behavior of Machiavellians using a sample of 364 employees.

Our results reveal that EHRMS moderates the relationship between Machiavellianism and unethical behavior, while ethical leadership does not significantly moderate this relationship. Our results suggest that EHRMS has a significantly stronger impact on managing the unethical tendencies of Machiavellians than ethical leadership.

The study offers unique insights into the differential effects of EHRMS and ethical leadership in moderating unethical behavior among Machiavellians. The findings are also unique, as they highlight that the receptivity of ethical leadership depends on the individual differences of followers/employees.

Despite the important role that suppliers have in enhancing the environmental performance of a buyer firm, previous research has not investigated the individual-level motivations of supplier employees (representatives) in supplier-to-supplier environmental knowledge sharing. Thus, we use insights from the coopetition literature to examine how buyer firms can encourage supplier-to-supplier environmental knowledge sharing with the aim of improving the buyer’s environmental performance.

We empirically test our model using an online vignette-based experiment administered to supply chain managers. We contextualized our results using insights from interviews with senior managers representing firms operating in a broad array of industries.

We find that a supplier representative’s personal environmental values influence their commitment to an environmental consortium with a rival firm, and they are subsequently willing to share proprietary environmental knowledge. In turn, these relationships are moderated by situational factors including competitive intensity and buyer power.

The study of coopetition is an emerging stream of research in operations management. Our findings improve the understanding on how a focal actor within a buyer–supplier coopetitive network can promote environmental knowledge sharing behavior.