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This study examines the link between vacations, parental leave and voluntary turnover among Canadian organizations in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

The empirical analysis is carried out using firm-level data sourced from a survey that was completed by HR managers of 125 ICT firms operating in the province of Quebec (Canada).The organizational voluntary turnover rate was used and was obtained by dividing the number of employees who voluntarily quit an organization within the last year by the total number of its employees. Based on ordinary least squared estimates, results were generated by regressing voluntary turnover rate on vacation and parental leave.

Vacation, operationalized as the average number of annual vacation days, is negatively and significantly associated with the voluntary turnover rate of the ICT organizations surveyed. Parental leave, operationalized as the percentage of salary reimbursed during parental leave, does not significantly reduce voluntary turnover in the ICT organizations surveyed.

In light of the results of this study, if organizations in the ICT sector, in Canada or abroad, desire to reduce voluntary turnover, compensating employees through the use of additional vacation days appears to be a viable approach.

This research constitutes an empirical test of the link between turnover and two compensation practices adopted by firms. To our knowledge, there is no prior scientific evidence on that subject in the Canadian ICT sector.

Despite its growing popularity in applied settings, executive coaching has to date received little attention in empirical research, especially in regard to the coaching process. This paper aims to investigate the effect of working alliance rating discrepancies on the development of coachees' self‐efficacy, a key outcome in leadership development.

The paper reports on a pre‐ post‐test study of a leadership development program taking place in a large North American manufacturing company. Data were collected from two samples: managers receiving coaching over an eight‐month period and internal certified coaches. In total, 30 coach‐coachee dyads were analyzed.

Results from an analysis of covariance did not support the authors' hypothesis, by indicating that coachees having worked with a coach who underestimated the working alliance, in relation to his or her coachee, experienced more growth in self‐efficacy than coachees who worked with a coach who either accurately estimated or overestimated the working alliance.

The results sugges that coaches should coach with an “ongoing and deliberately maintained doubt as their only certainty”. The importance for coaches to be sensitive to signs of what the coachee is experiencing, and to take the initiative to verify the coachee's comfort level with the way coaching is proceeding is addressed.

This study intended to delve deeper into the complexities of the coaching process by linking a key coaching process variable, the relationship, to coaching outcomes.

This paper aims to focus on one of the most frequently cited problems with respect to the performance management process: the prevalence of performance appraisal distortion.

Through semi‐structured interviews with managers, this paper attempts to answer the following question: Which factors influence managers' motivation to distort the performance evaluation ratings of their subordinates?

This paper offers three main contributions or implications. First, from a methodological point of view, using a qualitative research design to investigate the appraisal of subordinates' performance is useful because it allows us to reduce the gap between research and practice. Second, this study shows that researchers must embrace or integrate various theoretical perspectives (rational, affective, political, strategic, cultural, justice, and symbolic), given that managers' motivation to evaluate subordinate performance cannot be analyzed outside of the social context. Third, from a practical point of view, managers' motivation to evaluate subordinate performance is less about the technique used and more about leadership support, execution, and overall performance culture.

To date, prior research has focused on improving performance appraisal accuracy through experimental research design by emphasizing rating criteria, rater errors, rater training, and the various rating methods. Despite extensive research, very little progress has been made toward improving rater accuracy.

This study aims to determine the effect of individual and group variable pay plans on pay satisfaction among Canadian workers from six occupational groups.

Theoretical foundations rest on the discrepancy model of pay satisfaction and equity theory. Canadian national data from the Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) were used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that individual and group variable pay plans act differently on workers’ pay satisfaction. For individual pay plans, being eligible for a variable pay plan, and thereby having one's performance rewarded, has no effect on pay satisfaction. Workers on variable pay plans are more satisfied with their pay only when they receive performance‐dependent payouts. In short, they want to be rewarded not only for performance but also for effort. For group pay plans, not receiving payouts has no negative effect on pay satisfaction. In contrast, receiving payouts creates pay dissatisfaction. Individual and group plans have a distinct effect on pay satisfaction by occupational group.

Managers can make informed decisions regarding the adoption of variable pay plans and their implementation.

This study sheds light on the link between variable pay and pay satisfaction. It improves our understanding of the mechanism by which variable pay affects pay satisfaction: the effort – performance – pay link (i.e. risk and perceived fairness of the allocation).

The purpose of this article is to present a framework that allows an ampler understanding of the evolution process tracked by companies in the pursuit of strategies for sustainable development, taking into account the increasing awareness of the social and environmental pressures facing business.

The article adopts an interdisciplinary approach, using the complexity standpoint, allowing the articulation of the main axis of this study: sustainable development, organizational strategies and organizational learning.

Consideration of the type of learning undertaken by companies to advance in the direction of strategies oriented to sustainability. This is analyzed in light of the complexity theory, showing the need of transformations in the individual values, a transformation that will reflect itself in the organization and in society.

No empirical research is conducted to analyze the importance of the learning type for the orientation to sustainability in companies. Future research may verify this importance.

The article points to the need for sustainable business actions that are oriented to people and society in general. Some propositions can help managers to manage the considerable difficulties dealing with sustainable development pressures.

The text deepens the understanding about the evolution towards sustainability oriented strategies, considering the learning type as a key concept. It operationalizes the contributions of the complexity theory, according to the view of Edgar Morin (a French perspective). This allows a different comprehension of the non linear behavior patterns that are common in the organizations.

The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing should be taken as a novel system or frame of thinking, which is deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but it has significant global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a detailed elaboration of the indigenous Eastern epistemological system of Yin-Yang balancing in contrast to the Western logic systems; and second, to provide a roadmap for applying the system of Yin-Yang balancing to complex issues in the area of management, in general, and paradoxical issues, in particular.

This is a conceptual paper with a focus on theory-building.

The author elaborates on the indigenous features of Yin-Yang balancing, in contrast to Aristotle’s formal logic and Hegel’s dialectical logic in the West, to further explore the former’s global implications for the increased attention to research on paradox management. In particular, the author posits that Yin-Yang balancing appears to be better suited for paradox management than the more commonly used logics available in the Western literature. Built upon the Yin-Yang balancing, a practical tool of Duality Map for paradox management is proposed.

The system of Yin-Yang balancing proposed in this paper has the potential to embrace logical systems available in the West into a geocentric (East-meeting-West) meta-system. This paper further shows how to apply Yin-Yang balancing with the tool of Duality Map to the most salient paradoxes in the domain of management, including value-profit balance (triple bottom lines), exploration-exploitation balance (ambidexterity), cooperation-competition balance (co-opetition), globalization-localization balance (glocalization), institution-agency balance (institutional entrepreneurship), simultaneously positive and negative attitudes toward an entity (ambivalence), and etic-emic balance (geocentric) across all domains of management research.

The primary challenge for management researchers is to find a way to achieve a geocentric integration between the West and the East at the fundamental level of philosophy. The hope is that the philosophical traditions in the East will facilitate such integration. In particular, the Eastern philosophy of wisdom has a unique capacity to reframe paradox from a negative problem (i.e. a problem of inconsistency to be resolved by dualism in terms of separating opposite elements) to a positive solution (i.e. a solution of completeness or holism to be achieved by duality in terms of partially separating and partially integrating opposite elements).

The purpose of this paper is to propose a way of asking about organizational conceptions. Some years ago, Edgar Morin proposed the paradigm of complexity as the one that opposes to and contains both the mechanicist and the systemic paradigms, which he calls simplifiers. Based on these paradigms, some of their principles, as well as their influence in organizational thinking are studied here, looking for the establishment of a set of considerations to be taken into account when treating an organizational conception as complex.

Ten paradigmatic principles were compared from the mechanicism, systemic and complexity viewpoints, considering how they were used in the organizational discourse.

As a result, complex organizational conceptions consider the subject as active conscience in the world. In the same way, they establish dialogic relations among: the universal and the particular, temporal reversibility and irreversibility, the parts and the whole, linear and circular causality, order and disorder, organization and environment, observer and organization, and autonomy and dependence, through the use of the complex logic that allows adopting a meta‐point of view to articulate the contradictions and paying attention to the result of the dialogic processes pointed out.

The paper focuses especially on the dialogic principle, leaving the need to approach both the recursion and hologramatic principles, according to that proposed by Edgar Morin.

The paper establishes some references which should contribute to the understanding of complex organizations, as human activity systems, beyond the objectivism of the so‐called “complex systems”.

In this paper, a way of asking about organizational conceptions is proposed, with the aim of knowing the degree of satisfaction of paradigmatic requirements of complexity; so that, it allows knowing if what is being called complex – the organizations – is being treated in a complex way in turn.

To show that differences in the extent to which firms engage in unrelated diversification can be attributed to differences in ownership structure.

We draw on longitudinal data and use a panel analysis specification to test our hypotheses.

We find that unrelated diversification destroys value; pressure-sensitive Anglo-American owners in a firm’s equity reduce unrelated diversification, whereas pressure-resistant domestic owners increase unrelated diversification; the greater the firm’s free cash flow, the greater the negative effect of pressure-sensitive Anglo-American owners on unrelated diversification.

We contribute to corporate governance and strategy research by bringing in owners’ institutional origin as a shaper of owner preferences in particular with regards to unrelated diversification. Future research may expand our investigation to more than one home institutional context, and theorize on institutional origin effects beyond the dichotomy between Anglo-American and non-Anglo-American (not oriented toward shareholder value maximization) owners.

Policy makers, financial analysts, owners, and managers may want to reflect about the implications of ownership structure, as well as promoting or joining corporations with particular ownership configurations.

A shareholder value-destroying strategy, such as unrelated diversification has adverse consequences for society at large, in terms of opportunity costs, that is, resources could be allocated to value-creating activities instead. Promoting an ownership configuration that creates value should contribute to social welfare.

Owners may not be exclusively driven by shareholder value maximization, but can be influenced by normative beliefs (biases) stemming from the institutional context they originate from.

The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological frame of yin-yang balancing can be taken as a unique system of thinking toward a meta-perspective. It is not only deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but also bears salient global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose and contribution of this chapter are twofold: (1) to explain the unique and salient features of yin-yang balancing (the “either/and” system to reframe paradox into duality as partially conflicting and partially complementary, both spatially and temporarily) as compared with the Western logic systems (the “either/or” and “both/or” or “both/and” systems); and (2) to explore the global implications of the “either/and” system for future paradox research, including the three unique themes of overlap between opposites with the “seed” of one opposite inside the other; threshold from the contingent balance between partial separation and partial integration in line with specific contexts through three operating mechanisms, and knot for the special role of third-party to shift paradox from a dyadic level to a triadic and even a multiplex level.

This paper offers a framework based on the key principles of the complexity paradigm proposed by Edgar Morin to review what can be considered the dominant approach towards knowledge management, i.e. the intellectual capital construct. The purpose of this paper is to identify epistemological weaknesses to offer insights for the improvement of the theory and practice on knowledge management.

Based on the complexity paradigm and its dialogic and recursive principles, a framework to understand knowledge is offered comprising three interrelated requirements, each of which is based on a pair of opposites, arguably critical for the conceptualisation of a complex knowledge: order and disorder, whole and parts, and non‐logical and logical modes of thinking. This tool is applied to reviewing the epistemological assumptions under the intellectual capital approach, in order to find insights for further research on knowledge management. The task has an interpretative character and is carried out highlighting central aspects of the intellectual capital construct.

As a result it is possible to point out that the intellectual capital approach does not fulfill the complexity requirements, since it only recognises at the level of human beings their objective and functional aspects of knowledge, given by qualifications and other features that can be measured on the one hand, and driven a priori by a functional strategy, on the other. It ignores, in consequence, the more unstructured and disordered aspect of knowledge which, from a complexity perspective, is constitutive for the creation of innovative ideas.

The study is fully centered on intellectual capital literature. A complementary review of other less used expressions of knowledge management such as the construct of “communities of practice”, applying the same diagnostic tool, could enrich the conclusions and theoretical proposals.

A framework for the detection of epistemological biases is offered and used in this paper to study the intellectual capital construct, which could be also applied for other knowledge‐based settings. For business managers and consultants dealing with knowledge management, this paper can also give some insights for the improvement of their organisational interventions.

A novel approach, the complexity paradigm, is proposed as the epistemological standpoint to improve theory and practice on knowledge management.