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This study explores how compassionate managerial leadership style can help to mitigate workplace stressors and alleviate stress experiences among employees — particularly in an extreme situation, such as the current global COVID-19 pandemic. The study's context is Nigeria's banking, manufacturing and healthcare sectors, which have a history of high employee stress levels.

Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology, the study adopts the thematic analysis process (TAP) to draw and analyse data from semi-structured telephone interviews with 10 banking, 11 manufacturing and 9 frontline healthcare workers in Nigeria.

It was found that a compassionate managerial leadership can drive a considerate response to employees' “fear of job (in)security”, “healthcare risk” and concerns about “work overload, underpayment and delayed payment”, which respondents considered to be some of the key causes of increased stress among employees during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The study is limited to exploring the relationship between compassionate managerial leadership and an organisation's ability to manage employee stress in the COVID-19 situation, using 30 samples from organisations operating in three Nigerian cities and sectors. Future studies may involve more Nigerian cities, sectors and samples. It may also possibly include quantitative combination to allow generalisation of findings.

In order to survive in extreme situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations are forced to take drastic and often managerialist-driven work measures which can trigger high stress levels, low productivity and absenteeism among employees. Hence, organisations would benefit from implementing compassion-driven policies that are more inclusive and responsive to the workplace stressors facing employees.

Employee stress has been widely explored in many areas, including definitions, stressors, strains, possible interventions and coping strategies. There remains, however, a dearth of scholarship on how management-leadership compassion can help to reduce employee stress levels in extreme conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between managerialist employment relations and employee turnover intention in Nigeria. The study context is public hospitals in Nigeria, which have a history of problematic human resource management (HRM) practice, a non-participatory workplace culture, managerialist employment relations and a high employee turnover intention.

Based on a qualitative, interpretive approach, this paper investigates the process by which Nigerian employment relations practices trigger the employee turnover intention of doctors using 33 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in public hospitals.

This study found that Nigeria’s managerialist employment relations trigger the employee turnover intention of medical doctors. Additionally, it was found that although managerialist employment relations lead to turnover intention, Nigeria’s unique, non-participatory and authoritarian employment relations system exacerbates this situation, forcing doctors to consider leaving their employment.

Studies on the interface between managerialism and employment relations are still under-researched and underdeveloped. This paper also throws more light on issues associated with managerialist employment relations and human resources practice including stress, burnout and dissatisfaction. Their relationship with doctors’ turnover intention has significant implications for employment policies, engagement processes and HRM in general. The possibility of generalising the findings of this study is constrained by the limited sample size and its qualitative orientation.

This paper contributes to the dearth of studies emphasising employer–employee relationship quality as a predictor of employee turnover intention and a mediator between managerialist organisational system and turnover intention. The study further contributes to the discourse of employment relations and its concomitant turnover intention from developing countries’ perspective within the medical sector.

This paper explores the link between employee stress and the high-power distance (HPD) culture in Nigeria. The study context is the banking and manufacturing sectors in Nigeria, which have a history of exploitation, unconducive work environments to productivity, work-life imbalance, work overload, burnout and employee stress.

Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology, this article adopts a thematic analysis of data drawn from semi-structured interviews with 24 managerial and non-managerial workers to explore the process by which Nigerian manufacturing and banking sectors' work (mal)practices go unchallenged, thereby triggering and exacerbating employees' stress levels.

The study found that the high power distance culture promotes a servant-master relationship type, making it impossible for employees to challenge employers on issues relating to stressors such as work overload, unconducive work environments, work-life imbalance and burnout, thereby exacerbating their stress levels in a country in which stress has become a way of life.

Research on the relationship between employee stress and HPD culture is relatively underdeveloped. This article sheds light on issues associated with stressors in Nigeria's human resource management (HRM) and employment relations practices. The link between the inability of employees to challenge these stressors (which are consequences of an HPD culture) and increased employee stress has substantial implications for employment and work-related policies and practices in general. The study is constrained by the limited sample size, which inhibits the generalisation of its findings.

The article adds to the scarcity of studies underscoring the relationship between high-power distance and the inability of employees to challenge work-related stressors as a predictor of employee stress and a mediator between workplace practices and employee stress, particularly in the emerging economies.

Drawing on the emotional labour theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of cultural orientation on emotion regulation and display processes for service employees.

Based on a Nigerian study where literature is scarce, data were gathered from semi-structured interviews conducted with 40 call centre service agents.

The findings identified three key values around reinforcing social cohesion, anticipated self-curtailment, hierarchy and expressions of servility based on broader societal needs to promote relational harmony when managing customer relations during inbound calls into the call centre.

The extent to which the findings can be generalised is constrained by the limited and selected sample size. However, the study makes contributions to the service work theory by identifying the extent to which communication of emotions is informed in large parts by local culture and seeks to incite scholarly awareness on the differences of emotional display rules from a developing country other than western contexts.

This paper is among the first to focus on the interface between culture and emotional labour from a Sub-Saharan African context.

Given the sharp rise in the adoption of digital onboarding in employment relations and human resource management practices, largely caused by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, this study explores the impact of digital onboarding on employees' wellbeing, engagement level, performance, and overall outcomes.

This study uses an interpretive qualitative research methodology, undertaking semi-structured interviews with 28 participants working in the UK services industry.

The study finds that digital onboarding has a significant impact on employee outcomes, following the perceptions of “dwindling social connectedness and personal wellbeing”, “meaningful and meaningless work”, and “poor employee relations” among employees and their employers in the workplace.

Due to the increased adoption of digital onboarding, human resources teams must focus on having considerable human interaction with new hires, even if this means adopting a hybrid approach to onboarding. Human resources teams must ensure that they work together with line managers to promote a welcoming culture for new hires and facilitate organisation-driven socialisation tactics and the “quality” information necessary for supporting new employees. For new employees, besides acquiring the digital skills that are essential in the workplace, they must accept the changing digital landscape in order to practice effective communication and align their goals and values with those of their organisation.

Qualitative research on the influence of digital onboarding on employee outcomes is limited, with much of the research yet to substantially consider the impact of digitalisation on the human resources function of onboarding employees as full members of an organisation.

This study investigates the overarching ideology of work–life balance (WLB) or conflict as predominantly being a work–family affair. Based on a Nigerian study, and using organisational justice as a theoretical lens, it explores perceived fairness in accessing family-friendly policies by managers and professionals who are single and do not have children – a workgroup conventionally ignored in research on WLB.

Relying on an interpretivist approach, the data set comprises of interviews with 24 bank managers and 20 medical doctors working in Nigeria.

The authors’ findings highlight employers' misconceptions concerning the non-work preferences and commitments of singles as well as an undervaluation by employers of their non-work time. Conceptualised as “time biases”, such time is routinely invaded by the organisation, with profound implications for perceptions of fairness. This fosters backlash behaviours with potential detrimental effects in terms of organisational effectiveness.

The study is limited to investigating the WLB of singles in high-status roles, namely banking and medical careers. Future research may examine the experiences of a more diverse range of occupations. The sample comprises heterosexual, never-married professionals, whose experiences may differ from other categories of single workers, such as childless divorced people, widows, non-heterosexual singles and partners who have no children.

In order to avoid counterproductive behaviours in the workplace, WLB policies should not only focus on those with childcare concerns. Inclusive work–life policies for other household structures, such as single-persons, are necessary for improving overall organisational well-being.

The majority of WLB studies have been undertaken in Western and Asian contexts, to the neglect of the Sub-Saharan African experience. Additionally, research tends to focus on WLB issues on the part of working parents, overlooking the difficulties faced by singles.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of work-life-balance (WLB) challenges for Nigerian female medical doctors. This study focusses on Nigeria, which its peculiar socio-cultural, institutional and professional realities constitute WLB as well as social sustainability (SS) challenge for female medical doctors.

Relying on qualitative, interpretivist approach and informed by institutional theory, this study explores how Nigeria’s institutional environment and workplace realities engender WLB challenges, which consequently impact SS for female doctors. In total, 43 semi-structured interviews and focus group session involving eight participants were utilised for empirical analysis.

The study reveals that factors such as work pressure, cultural expectations, unsupportive relationships, challenging work environment, gender role challenges, lack of voice/participation, and high stress level moderate the ability of female medical doctors to manage WLB and SS. It also identifies that socio-cultural and institutional demands on women show that these challenges, while common to female physicians in other countries, are different and more intense in Nigeria because of their unique professional, socio-cultural and institutional frameworks.

The implications of the WLB and SS requires scholarship to deepen as well as extend knowledge on contextual disparities in understanding these concepts from developing countries perspective, which is understudied.

This study offers fresh insights into the WLB and SS concepts from the non-western context, such as Nigeria, highlighting the previously understudied challenges of WLB and SS and their implications for female doctors.

This study explores the practices of locational flexibility in the Nigerian higher education sector. It examines the realities of remotely organising and managing academics' teaching and administrative workload, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Relying on the interpretative paradigm, the dataset consists of semi-structured interviews with 92 professionals in the Nigerian higher educational institution (HEI) sector drawn from private and public federal government-owned and regional (otherwise known as state government) tertiary institutions.

The study highlights the practices of locational flexibility across the Nigerian higher education sector. Therefore, it underscores the notions of locational flexibility from the perspective of Nigerian academics. It reveals a paucity in the range and usage of locational flexibility options across the Nigerian higher education sector, as well as the factors shaping its implementation and utilisation. Ultimately, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings reveal that locational flexibility is predominantly environmentally induced.

This study focused on a salient topic that explores the practices of locational flexibility, particularly in an underresearched context of developing economies, specifically Nigeria. Moreover, the study contributes to the scarce literature on locational flexibility. Additionally, unlike previous studies that are mostly preoccupied with the meaning of the concept and the importance of the practice to employees' work-life balance, organisational flexibility, and overall operational performance, this study underpins the practices, utilisation and barriers to implementing locational flexibility.

Based on a study of internationally oriented Greek small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and using the lens of institutional theory, this paper extends the understanding of the extent to which Greece's institutional context influences talent management (TM). In so doing, the authors focussed on the key TM practices employed by SMEs to enhance and sustain TM: talent acquisition, development and retention. The authors also explore how these practices are shaped by the Greek institutional context.

Employing a multiple case-study approach, the authors conducted 18 interviews in six distinctive SMEs operating in north, central and southern Greece. The data were thematically analysed to identify patterns across all SMEs.

This study found that unlike multinational corporations, internationally oriented Greek SMEs adopt a more inclusive approach to TM practices as well as that the country's institutional context presented important yet not deterministic hurdles. The authors also found that SMEs adopt an opportunistic approach to talent acquisition by utilising appropriate available sources to reach out for available talent. The authors provided evidence that SMEs adopt a hybrid approach to talent development in addressing talent scarcity. Finally, this study reported that talent retention is significantly appreciated by SMEs, who offer a range of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives to retain their talented workforce.

This study provides stakeholders with insights into how effective TM practices can be considered a lifeline to organisational sustainability – particularly for SMEs in the contemporary challenging and fiercely competitive business environment. It also highlights the potential of inclusive TM practices to be part of an effective workforce management strategy: Relative to the prevailing institutional dynamic, stakeholders (policymakers and human resource practitioners) must engage in the multiple areas of individual talent acquisition, development and retention.

In a context of reforms, this study reports on TM practice in internationally oriented Greek SMEs. The authors also add to the literature on TM in SMEs by providing evidence on the conceptualisation and management of global talent in this context.

Despite the fundamental role of culture in an organisational setting, little is known of how organisational culture can be sometimes determined/influenced by professional culture, particularly in the global south. Using Nigeria as a research focus, this article uses critical discuss analysis to examine the link between professional and organisational culture.

This study uses qualitative research approach to establish the significance of professional culture as a determinant of organisational culture among healthcare organisations.

We found that the medical profession in Nigeria is replete with professional duties and responsibilities, such as professional values and beliefs, professional rules and regulations, professional ethics, eagerness to fulfil the Hippocratic Oath, professional language, professional symbols, medicine codes of practice and societal expectations, all of which conflate to form medical professionals' values, beliefs, assumptions and the shared perceptions and practices upon which the medical professional culture is strongly built. This makes the medical professional culture stronger and more dominant than the healthcare organisational culture.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the limited and selected sample of the research.

The primacy of professional culture over organisational culture may have dysfunctional consequences for human resource management (HRM), as medical practitioners are obliged to stick to medical professional culture over human resources practices. Hence, human resources departments may struggle to cope with the behavioural issues that arise due to the dominant position taken by the medical practitioners. This is because the cultural system (professional culture), which is the configuration of beliefs, perceived values, code of ethics, practices and so forth. shared by medical doctors, subverts the operating system. Therefore, in the case of healthcare organisations, HRM should support and enhance the cultural system (the medical professional culture) by offering compatible operating strategies and practices.

This article provides valuable insights into the link between professional culture and organisational culture. It also enriches debates on organisational culture and professional culture. We, therefore, contend that a strong professional culture can overwhelm and eventually become an organisational culture.