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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of role stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload) on change readiness and in turn their effects on the withdrawal process. In addition, it explores the moderating role of colleague support in the relationship between role stressors and change readiness.

Data were collected from health care workers (n=457) in a large Canadian hospital undergoing large scale change.

The results revealed that role ambiguity and role conflict had a significant negative association with change readiness. Change readiness was related to turnover intentions which was related to higher levels of absenteeism and actual turnover. Change readiness partially mediated the relationship between role ambiguity and turnover intentions but not for role conflict and role overload. Turnover intentions partially mediated the relationship between change readiness and actual turnover but not for absenteeism. Role conflict had a direct rather than an indirect effect via change readiness on turnover intentions. Finally, colleague support moderated the relationship between all three role stressors and change readiness.

Little is known about the limiting factors of change as well as the factors that protect against them. The authors identify role stressors as a limiting factor for change and highlight their impact on change readiness and the overall withdrawal process. The results, however, also show that some demands are more commonly experienced by health care workers thereby not posing a threat to their change readiness. Colleague support is identified as a coping mechanism for mitigating against the detrimental effects of role stressors.

This study examined gender differences in CEOs' expression of implicit achievement, power and affiliation motivation. Building on the role congruity account of sex differences and similarities in motivation and existing literature on implicit motives, the study tested whether female CEOs would express higher affiliation motivation than male CEOs and similar levels of achievement motivation. In addition, gender differences in power motivation were explored.

The study used propensity score matching to generate a comparable sample of male and female CEOs from publicly traded companies. Subsequently, the authors content-coded CEO letters from annual reports using Winter's (1994) manual for scoring motive imagery in running text.

Overall, CEOs expressed more achievement and power motivation than affiliation motivation. Comparisons between male and female CEOs showed that female CEOs expressed lower power and higher affiliation motivation than male CEOs.

By integrating implicit motive theory with social role theory and the role congruity account of motivation, this study provides a theoretical framework and novel demonstration that understanding social roles and gender roles can lend insights into motive expression by CEOs.

The study uses established theory and a validated scoring method in a novel way by analyzing implicit motives from CEO letters, a critical communication channel in the CEO–shareholder relationship. In doing so, this study adopts a sociocultural perspective. Informed by the role congruity account of motivation, the study demonstrates the importance of social roles and gender roles for motivational displays.

Addressing the continuing productivity challenge, the purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the National Health Service on employee involvement (EI) in order to gain critical insights into how employees’ shared perception of EI in organizational decision making (i.e. EI climate) might address two persistent issues: how to enhance positive staff attitudes and improve organizational performance. In doing so, the authors respond to recent calls for more multilevel research and extend previous research on EI climate by attending to both EI climate level and EI climate strength.

Data from 4,702 employees nested in 33 UK hospitals were used to test the moderating role of EI climate strength in the cross-level EI climate level employee level-attitudes relationship and in the organizational-level EI climate-organizational effectiveness relationship.

The results of the multilevel analyses showed that EI climate level was positively associated with individual-level employee attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment). Further the results of the hierarchical regression analysis and the ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that EI climate level was also related to organizational effectiveness (i.e. lower outpatient waiting times, higher performance quality). In addition, both analyses demonstrated the moderating role of EI climate strength, in that the positive impact of EI climate level on employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness was more marked in the presence of a strong climate compared to a weak EI climate.

By creating and maintaining a positive and strong climate for involvement, hospital managers can tackle the productivity challenge that UK hospitals and health care institutions more generally are currently facing while improving the attitudes of their employees who are critical in the transformative process and ultimately underpin the organizational success.

This is the first study which provides evidence that favorable and consistent collective recognition of EI opportunities by staff contributes to enhance both employee attitudes and hospital performance. Results highlight the role of EI climate strength and underscore its importance in future research and practice.

The present study contributes to our understanding of how to curb burnout among hospital staff over time. The authors extend existing research by examining the mediating role of mission valence in the link between transformational leadership and burnout.

Self-administered questionnaire data from employees in a Canadian general hospital (N = 185) were analyzed using a time-lagged research design to examine whether transformational leaders can increase employees' attraction to the organization's mission (i.e. mission valence) and in turn alleviate long-term burnout.

Structural equation modeling analysis demonstrated that transformational leadership (time 1) was negatively related to the burnout components of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (time 2). Further, the results showed that mission valence mediated these relationships.

The study findings are important for managers and professionals as they identify transformational leadership as a potent strategy to alleviate employee burnout and clarify the process through which this is achieved, namely, by increasing mission valence.

To date, surprisingly little research has explored how transformational leadership influences followers' burnout. To address this issue, the present study examined the role of transformational leadership on staff burnout through the mechanism of increasing mission valence. Understanding how to mitigate burnout is particularly critical in health care organizations given that burnout not only negatively impacts employee wellbeing but also the wellbeing and quality of care provided to patients.

This chapter investigates the relationship between abusive supervision and employee well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, engagement) and ill-being (i.e., burnout, workaholism) and examines whether follower core self-evaluations (CSE) moderate this relationship.

The study uses cross-sectional survey data collected from 111 professional employees across a range of industry sectors.

Results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to employee well-being (i.e., engagement and job satisfaction) and positively related to employee ill-being, namely burnout. In addition, employees low in CSE are less engaged and less satisfied than employees high in CSE.

The study’s cross-sectional design limits the strength of its conclusions.

This chapter notes the ethical and legal obligations of organizations to provide a safe working environment and identifies the policies and procedures that will signal a commitment to employee well-being.

The study contributes to the leadership and well-being literatures by exploring the influence of abusive leaders on follower well-being and engagement. It also goes beyond merely identifying correlations between leadership style and follower well-being outcomes to investigate how leader and follower attributes can combine to influence these outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the indirect link between high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and firm performance in Chinese professional service firms (PSFs) by investigating the mediating role of organizational ambidexterity, i.e. a firm’s capability to simultaneously explore new ideas and exploit existing resources.

Data were collected from 120 Chinese accounting firms. The authors used hierarchical and polynomial regression analyses to test their hypotheses.

The proposed positive link between the HPWS and organizational ambidexterity was found. Further, the results showed a non-linear relationship between organizational ambidexterity and organizational performance.

The present study is limited in terms of small sample size, single industry and self-report data.

Firms which reported a higher level of HPWS demonstrated better performance due to their organizational capability to explore new ideas and exploit existing resources. In the Chinese context, firms that had high levels of exploration (exploring new resources) and exploitation (exploiting existing resources) or that had a high level of exploration experienced higher performance. The authors can conclude from these findings that without exploration, organizational success is difficult to achieve for PSFs.

This is the first study examining the underlying mechanism of organizational ambidexterity in the indirect relationship between HPWS and firm performance in Chinese PSFs. It advances the authors understanding of HPWS and firm performance relationship in an Eastern country and an emerging context of PSFs. This is also the first study to use polynomial regression to operationalize organizational ambidexterity.

Organizational ambidexterity enables firm to simultaneously exploit existing resources and explore new resources. It is associated with high levels of organizational performance. The purpose of this paper is to identify key internal management resources which contribute to building organizational ambidexterity. In particular, this study examines the impact of intellectual capital, i.e. human, social, and organizational capital, on organizational ambidexterity which in turn influences firm performance.

The research was conducted within the context of professional service firms due to the importance of intellectual capital and organizational ambidexterity. Data were collected from 112 Chinese (cross-sectional design) and 93 Irish accounting firms (time-lagged design).

Results provide support for the linkage of intellectual capital to organizational ambidexterity and firm performance. Interestingly, findings are mixed regarding the impact of the three types of capital resources on organizational ambidexterity across both countries.

This study finds that various components of intellectual capital facilitate organizational ambidexterity which in turn improves firm performance. Therefore the authors provide managers with evidential support for the salience of intellectual capital in enabling organizations to simultaneously engage in exploiting existing resources while also exploring new ideas and opportunities.

This study is unique in that it highlights the importance of internal management resources in building up organization’s ambidexterity capability. The link between intellectual capital and organizational ambidexterity was established using a rigorous research design which has not been done before. It also emphasizes the role of people in leading to organizational effectiveness via developing organizational ambidexterity. Furthermore the evidence is gathered in two countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a system of human resource management (HRM) practices, labelled high-performance work systems (HPWS), influences organizational innovation in professional service firms (PSFs). In this study, innovation in PSFs is seen as an indicator of firm performance and is calculated as the revenue per person generated from new clients and new services, respectively.

Quantitative data were collected from 195 managing partners, HR managers or experienced Partners in 120 Irish accounting firms. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The analysis results indicate strong support for the mediating role of employees’ innovative work behaviours in the relationship between HPWS and two types of PSFs’ innovation performance.

Managers need to effectively adopt and implement innovation-based HRM practices to encourage and support employees’ creative thinking and innovation. Through the adoption and utilization of these practices managers can enhance the firm’s innovation and its performance.

This study contributes to our understanding of the link between HRM and firm innovation by explicating a pathway between these variables. This study also generalizes consistent findings on the HRM-firm innovation relationship to a different context, i.e. PSFs.

The aim of this study is to better understand service supply chain management by analysing the professional service supply chain in professional service firms (PSFs) and exploring how the high performance work systems (HPWS) influence professional service supply chain performance. In addition, this study seeks to examine the relationship between professional service supply chain performance and the overall organizational performance.

Analysis of PSF suggests a three‐step of professional service supply chain as the clients' requests, partners forming working teams or so‐called team formation and utilization, and delivering of solutions or services to clients. Based on extensive literature review, the authors hypothesize that HPWS have a positive impact on the professional service supply chain performance and the team formation and utilization mediates the link. They also hypothesize the positive link between the professional service supply chain performance and the overall organisational firm performance. Employing survey method, data was collected from 93 accounting firms at two time points. In May 2010 (Time 1), a survey including questions on HPWS, team formation and utilization and professional service supply chain performance were sent out to the managing partners and HR directors in accounting firms based in Ireland. Around one year later (Time 2), another survey measuring firm performance was sent out. This data allowed the authors to establish causal pattern in their results. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyse data to test hypotheses.

The results indicate the positive link between HPWS and the professional service supply chain performance. The team formation and utilization mediates the above relationship. In addition, professional service supply chain performance was found to be positively linked to the firm performance.

The present study is limited in terms of sample size, single industry and self‐report data. Future research also needs to examine more mediators or moderators – the mechanisms through which HPWS work on the professional service supply chain.

Firms using higher level of HPWS experience better professional service supply chain performance. Human resource management practices that promote employees' ability, motivation and opportunities which allow teams to be formed more effectively to work with clients enhance organizational performance and higher profit levels. Managers able to effectively adopt and implement these teamwork‐based HR practices and encourage and support employees' collaboration through such practices enhance the firm's professional service supply chain effectiveness and its organisational performance.

The authors' study focuses on the service supply chain management operations within the professional service firms. In doing so, their research answers the call by Ellram et al. for more supply chain management research with respect to the service sector. It addresses a significant research gap identified by Rahman and Wu, namely, “relatively little attention has been given to the service suppliers' perspective”. By linking service supply chain management and human resource management, this study also answers a few calls for more research on the interaction of human resource management and supply chain management, service supply chain and human resource management in professional service firms.

This is one of the few studies to analyse the professional service supply chain management and assess the human resource management and supply chain management link. Moreover, it is the first study which empirically establishes the link between human resource management and professional service supply chain performance in PSFs.

Across the United States (US), COVID-19 vaccination coverage was lower in rural counties compared to urban counties, exacerbating rural health inequities. While rural communities fall short of the public health goal to vaccinate all who are eligible, most rural residents have chosen to vaccinate for COVID-19. The aim of this study was to better understand rural New Mexicans' attitudes and beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines.

We conducted and analyzed 51 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with adults living in rural New Mexican counties, covering a range of topics related to the pandemic, including vaccines. These interviews were conducted in the Summer of 2021 after the vaccines were widely available to all adults over the age of 18 and youth between the ages of 12–17, but not yet available for children under 12 years.

Two major perspectives were identified: (1) the idea that COVID-19 vaccinations are a tool that individuals can use to achieve freedom and protection and (2) the view which regarded vaccines as an infringement of personal rights and one's autonomy of health. For people who viewed the vaccine as a tool for freedom, several themes emerged, including (1) a preference for vaccine manufacturers, specifically a preference for Pfizer, and (2) frustrations related to vaccine access, specifically, older adults expressed frustrations with the difficulty of scheduling vaccination appointments. However, most participants felt as though they had enough vaccination resources. For people who viewed vaccines (and vaccine mandates) as limiting their freedom, additional themes emerged: (1) overarching distrust of government and the perception that vaccines were an extension of government and (2) distrust in the vaccines themselves, including a perceived lack of research on the vaccines and a perception that the vaccine was developed in too short of a period. Some of the people who hold these beliefs are also vaccinated. We draw from social psychology theories to better understand how people who hold a rural identity come to establish different beliefs and practices compared to larger metropolitan regions. While political identity is a contributor, of our participants, the group who were most likely to report not being vaccinated were the “independent” or “unaffiliated voters.” Our findings can help craft culturally responsive vaccine initiatives for rural communities.