This study examined how individuals make sense of their work narratives – autobiographical stories about their work lives – and the implications for individual well-being. A mixed methods approach was used to investigate relationships between meaning making, pathways to meaningfulness, job characteristics, job involvement, and psychological well-being. Survey responses and narrative themes from life story interviews were collected from 119 adults. A narrative coding scheme was developed to identify pathways to meaningful work. Results show that people made sense of their work lives most often by constructing themes about personal agency. The findings support prior research suggesting that socioeconomic factors, access to resources, and working conditions increase the likelihood of finding and benefiting from meaningful work. For individuals wishing to find meaning in their work, job design characteristics (e.g., decision authority, skill discretion), and developing a sense of agency can be levers for fostering meaning and well-being.

Drawing on the configuration argument of strategic fit – i.e., an effective alignment of a firm's strategy with its environment, internal structures, and processes – and the resource-based view, this paper clarifies the impact of alliance strategy, alliance management resources, and alliance management capabilities on innovation performance in collaborative ventures. This study of 441 collaborative ventures in the electronics industry offers empirical support for the configuration argument. First, greater alliance strategy formalization influences innovation performance directly and indirectly. Alliance management capabilities – that reflect organizational routines to implement an alliance strategy – partially mediate this effect. Second, alliance management capabilities leverage alliance management resources in that the effect of the former on innovation performance is moderated by the latter. Furthermore, greater innovation strategy formalization affects innovation performance and moderates the direct effect of alliance strategy formalization on innovation performance; an effect that increases with technological uncertainty.

This paper examines one type of negative work behaviour, work harassment, using two theoretical frameworks: Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Similarity-Attraction (SA). SET explains work harassment as a product of poor management practices, whereas using SA theory explains it as a result of the growing normalisation of high workloads. The study undertakes latent mean and path model comparison analysis using structural equation modelling of data from 189 nurses in the UK and 401 nurses in the USA. The findings indicate a good model fit showing a significant path from Leader Member Exchange (LMX) to work harassment, wellbeing and subsequent turnover intentions, with LMX fully mediating the path from LMX to wellbeing for UK nurses, but only partially mediating the same path for nurses in the USA. The findings suggest SET provides a better explanation for work harassment for UK nurses, whereas SA theory better explains the US nurse experience.

Drawing on goal orientation theory, in this study, we examine how an individual's motivational approach relates to the use of two common emotional labor strategies: surface acting and deep acting. In addition, we examine the role of self-efficacy as a mediating mechanism through which different goal orientations are related to different emotional labor strategies. To test our hypotheses, 262 U.S. full-time working adults from a variety of service occupations were surveyed. Consistent with the predictions of goal orientation theory, our results show that learning-oriented service employees tend to use deep acting, while performance-oriented service employees use both emotional labor strategies. Our findings also show that emotional labor self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between motivational approach and emotional labor strategy use.

This paper reflects on the latent organisational process that leads tothe scarcity of women in senior positions. Utilising characteristics of legitimisation, institutionalisation and self-determination theories the paper observes how women manage upward mobility. Subsequently, it was important to investigate the mid-level cohorts, as there lies the critical question triggering the anomaly. Focusing on the public sector with an interest in gendered organisations, the study examines law enforcement. Conversely, the aim of this paper is to focus on why there is a continued dearth in the number of policewomen at top level positions in USA and Australia. A qualitative study with a phenomenological approach is applied. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with 40 policewomen in mid-management positions in American and Australian law enforcement. It further aims to explore the linkages of the ongoing paucity of gendered leadership in organisations, questioning how these will influence women's ability to advance to higher-level positions.

How organizations utilize capabilities to achieve competitive advantage and improve performance has received an abundance of scholarly attention. Both ordinary and dynamic capabilities (DC) enable organizations to achieve higher performance when leveraged appropriately and under favorable conditions. The complexity of an organization's motives for why and how different capabilities are acquired drives us further to explore what complementarities organizations might achieve and under what contexts. Specifically, we explore how firms engaging in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to acquire dynamic and/or ordinary capabilities experience different market reactions and levels of short- and long-run value creation given environmental uncertainty. Our results support the acquisition of ordinary capabilities for predicting positive short-term market reactions and of DC for longer-run firm performance post-M&A, with uncertainty factors moderating these relationships. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of uncertainty and acquisitions of these capabilities and offer suggestions for future research.

Although previous studies provide diverse perspectives on subordinate's deviant behavior as a reaction to abusive supervision (ABS), the influence of ABS on subordinates’ inter-personal relations received little attention. Grounded on social exchange theory, this study proposes that subordinates who are being abused by the same supervisor develop a bond among each other. That further provides strength to each of the abused group member to exhibit deviant behaviors against supervisor and non-abused peer group. Data were collected and analyzed through mediation analysis using AMOS. Using a sample of 920 employees from multi-sector organizations it was found that abused employees show citizenship behavior toward other abused peer-group members and counter-productive behavior toward supervisor and non-abused peer-group members. Moreover, citizenship behaviors created among the abused peer-group members partially mediate the relationship of ABS and counter-productive work behavior.

Using the data on the religious belief of entrepreneurs in Chinese family firms, this study shows that religious entrepreneurs significantly positively affect corporate longevity, echoing the view that religious entrepreneurs can obtain managerial skills and share managerial knowledge about corporate operation through the conduit of religious attendance, and thus firms with religious entrepreneurs are more long-lived. Moreover, the development of factor markets across different provinces in China reinforces this positive relation between religious entrepreneurs and corporate longevity. Furthermore, qualitatively similar results can be found from various robustness tests, and our conclusions still stand after controlling for the potential selection bias in the research sample. Lastly, after differentiating different religious beliefs, the positive relation between religious entrepreneurs and corporate longevity is only valid for Western religious beliefs (but not for Eastern religious beliefs), and the reinforced role of the development of factor markets only stands for Eastern religious beliefs.

Based on positive organizational scholarship in healthcare, this study examined the relationships between four dimensions of employee perception of training: workplace stress, organizational outcomes, job performance, and turnover intentions. We hypothesized that employee training perception would have a negative relationship with workplace stress and that stress would mediate the relationship between employee training perception, job performance, and turnover intentions. We obtained data on 317 elderly-care workers in Northern Cyprus and analyzed it using structural equation modeling. Employee training perception was negatively related to workplace stress, and stress was negatively related to job performance and positively related to turnover intention. In line with Job Demand-Resource theory (JD-R), workplace stress partially mediated the relationship between employee training perception and organizational outcomes. The study contributes to the literature by confirming that elderly-care organizations that provide training opportunities for employees can reduce workplace stress, build organizational strengths, and facilitate positive outcomes.

This conceptual paper focuses on the importance of extending the collaborative dynamic capabilities (C-DCs) view and its emphasis on the boundary spanning strategic communities (SCs) from firm-centric to the network-centric perspective. The C-DC view is an original theoretical perspective that offers a good explanation of corporate-level transformations in the context of cross-sectoral convergence. Although the focus of prevailing research on large firms as cornerstones of SCs is valid, it does not fully capture the more complex dynamics that take in the horizontal networks of firms. We show that C-DC and SC theoretical perspectives can be adapted to the context of regional industrial clusters and contribute to their strategic renewal. The paper conceptualizes the different challenges and nature of leadership that prevail in SC-based firms networks. It also presents the different enabling aspects of collaborative DCs (with regard to trust building, co-specialization and capability synthesis) in firm- vs. network-centric environments.

We conceptualize that psychosocial safety climate (PSC) has a positive effect on employees' safety behavior by reducing their psychological distress. A high-level PSC environment reduces psychological distress by eliminating the employees' need for devoting psychological resources toward safety concerns. This preserves psychological resources to be invested in important behaviors i.e., safety compliance and participation. Data were collected from 190 production workers in the oil and gas industry across three states of Malaysia. Results showed strong support for our hypotheses. PSC was negatively linked with psychological distress. Psychological distress predicted safety compliance and participation and mediated the relationship between PSC and safety compliance/participation. Results suggest that in order to improve safety compliance and participation, management in safety-sensitive industries should pay attention to psychosocial factors in the work environment. The implications of these results for safety interventions and further research are discussed.

Research indicates that there is a positive relationship between organization-based self-esteem and in-role performance. The intervening process that creates this relationship, however, has not been investigated. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine employee learning behavior as a process between organization-based self-esteem and in-role performance. Additionally, this study examines perceived delegation as a boundary condition of a positive relationship between two variables. The sample size consisted of 293 employees from a Korean company, and the study findings revealed that employees’ learning behaviors mediate the relationship between organization-based self-esteem and in-role performance. Further, perceived delegation moderated the strength of the mediated relationship. Therefore, this study provides implications for how human resource practitioners and their organizations could support volitional learning behaviors through formal training, development-focused performance feedback, and the creation of new work experiences and learning opportunities.

Supervisor character and behavior are key components of an organization's ethical fabric that should play a role in employee helping behavior. However, research has not fully distinguished how these factors are interrelated. The current study explores these relationships by developing a deeper understanding of ethical language in organizations via thick ethical concepts found in simulation software, supported by affect control theory. Software formulae in these simulations were developed via empirical research conducted over several decades. Simulations provided predictions of employee helpfulness in response to encounters with supervisors of varying ethical characters, enacting a variety of behaviors. The likely impact of supervisor character on employee helpfulness is more substantial than the impact of supervisor behavior. New insights emerged related to underlying complexities of ethical languages, such as the role of cultural meanings of language terms. These outcomes, as well as the associated implications, research limitations, and suggestions for future research, are discussed.

The purpose of this empirical research is to address leadership within a complex multicultural context; namely Islamic organizations within a contemporary Western society (Australia). The researchers utilized qualitative analysis of triangulated, predominantly qualitative data. The analysis drew on core elements of grounded theory. It was found that both macro- and micro-dimensions of culture had an impact on Australian Muslim understandings of leadership and subsequently had an impact on leading. The analysis also uncovered intra- and inter-cultural complexity within Muslim organizations. The concept of an ‘iron cage’ of micro-cultures emerged to integrate these findings. An abstract storyline is posed wherein a new leadership identity will facilitate empowerment and uncertainty resolution about the stress of cultural complexity, resulting in more effective leadership.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays an important role in promoting workplace ethics. However, most research has focused on CSRs’ performance or favourable performance-related behaviour outcomes. Little is known about how individual employees perceive CSR and how this affects their ethical behaviour. This research examines how employees' perceived corporate social responsibility (PCSR) facilitates their ethical behaviour. Specifically, we hypothesise that PCSR influences employee ethical behaviour by enhancing employees' organisational commitment. The relationship between employees' commitment and ethical behaviour is contingent on their co-workers' ethical behaviour. The hypothesised relationships were assessed using partial least squares structural equation modelling with a sample of 300 employees from ‘The Ghana Club 100’ firms. Our findings suggest that employee commitment serves as an effective mechanism through which employees' perception enhances their ethical behaviour. The findings also show that the weaker the co-workers' ethical behaviour, the stronger the relationship between employee commitment and ethical behaviour. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This paper explores teaching business students research methods using a psychogeographical approach, specifically the technique of dérive. It responds to calls for new ways of teaching in higher education and addresses the dearth of literature on teaching undergraduate business students qualitative research methods. Psychogeography challenges the dominance of questionnaires and interviews, introduces students to data variety, problematizes notions of success and illuminates the importance of observation and location. Using two studies with undergraduate students, the authors emphasize place and setting, the perception of purpose, the choice of data, criteria of success and the value of guided reflection and self-reflection in students’ learning. Additionally the data reflect on the way students perceive research about management and the nature of management itself. The paper concludes that the deployment of psychogeography to teach business research methods although complex and fraught with difficulty is nevertheless viable, educationally productive and worthy of further research.

Recently, researchers have argued that strategic planning (SP) can be considered a dynamic capability (DC) in organizations – known as dynamic SP. However, the literature that discusses both SP and DCs supports different comprehensions of how both interact, resulting in different sets of research with contradictory findings. This theoretical effort presents a brief review and argues that SP is one of the microfoundations of DCs because it supports the seizing and continuous alignment of assets and resources. Under this perspective, SP has a role in the development and implementation of all organizational DCs and is not restricted to a DC specifically. It is argued that the interactions between DCs, SP and performance over time can lead to the learning needed for better DCs, SP and performance in a virtuous and mutually reinforcing cycle.

The study examines the effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and psychological capital (PsyCap) on customer engagement through discretionary service behaviors including adaptive and proactive service behaviors (ASB and PSB). A field study of 56 managers, 513 service employees, and 560 customers in 56 branches of insurance companies was carried out to test a theoretical model using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM7). The results demonstrated that PsyCap and PSC were both positively associated with ASB and PSB at the individual level. The results also showed that an interaction between PsyCap and PSC was related to ASB but not PSB. This suggested that PsyCap and PSC interact in a synergic manner to affect service employees' engagement in ASB, beyond their direct effects. At the branch level, ASB was not associated with customer engagement behavior, but PSB was. Furthermore, PSB mediated the relationship between PSC and customer engagement behavior, although ASB did not.

This study elucidates the falsity of business research in relying on either respondents or informants alone for data collection, and argues that with the biased data, business research cannot provide unbiased solutions. We compare 400 reports (200 respondents and 200 informants) on the workplace deviance and assess the goodness of both the techniques. Analysis of variance and posthoc (descriptive discriminant analysis) indicate significant disparities between the two approaches across all items. In the informant’s role, people tend to overreport, whereas in the respondent’s part they underreport an undesirable behavior. Further, we find that conventional techniques for assessing the construct’s validity and common-method bias neither assures realistic measurement nor eliminate the response bias. Drawing on the theory of psychological projection, we propose a hybrid approach that curtails some of the main biases in data and measurement. Qualitative confirmation through informal interviews with managers in the investigated firms validates the proposed method.

In a Schumpeterian economic model, dynamic capabilities (DC) help entrepreneurial firms create competitive advantages. However, advancing the construct of DC in entrepreneurship is hampered by the incompatibility of some key assumptions in entrepreneurial ventures. In this paper, we propose that dynamic managerial capabilities (DMC), which builds upon the DC perspective by drawing attention to the role of managers, is a better alternative in analyzing entrepreneurship research. We find support for our ideas in a systematic analysis of extant research. Our review highlights the evolution of DMC literature in entrepreneurship and traces its dominant intellectual structures. In concurrent analysis, we highlight the limitations of utilizing DC. Additionally, we shed new light on the emergence of organizational capabilities, and present new avenues for future research.