Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between union practices and two types of employees’ extra-role behaviors, namely, union citizenship behavior (UCB) and employee voice (EV), and the mechanisms that mediate this relationship.

Using matched data from 46 union leaders and 279 union members of 33 workplaces in China, this study utilized multilevel structural equation modeling to test the cross-level influences of union practices on employees’ extra-role behaviors and the mediation effects.

The results show that (1) union practices have a positive impact on employees’ UCB and EV, and (2) union practices increase UCB and EV through the improvement of industrial relations (IR) climate at the workplace level, as well as union commitment (UC) and union instrumentality (UI) at the individual level.

Although the authors collected data from multi-sources (i.e. union leaders and members), the cross-sectional data of this study limited the ability to make casual inferences.

This study contributes to the literature by providing theoretical explanation and empirical evidence to illustrate the role of union practices in increasing the extra-role behaviors of employees (i.e. UCB and EV). This is of particular importance in elaborating the effectiveness of enterprise unions under the recent reforms in China. In addition, the authors also unpacked the antecedents of extra-role behaviors in the union context by investigating how IR climate, UC and UI mediate the relationship between union practices and extra-role behaviors of employees.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether a four‐dimensional model of occupational commitment could help to help explain intent to leave one's occupation.

A total of 2,032 massage therapists and bodywork practitioners completed an on‐line survey measuring occupational commitment, intent to leave occupation, job satisfaction, job perception, and personal variables. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the study hypotheses.

Controlling for personal and then job‐related variables, general job satisfaction was a significant negative correlate of intent to leave the occupation beyond these variables. Controlling for personal, job‐related and job satisfaction, three of the four occupational commitment dimensions, affective, accumulated costs, and limited alternatives, were each significant negative correlates of intent to leave. Normative commitment was not a significant correlate. After controlling for lower‐order interactions, a four‐way interaction of the occupational commitment dimensions explained significant additional variance in intent to leave. Separate “high” (versus “low”) cumulative commitment subgroups were created by selecting respondents who were equal to or above (versus below) the median on each of the four occupational commitment dimensions. An independent samples t‐test indicated that low cumulative commitment massage therapists and bodywork practitioners were more likely to intend to leave than high cumulative commitment practitioners.

Despite the cross‐sectional, self‐report research design, the results suggest that a four‐dimensional model of occupational commitment is useful for understanding intent to leave occupation. Given the costs and difficulties associated with changing occupations, follow‐up research using other samples and additional noted research design variables is needed.

The results and recommendations in the paper will be of interest to those involved in the field of human resources.

To reconcile the mixed findings on commitment-oriented human resource management (HRM) on employee job performance, this study tests whether commitment-oriented HRM has a threshold effect on employee job performance and when this threshold effect matters. The authors further tested the role of employees' age in the relationships.

The authors conducted a survey and collected data from 601 employees in 32 firms in China, and used a multilevel approach to test the hypothesis.

The results showed that the association between commitment-oriented HRM and employee job performance was J-shaped, meaning that commitment-oriented HRM was positively related to job performance when the degree of commitment-oriented HRM exceeded a threshold. Moreover, the authors found that employee age moderated this J-shape relationship. Specifically, the curvilinear relationship between development commitment-oriented HRM and job performance was stronger in younger employees. Contrary to our prediction, the results showed that younger employees reacted more strongly to improve job performance than older employees when maintenance commitment-oriented HRM exceeded a moderate degree.

The findings on the J-shape effect and moderating role of employee age on the J-shape provided critical insights into understanding the mixed results of the effect of HRM. Additionally, this study provided new insight in the linkage between HRM practices and employee outcomes.

This paper aims to examine the role of three forms of customer commitment (normative, affective, and continuance) on a variety of loyalty‐related customer responses.

Data were collected from two distinct sampling frames, which yielded a combined metrically invariant sample of 348 consumers. A three‐dimensional conceptualization of commitment is used to analyze impacts on one focal (i.e. repurchase intentions) and two discretionary customer responses.

Results of structural equation modeling analyses indicate that affective commitment is the primary driver of the customer responses and mediates the effects of normative and continuance commitments. These effects are contingent upon the type of service.

This research emphasizes the primacy of affective commitment in predicting loyalty‐like customer responses.

Managers need to focus primarily on generating affective commitment, but be mindful that normative and continuance commitment also play a role in generating desirable consumer responses.

The paper builds on and overcomes several deficiencies in prior commitment research. A more accurate and useful representation of affective, normative, and continuance commitment roles in generating focal and discretionary behaviors is provided.

The aim of this paper is to give a critique of the extant literature on union commitment and participation in order to develop remedies to identified weaknesses

The paper uses a critical assessment of extant literature.

A number of critical deficiencies exist in the literature to which remedies are proposed.

The remedies need testing through empirical research.

Future research needs to have different research foci and questions.

With a reorientation of future research on union commitment, participation and leadership, unions may be better able to benefit from academic research in the area.

The paper suggests that a reorientation of future research on union commitment, participation and leadership will allow more incisive and more robust contributions to be made to understanding unions as complex social organisms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evidence for trade union renewal in the UK fire service. Its aim is to consider two main questions: “How have union‐management relations and the industrial relations climate been affected by management reforms?” and “To the extent that there is deterioration in the IR climate, has this had an effect on union leadership style and also on union commitment and participation amongst ordinary members?”

The paper draws on interviews with managers and union representatives and a survey of firefighters in the north of England.

The research finds that a marked deterioration in the industrial relations climate led to changes in union leadership and to an increase in union commitment and participation amongst ordinary members. The poor climate created the conditions for union renewal by bringing forward union activists with more inclusive styles and by raising membership awareness of the need to vigorously defend their existing terms and conditions.

There is a research gap in the industrial relations literature on how industrial relations climate impacts on the renewal of workplace trade unionism.

This paper helps to fill the research gap in the industrial relations literature on how industrial relations climate impacts on the renewal of workplace trade unionism.

Multinational enterprises are increasingly interested in improving employee engagement across diverse geographies, signifying the importance of understanding antecedents of engagement across different national business systems. This study aims to explore the relationship between an important job resource, perceived performance appraisal fairness and employee engagement in two countries: the UK and India. Critically, the mediating role of perceived supervisor support in these contrasting cultural contexts is investigated, as well as differentiating between two types of engagement: work and organization.

Drawing on a UK-based multinational enterprise operating in its home country and in India, survey data from 249 employees are analyzed.

The survey results indicate that there are positive relationships between elements of perceived performance appraisal fairness and engagement in both countries, and that supervisor support plays an important mediating role. There are, however, important differences between the two countries’ results.

Cross-sectional data from a single firm are a limitation of this study, as well as using national culture as an explanatory variable although this is not measured. Future research should attempt to measure culture, especially in India, where cultural heterogeneity is high.

The study demonstrates the importance of ensuring appropriate mechanisms in different overseas operations to achieve engagement when implementing performance appraisal.

This study expands significantly our knowledge surrounding the engagement construct by including both work and organization engagement, measured simultaneously in two contrasting national contexts. Furthermore, it highlights the value of national business systems cultural theorizing to explain differences in employee workplace experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine inclusion as subjectively created knowledge individuals generate through their interactions within a social environment. The main purpose is to introduce an inclusion-related conceptualisation of intelligence by means of which an individual evaluates, understands and engages in action in a work-setting in order to achieve efficient outcomes while feeling belonged and unique in a work-setting.

Aiming at explaining a phenomenon and building a conceptual framework from the subjective perspective of a particular individual at work, such as a team member, the philosophical assumption embedded in this paper is social constructivism.

A substantive conclusion drawn in this paper is the importance of an individual’s personal resources, such as optimism, resilience, self-efficacy and positive psychology, to evaluate situational conditions, and take necessary actions, which in turn determines how included that individual feels in a work-setting. Moreover, dyadic interactions are also substantial, and one-to-one communication in every dyad is essential for the “co-construction” of an individual’s inclusion.

A scale development effort to explore and validate a construct for inclusionary intelligence and its domains can be suggested for future research.

While management literature, in general, lays much emphasis on managing diversity in team and organisations, this paper puts stress on the perspective of the individual at work.

The paper elaborates on the nature of inclusion with a social constructivist paradigm and approaches inclusion as a feeling, an experience, a subjective interpretation of one’s own position in a work-setting and an important predictor of one’s job satisfaction and well-being at work.

States with Right-to-Work (RTW) law coverage have increased since 2012, with union membership decreasing. In such states, employees in union-represented positions cannot be required to be union members and/or pay dues, even though the union must still legally represent them. While union member retention in RTW states provides new challenges for unions, it has not been extensively studied. The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature by testing a model of intent to remain a union member in an RTW context using union loyalty as a mediator.

The model is based on how different types of exchanges shape intentions to remain a union member. To test the hypotheses, a sample of 475 members was used where an RTW law was about to be implemented in a Midwestern American state.

Union loyalty mediated the relationships between social and ideological exchanges with the union and employee intent to remain a union member and similarly mediated the organization–employee exchanges. Economic exchanges with the union were not a significant predictor in the full model.

This study extends the employment-relations literature by helping us better understand member intent triggered by RTW laws. Insights are provided for both unions and organizations to better manage their relationships with employees.

This study advanced the employee-relations literature by providing a more holistic theoretically based understanding of how unions may retain members by using multiple forms of exchange, often studied separately in previous literature of member–union relationships.