Drawing upon Parker, Bindl, and Strauss' [(2010). Making things happen: A model of proactive motivation. Journal of Management, 36(4), 827–856] model of proactive motivation, we provide an explanation for how employees who exhibit a high need for achievement can take a proactive initiative through the expression of voice. Importantly, the extent to which employee voice can bring about desired changes depends largely on how positively received the behavior is by those in higher positions, such as supervisors. In this regard, we further highlight the facilitating role of supervisor developmental feedback in shaping the effectiveness of voice behavior. Data from 392 independently matched subordinate–supervisor dyads from Japan provide empirical support for proposed relationships as follows: (a) there is a positive mediating relationship between the need for achievement, employee voice, and supervisors' evaluations of employee task performance and discretionary work effort, and (b) the mediating relationship becomes stronger when supervisor developmental feedback is high. Theoretical and practical implications are further discussed.

This study examines the organization impression management (OIM) tactics used in agri-food cooperatives to communicate their intentions toward sustainable development. Based on content analysis of the chairperson and CEO statements of 14 agri-foods cooperatives from six years' annual reports, this study sheds light on the role of member-owned firms in shifts toward realizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper proposes multistakeholder OIM tactics. These insights about sustainable development extend knowledge of how senior managers communicate their intentions in multistakeholder situations, which include shareholders, suppliers, customers, and local communities. This study contributes to the literature on organizational impression management and member-owned firms. Managerial implications are also outlined.

Based on the fundamental principles of social identity theory, this study examines how inclusive leadership can help build employees' organizational identification, stimulate leader-directed helping behavior, and improve task performance by facilitating insider status and relational coordination. Furthermore, we explored how these relationships are conditional on the synergy diversity climate in a moderated mediation model. We collected temporally segregated data (n = 300) from employees in diverse workforces at three time intervals with a 2-week gap between intervals. The results support the indirect effects of inclusive leadership on employee outcomes through the development of perceived insider status and relational coordination. Additionally, these indirect effects are more pronounced at higher levels of a synergy diversity climate. In conclusion, our study offers critical insights into the diversity and leadership literature by answering why and under what conditions an inclusive leader can generate favorable employee outcomes.

The uncertainty and insecurity generated by COVID-19 has greatly reshaped work styles, bringing employees more strain and less engagement and subsequently making human resource management (HRM) more challenging. There has been a growing interest in employee work engagement in the field of HRM. This study utilized positive psychology and the job demands-resources model to explore the mediating mechanism between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and employee work engagement. Based on survey data from 71 senior HR managers and 288 employees of 71 China's manufacturing state-owned enterprises, multilevel structural equation modeling shows that HPWS is positively related to work engagement. Employee-perceived internal marketability fully mediates the relationship between HPWS and work engagement. The key result of this paper is that employee-perceived internal marketability is seen as a core personal psychological resource that can be developed through HPWS to benefit both employers and employees.

Promoting knowledge sharing among employees is vital for companies whose competitive advantage is based on innovation. However, there is inadequate empirical evidence to show that human resource practices intensify knowledge sharing. Thus, this study examines whether high-commitment human resource management can boost knowledge sharing among staff members. A cross-sectional survey of permanent employees was conducted (N = 480) to examine the suitability of the secondary constructs ‘knowledge sharing in the organisation’ and ‘high-commitment human resource management’ using confirmatory factor analysis; their mutual relationship via structural equation modelling was also explored. The findings indicate that high-commitment human resource management increases knowledge dissemination in organisations. Additionally, they suggest that firms should concentrate on hiring selectively, providing autonomy and motivating work tasks to employees, setting practices for performance management and career management, and investing in employee training and development to support firm innovativeness.

Hierarchical bullying in public healthcare organizations is an entrenched negative behaviour that results in a range of adverse outcomes for staff, including diminished wellbeing. This study integrates social exchange and conservation of resources theories as a lens for formulating hypotheses and employs multilevel statistical modelling to examine whether team-level compassion moderates the impact of hierarchical bullying on wellbeing. Using multilevel statistical modelling, the study analysed cross-sectional data from 632 healthcare workers nested within 48 teams in a single public health district in Australia. The findings indicate that work teams with higher levels of team compassion can mitigate the negative effects of hierarchical bullying on employee wellbeing. The results imply that investing in developing compassion within teams is an effective strategy for mitigating some harmful effects of hierarchical bullying on employee outcomes.

The study determined whether psychological empowerment and work–life balance jointly mediate between transformational leadership and in-role performance of employees in Nigerian not-for-profit (NFP) universities using data collected through a 360-degree performance review of employees. Data were collected from the employees, their supervisors, colleagues, and customers. A sample of 360 comprising 36 faculty finance officers (the employees), 36 assistant faculty finance officers (colleagues), 36 deans of faculties (supervisors), 36 finance supervisors (supervisors), 108 undergraduate and 108 postgraduate students (customers) from Nigerian universities were surveyed using Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, employees' in-role performance questionnaire, four dimensions of psychological empowerment questionnaire, and work–life balance questionnaire. The reliabilities of the questionnaires were estimated using Cronbach's α technique. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlations at the preliminary level, while three separate Hierarchical Multiple Regression and 5000 re-samples BC bootstrapping method on PROCESS macro were used to test the hypotheses to determine the total, direct, and indirect effects of the study variables. The study established that psychological empowerment and work–life balance jointly and significantly mediated the high relationship between transformational leadership and the in-role performance of the faculty finance officers. The implications for researchers and organizational practitioners, limitations, and suggestions for future research were discussed.

By drawing on social exchange theory, we developed a theoretical model to explore the effect of political skill on unethical pro-supervisor behavior (UPSB) via leader–member exchange (LMX) and the way in which immediate supervisor empowering leadership moderates this mediated relationship. A three-wave study (n = 442) provided evidence suggesting that political skill is positively related to UPSB and that LMX partially mediates this relationship. Immediate supervisor empowering leadership moderates the effect of political skill on LMX, and political skill is positively and indirectly related to UPSB via LMX when the level of immediate supervisor empowering leadership is high. Although political skill is beneficial to both employees and organizations in many respects, our study provides empirical evidence that can improve our understanding of how political skills trigger UPSB. The practical and theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.

Decades of ambidexterity research have gained huge scholarly attention from diverse research areas like marketing, organizational learning, innovation management, supply chain management, strategy, and entrepreneurship. However, it has been observed that past studies do not provide a quantitative assessment of ambidexterity determinants applicable to small and medium firms. In response, this study attempts to address this gap by providing an extensive list of eight determinants that are significantly related to Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) ambidexterity. We employed Random effects meta-analytical procedure to examine the combined effect sizes of each determinant. The analysis was based on 37 empirical publications from 2004 to 2021, involving 8422 SME observations and 48 correlations. The findings of the meta-analysis revealed that all the considered determinants such as Knowledge management, Entrepreneurial orientation, Formalization, Market orientation, Networking, Technological capability, Organization context, and Environmental dynamism are heterogeneous, and they all exert a significant positive impact on ambidexterity.

Having a sense of calling toward one's work has key benefits for both the employee and the employer. Yet, little is known about whether and what kind of work climate facilitates employees' senses of calling, hindering efforts toward positive changes from managers and organizations. This research introduces the concept of ‘career calling climate’ and describes the development of a scale (i.e., Career Calling Climate Scale) to measure the level of support that a work unit provides for its employees' pursuit of a calling. We established the scale's validity and reliability using survey responses from participants of various occupations and age. To provide evidence of its predictive validity, we examined career calling climate's relation with career callings using a sample of 189 healthcare employees nested in 34 work units. Results suggested that career calling climate predicted individuals' career callings. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

International alliances are important strategic vehicles to build geographic scope and enter foreign markets, especially for firms lacking the resources or facing limitations to direct foreign expansion. Addressing recent calls to study alliance structure, we investigate the design parameters of nonequity international alliances and their performance implications. Building on the resource-based view of the firm, we theorize the effect of three key structural dimensions – formalization, interface, and specialization – on firm effectiveness. Our empirical work focusses on the legal service industry where international interfirm alliances are common, and resources like expert workers and knowledge are essential. We study 121 French, German, Italian, and Spanish law firms; and our data include the structural features of the alliances to which they belong, as well as various measures of firm effectiveness. Our analyses via structural equation modelling point toward the importance of informality and strong interface for effectiveness in these contexts. This study contributes to a finer understanding of international alliances by directly addressing the structural variation among nonequity international alliances, and analyzes their implications for firms. We thus respond to calls to investigate structural dimensions of alliances, operationalizing relevant dimensions of alliance organizational structure. Second, we add to understanding of the performance effects of international alliances, showing the benefits of individual structural parameters for firm effectiveness. Finally, we extend research on the use of international alliances as a strategic vehicle to enter foreign markets, capturing essential aspects of the internal arrangements of these interorganizational collaborative relationships, and thus adding to understanding of this strategic entry mode.

Self-promotion, widespread in the workplace, has received extensive attention from scholars. However, due to the narrow one-dimensional structure of traditional self-promotion and the limitations of theoretical thinking, its antecedents and consequences are still unclear. Therefore, we propose a new pair of self-promotion behaviors (sole self-promotion and joint self-promotion), and develop the measures based on a more grounded definition of self-promotion. In phase 1, we developed the scales of sole self-promotion and joint self-promotion (sample 1), and assessed their psychometric properties (i.e., content validity, factor structure, and reliability) by using two samples (samples 2 and 3). In phase 2, using three-wave data (sample 4) with two sources (employees and coworkers), we tested the overall model based on social comparison theory, examining the antecedents and consequences of sole and joint self-promotion, and exploring the different effects of these two behaviors on career success. Overall, our research offers new insight into self-promotion research and provides a useful tool to evaluate employee self-promotion. Implications for theory and practice, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

In this study, we explore how early career advancement affects the gender pay gap among top executives and argue that an employee's age at attainment of an executive position serves as a signal that helps reduce biases toward women, thereby lowering gender pay differentials. We analyze career data of 803 executives from public high-technology manufacturing firms in the United States by collecting information from ExecuComp, Marquis Who's Who, LinkedIn, and Bloomberg. Our results indicate that attaining a top management position at a young age has a positive effect on pay, particularly among women, and this effect is due to the variable portion of compensation, which represents a large proportion of compensation among top executives. Further, recent research has identified a pay premium among high-potential female managers, although its key drivers remain unclear. This paper explores age as an observable signal that influences this premium and reduces the gender pay gap.

This study examines the influence of founding conditions and decisions on new companies' performance, analysing how both environmental context and organisational dynamics interact to determine their success. It distinguishes between two different success indicators: survival and profitable growth. An empirical study conducted using a sample of 3,722 new agri-food companies in two different periods, one of economic stability and the other of recession, showed that founding conditions had long-lasting effects on post-entry performance. The economic context acted as a moderator of the relationship between individual factors and success. Adverse environmental conditions were also a determinant of success, making surviving firms more competitive and resilient. The results reflect the survival of the fitter principle by showing that early profitability reduced the risk of failure and made firms more likely to become profitable in the medium term. Internationalisation strategies developed organisational capabilities that created an imprint for adaptability and growth.

Supervisory mentoring represents a type of social dilemma called a delayed social fence. This study adopts a social dilemma perspective to examine how the three types of psychological contracts (balanced, relational, and transactional) perceived by supervisors differently influence their mentoring. Drawn on social dilemma perspective, we proposed that supervisory mentoring would be more likely to occur when supervisors perceived benefit return from their mentoring provision in a timely manner. The results obtained from a sample of 596 supervisor–subordinate matched data from the self-reported questionnaires completed by 225 sales agent teams in the insurance industry in Taiwan support our predictions. Consistent with the social dilemma perspective, supervisory mentoring is more likely among subordinates whose supervisors perceived balanced psychological contract, while supervisory mentoring is less likely among subordinates whose supervisors perceived transactional psychological contract. Furthermore, we found that supervisory mentoring is positively related to subordinate performance. Our mentor-centric multilevel framework helps identify the social dilemma nature underlying mentoring provision, and verify the positive influence of mentoring on protégé performance.

Drawing on social resources theory and social exchange theory, we propose that two forms of employee proactive behaviors, namely voice and taking charge, influence a leader's perception of their employees and hence affect the interpersonal relationships within the dyad. We introduce an expanded construct, termed as the leader perceived constructiveness, as a mediating mechanism that links the effects. We further propose two conditional factors that also govern the effects. Pairwise data collected from Taiwanese employees and supervisors in two separate studies provide support for the theorized hypotheses and confirm that the indirect relationship between employees' proactive behaviors and leader–member exchange (LMX) is augmented by their past performance. Our study advances the literature by adopting a more follower-centered framework. Moreover, by demonstrating how and when employee-initiated behaviors affect upwardly and improve the dyad outcome, we also contribute to the LMX literature and provide useful insights for managerial practice.

Organizational context has an important influence on voice behavior. This study investigates the curvilinear relationship between perceived organizational politics (POP) – an inevitable organizational context factor – and employee voice behavior through a conservation of resources theory lens, considering the curvilinear mediating role of territoriality. A three-wave survey of 227 full-time employees revealed that (1) POP is positively associated with territoriality, (2) territoriality has U-shaped relationships with both promotive and prohibitive voice, that is, when territoriality ranges from low to moderate, promotive/prohibitive voice behavior gradually decreases. When territoriality ranges from moderate to high, promotive/prohibitive voice behavior gradually increases and (3) territoriality acts as a curvilinear mediator between POP and promotive/prohibitive voice behavior. These findings make a significant contribution to POP literature and voice behavior literature by identifying territoriality as a mediator between these organizational factors. Implications for practice are also discussed.