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Most prior studies treated human resource management (HRM) strength as a whole, while neglecting the dynamic interactions between distinct components (consensus, consistency and distinctiveness). The authors lack a deep understanding of how different components operate together to influence burnout. To address these gaps, this study aims to adopt signaling theory to investigate the interactions among different components and their impacts on employee burnout.

The authors collected time-lagged data from 231 full-time employees in manufacturing firms in Suzhou, China. The authors used the PROCESS Model 6 and hierarchical multiple regression to analyze the data.

This study found that HRM system consensus and consistency mitigate employee burnout, whereas HRM distinctiveness is not significantly related to burnout. Furthermore, the authors revealed that HRM system consistency (rather than distinctiveness) mediated the relationship between consensus and burnout. Moreover, the authors found the sequential mediating effects of HRM system distinctiveness and consistency on the association between consensus and burnout.

Considering that employees’ well-being problems may be debilitating and overwhelming during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is particularly ethical and timely for managers to direct attention to the role of HRM system strength in addressing employee burnout.

This study advances the HRM system literature by teasing out the interactions between the three pivotal components of HRM strength. Our study is among the first to empirically investigate the internal relationships between the meta-features of the HRM system and employee burnout. In doing so, the authors develop a more nuanced understanding of the collective nature of a strong HRM system that conveys a shared message about HRM to promote well-being.

The literature on information technology outsourcing (ITO) prioritises monetary considerations and overlooks human aspects. This qualitative study adopts a contextualised approach to address a research gap in understanding agency workers’ intent to stay in the ITO sector.

In contrast to previous studies that focus on intra-organisational factors and use quantitative designs, this study takes a qualitative approach. It analyses data from 85 in-depth interviews with agency workers in the Chinese ITO supply chain and project managers of supplier and client firms.

The study constructs an integrated framework covering 15 factors at three levels and shows how they interact to influence Chinese agency workers’ intent to stay in the ITO supply chain. Variations in outsourcing management styles and practices among U.S., Japanese and Chinese client firms are presented to enrich the understanding of outsourcing dynamics in a global context.

This study contributes to the ITO literature by providing new insights into the retention of highly skilled agency workers and deepening the contextual understanding of this issue, throwing light on the human aspects often overshadowed by monetary considerations.

The pandemic emphasised the importance for society of the “hidden” workforce – cleaners, delivery drivers, security guards or hospital porters. This paper explores the well-being of low-status expatriates in the international workplace exemplified by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This is one of the first studies examining the well-being of people at the bottom of the pyramid, living in difficult circumstances, and undertaking work that is hard and sometimes dangerous.

The authors adopt an exploratory approach. Using semi-structured interview data from 21 low-status expatriates, the authors examine their experiences in the UAE in relation to their well-being, allowing the authors to suggest the need to develop our understanding of the concept of well-being and the concept's application.

Low-status expatriates live restrictive lives, away from their family and friends for extended periods, and subject to rigid terms and conditions of employment. Difficult circumstances, long working hours, late or arbitrarily reduced salary payment and a lack of voice affect their personal well-being and sacrificed to consideration for their family well-being. Applying the concept of well-being in such cases requires the authors to develop the notion beyond the individual to encompass the wider family.

This exploratory analysis opens new avenues for well-being studies and highlights the need for contextualised research. Future research might benefit from quantitative methods being used alongside qualitative methods and collecting multiple perspective data, including the views of managers and policy makers and data from the “left-behind” families of these low-status expatriates.

There is plenty of scope for managers of low-status expatriates to improve the latter's well-being. Given the lack of interest in doing so, the authors suggest that policy makers may need to modify extant legalisation to ensure a greater focus on low-status expatriates.

The authors believe this to be the first study to examine the impact of family orientation on the well-being of low-status expatriates, encouraging the authors to challenge and suggest developments to current understandings of well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the power dynamics between the client firm and the supplier firm in the information technology outsourcing (ITO) supplier chain influence the supplier firm's human resource management (HRM) practices, particularly talent retention.

A multi-case study approach was adopted comprising four supplier firms, three client firms and a total of 53 interviews. The transaction cost economics (TCE) is the theoretical lens that guides the interpretation of our findings.

The power dynamics between client and supplier firms in the ITO supply chain is one underpinned by TCE theory, characterised by an asymmetric client-dominated, transactional relationship, with the client firms controlling the “why”, the “what”, and the “how” dimensions of their collaboration. This “three-dimensional control” led to high talent turnover in supplier firms, which boomerangs to perpetuate the power dynamic, forming “vicious cycles of talent turnover” in the ITO supplier chain.

No previous study has analysed power dynamics as an external factor on ITO supplier firms' talent retention. The construct of the “three-dimensional-control” offers a framework to study power dynamics in the ITO supplier chain. The study’s framework of the “vicious cycles of talent turnover” is the first that explains the mechanisms through which the power dynamics in the ITO influences supplier's talent retention.

Reducing employees’ knowledge hiding is vital for enterprise managers. The development of enterprise social media brings opportunities for them to manage employees’ knowledge-hiding behaviors. However, whether the use of enterprise social media inhibits or promotes knowledge hiding is still unclear. The purpose of this study is to explore how enterprise social media usage affect employees' knowledge hiding.

Based on the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation model, this paper proposes a research model to investigate the relationship between enterprise social media usage and knowledge hiding, using a structural equation modeling analysis of 288 employees’ data.

The results show that work-related public social media usage has an inhibiting effect on employees’ knowledge hiding, whereas the effect of work-related private social media usage on employees’ knowledge hiding is not significant; socially related public social media and private social media usage has a promoting effect on employees’ knowledge hiding; and job engagement acts in a positive moderating role between socially related private and public social media usage and evasive hiding.

First, this paper contributes to knowledge-hiding literature by revealing the relationship between enterprise social media usage and knowledge hiding. Second, this study contributes to motivation theory by clarifying how the use of enterprise social media with different motivations affects knowledge hiding. Third, this paper also contributes to knowledge-hiding literature by revealing a boundary condition, namely, job engagement.

For nanostores, striving to become the community group-buying leader is gaining prominence. This paper aims to construct Hotelling linear models to investigate whether nanostores should be registered as leaders and their decisions in a competitive environment.

This paper constructs three Hotelling linear models: neither nanostore registers as community leader, only one nanostore registers as community leader and both nanostores register as community leader. The competitive operation strategies of two general nanostores under three scenarios are solved.

The study finds that nanostores without a cost advantage may benefit from being the first leader. The nanostore's preferred decisions depend on the investment cost parameters of its own and competitors which may lead to market share competition. Furthermore, consumers' sensitivity to community group-buying service has a negative effect on nanostores' profit.

The study is one of the few to consider the competition between community leaders. Besides, the study considers that the utilities functions of consumers are concurrently impacted by the service decisions, along with the price in different nanostores. It can provide nanostores useful implications in the dynamic industry.

Enterprises use social media for their daily work. The use of social media in the workplace is crucial for social connections, the growth and evolution of the enterprise, and it opens up new avenues for voice behavior. Employee voice involves the expression of ideas or opinions towards enterprise and is beneficial for employee work and enterprise development. Extant studies of voice behavior usually focus on the leadership and employee factors. However, the internal mechanism of voice behavior, especially the interrelationship between different kinds of social media use and voice behavior has not been well investigated. To fill that research gap, this study analyzes the internal mechanism of voice behavior, taking the effects of social media use and social capital into consideration.

Using structural equation model, this study collected data from employees using social media and analyzed the data using the software of Smartpls 3.0, SPSS and AMOS, in order to analyze the internal mechanism of voice behavior among employees.

Based on social capital theory, this study investigates the relationship between social media use, social capital and voice behavior, and provides some insights into the mechanism of voice behavior. The social media use, social capital and voice behavior are divided into several kinds in order to clarify the internal mechanism of voice behavior more comprehensively. The empirical results show that: (1) Social media use for both work and social-related purposes could positively affect employees’ promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors. (2) Social capital mediates the relationship between social media use and voice behavior. (3) In the process of social media use influencing employees’ voice behavior, employees of different genders and ages show significant differences in social capital and voice behavior.

This study explored the internal mechanism of voice behavior, which could help to elicit the relationship between social media use and voice behavior. By integrating the roles of social capital, individual differences, this study could uncover the deep internal mechanism of employee voice behavior more comprehensively, broadening social capital theory and enriching the researches of voice behavior among employees.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel method to prepare pure Ti powder for 3D printing with tailorable particle size distribution.

The main procedures of the present method consist of gas state reaction to synthesize TiH₂ nanoparticles, agglomeration to obtain micronscale powder particles by spray drying, and densification of particle interior by heat treatment.

The prepared Ti powder has a specific bimodal particle size distribution in a range of small sizes, good sphericity and high flowability. Particularly, this new technique is capable of controlling powder purity and adjusting particle size.

To the best knowledge of the authors, the approach for preparing 3D printing metallic powders from nanoparticles has not been reported in the literature so far. This work provides a novel method that is particularly applicable to prepare 3D printing metallic powders which have small initial particle sizes and high reactivity in the air.