The main goal of the current study is to analyze the relationship between leaders' empowerment, radical innovation and organizational performance. A total of 300 Spanish companies participated in the study. In total, 600 valid questionnaires were obtained. Structural equations were used to validate the proposed hypotheses. Two different respondents in each company were selected to provide information. All the hypotheses proposed in the theoretical model were confirmed. This research provides empirical evidence of the relationship between leaders' empowerment and organizational performance, highlighting the mediation role played by radical innovation. Leaders who empower, promote radical innovation and, in turn, performance. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical study that analyzes the effect of leader's empowerment on radical innovation. Although in the former literature there are evidences of a positive relationship between empowerment and innovation, there are no studies that differentiate between innovation typologies.

Executive onboarding has become a popular technique in the business world during the past decade. However, the demonstrated success of traditional onboarding practices is mixed. We assert in this article that executive onboarding should be strategic, so that it not only prevents executive derailment, but accelerates contribution to optimize strategic achievement. We review the literature and identify six problematic areas externally hired executives often encounter when transitioning in to new organizations. It is recommended that effective onboarding should be tailored to the targeted organizations and executives to address specific transition issues. We propose a conceptual framework to implement onboarding on a strategic basis. It is hoped that such a review and conceptual discussion will enhance the effectiveness of onboarding experiences and increase the likelihood of success for executives hired from outside the organization.

This paper reports on a project conducted with representatives of indigenous Māori organizations that are active in New Zealand land-based sectors. The primary aim of the research was to assist these organizations in thinking about their current and future positioning with regard to climate change. Using Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology as a broad framework for the research, the paper first seeks to capture some of the likely issues that enable and constrain strategic activity in the climate change arena. It then uses various soft systems modelling tools to research and structure a debate to consider the desirability and feasibility of particular interventions.

This research studies industry exit in the Japanese context, by examining the process followed five Japanese flat panel display manufacturers as they de-committed to and later exited from the industry. The five cases examine firms with systematically different exit barriers due to the presence or absence of strategic centrality and vertical integration in each firm. With one exception, all the firms followed multi-staged exit processes involving cooperative arrangements with other industry participants. Firms with middle to high levels of commitment and exit barriers went through more steps in the process than those with the lowest levels of commitment. The effect of top management succession and long-term employment upon the exit process are considered, and the role of cooperative arrangements in reducing exit barriers are discussed.

Top management plays a central role in interpreting the organization’s performance and communicating to stakeholders. Management’s performance attributions set the tone for accountability and shape organizational climate. However, prior studies of the relationships between attribution patterns and subsequent performance have been limited and reported mixed results. This study extends this literature stream by examining the relationships of four different types of attribution and subsequent performance concurrently and testing them in a two-country sample. We find a significant positive relationship between positive internal attribution and subsequent performance, and reaffirm prior findings on negative external attribution and performance.

By introducing gender similarity as a contextual antecedent of coworker support, we examined the mediating role of coworker support for the relationship between workgroup gender similarity and job attitudes. In addition, we explored how a creative requirement, which is an occupational characteristic, can influence the relationship between coworker support and job attitudes above and beyond the role of supervisor support and organizational support. Results based on 975 full-time employees across a wide variety of occupations and industries indicated that as expected coworker support can serve as an underlying mechanism in the relationship between the relational demography of a workplace and employees’ job satisfaction and intention to quit. Furthermore, coworker support was significantly related to job satisfaction only for those occupations that required high levels of creativity. Finally, the creative requirement of an occupation moderated the indirect effect of gender similarity on job satisfaction through coworker support.

The employee–customer interface in hedonic services requires high quality interactions at key touch points to ensure experiences are positively remembered. We propose an approach that combines service blueprinting with internal marketing to achieve these experiences. While internal marketing suggests using marketing techniques for hiring, retaining and motivating employees, the literature in this field has been largely independent of each employee's contribution to the internal value chain. Service blueprinting is a useful approach which makes explicit the value creation processes used in service production. No study has thus far connected the blueprint (which identifies functions to be performed) to internal marketing (which specifies the mechanisms for hiring, retaining and motivating the people performing the functions). This paper proposes a service value chain optimisation framework to enhance employee–customer interactions in hedonic services using these two research streams.

This article focuses on a thus far insufficiently explored theme within management sciences, specifically the direct supervision of frontline workers, that is, frontline command. Frontline command can be defined as making decisions in the frontline and ensuring that frontline workers carry out these decisions accordingly. Scholarly knowledge on frontline command is still fragmented and the associated implications for frontline commanders have not yet been described or discussed in depth. This contribution aims to make up for that deficiency. For this purpose we brought together existing insights derived from research into Naturalistic Decision Making and other relevant research which we subsequently present using the FADCM model. This model sets out frontline command in five steps, already described in scholarly literature, and provides, per step, recommendations for frontline command. Finally, we provide associated examples derived from the Dutch firefighting practices.

Considerable attention has focused on tactics firms use when building their sustainability platforms. Less is known, however, about how sustainability goal setting varies globally, especially in developing economies. Accordingly, we examined sustainability goals of 21 of the 50 largest Indian firms and compared them with similar data from a published study that examined 22 of the 50 largest U.S. firms. In total, 679 sustainability goals were analyzed using a triple bottom line framework. We found U.S. firms set more sustainability goals than Indian firms. Firms from both samples set similar numbers of people goals but U.S. firms set more diversity goals. Indian firms were more inclined to set economic and community development goals. We also detected differences across the samples in planet goals associated with emissions and water. Especially significant, Indian firms were much more likely than U.S. firms to specify profit goals. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The present study investigated the role of temporal flexibility on three conceptualizations of person–environment fit and job satisfaction. Data were collected from 320 full-time employees in Canada and America. Using structural equation modeling, it was found that temporal flexibility was directly related to increased job satisfaction and indirectly related to job satisfaction through supplementary fit, demands–abilities fit, and needs–supplies fit. Moreover, supplementary fit and demands–abilities fit were influential on perceptions of needs–supplies fit, although we acknowledge that additional research is required to further explore our novel findings of the relative relationships between the three conceptualizations of person–environment fit. The present research supports the idea that giving employees greater control over their schedule increases their autonomy, thus helping to satisfy a core psychological need. Organizations that provide employees with the opportunity to choose their own schedules may be more likely to retain satisfied and committed people who believe they fit well with their employer.

This study examines the effect of diverse experiences on a firm’s alliance portfolio diversity (APD). Drawing on the organizational learning perspective, it argues that a firm’s learning from diverse experiences enables it to reap the benefits and mitigate the risks of high level of APD. Thus, an experienced firm may choose to form or maintain relationships with diverse partners to get the intended benefits of APD. In particular, the study hypothesizes that a focal firm’s product and international diversification experience, alliance experience, and alliance experience heterogeneity are positively associated with its APD. A longitudinal investigation of 90 Indian firms, for the period 2004–2014, provides support for all the hypothesized relationships. In general, findings, which are robust to multiple estimation methods, suggest that a firm’s diverse experiences influence its APD. Findings of this study contribute to the alliance portfolio and organizational learning literature by examining the experiential antecedents of APD.

The coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic changed regular life and work around the world. Educational institutions moved to a virtual environment, in many cases without any experience and preparation. This paper explores the impact of institutional support on educators' subjective well-being during the pandemic lockdown. A quantitative study was conducted in Lithuania with 1,851 educators in April 2020. Institutional support was found to have a positive impact on work–life balance and well-being, as well as reducing work-related, client-related and personal burnout. This study begins a dialog on institutional support and its impact on employee well-being in unexpected work and life conditions.

This research aims to analyse the links and potential limiting and supporting factors between sustainability actions and sustainability reporting. Comparing companies involved in sustainability actions and those whose reporting practices lack a formal reporting system, this analysis focuses on Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the meat and cured meat industry, identifying the perspective (formative) that links sustainability action to communication in these SMEs. The qualitative interpretative approach, based on semistructured interviews, highlights the relevant strengths and weaknesses concerning substantive sustainability actions and the effect of communication on them, providing implications for international and sectoral policies and management choices. Filling a gap in the SME literature concerning their approaches to sustainability reporting and action (and the relationship thereof), this study also introduces, as a widely used practice, ‘greenhushing’, i.e., the deliberate absence of or limited communication on effectively implemented sustainability practices or their salient results.

This research investigates how employees' perceptions of role ambiguity might inhibit their propensity to engage in organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), with a particular focus on the potential buffering roles of two personal resources in this process: political skill and organizational identification. Survey data collected from a manufacturing organization indicate that role ambiguity diminishes OCB, but this effect is attenuated when employees are equipped with political skill and have a strong sense of belonging to their organization. The buffering role of organizational identification also is particularly strong when employees have adequate political skills, suggesting the reinforcing, buffering roles of these two personal resources. Organizations that want to foster voluntary work behaviours, even if they cannot provide clear role descriptions for their employees, should nurture adequate personal resources within their employee ranks.

In the past, alliance portfolio configuration (APC) studies concentrated mostly on the direct alliances or partners of a focal firm. However, a focal firm is also influenced by indirect alliances or partners. This study endeavors to focus on this aspect of APC. It contributes to APC research by extending the scope to three degrees from a focal firm. To assess the effects of extended APCs, 186 3-year window snapshots were created of the extended APCs of 31 Korean bio-pharmaceutical firms. These snapshots range from 2007 to 2014. The effects of structure (density), size (number of alliances and partners), and relationships to firm innovation were measured using the two-step generalized method of moments estimates. The results show that structural sparseness and larger-sized extended APCs are more favorable conditions for innovation, and that structural sparseness and size have a positive relationship to innovation performance.

The present research aims to examine the role played by perceived similarities between the workgroup and the organization in the relationships between workgroup identification, organizational identification, and affective organizational commitment. Using two different samples, we found that when perceived similarities were high, workgroup identification was more strongly related to organizational identification and that this relationship carried over to affective organizational commitment. These results were obtained with both a global measure of perceived similarities (Study 1) and a more narrow measure operationalizing perceived similarities in terms of value congruence (Study 2), confirming the generalizability of our results.

After nearly three decades of corporate restructurings and reorganizations, the modern firm has continued to resort to reduction-in-force (RIF) strategies. This article presents an overview and a brief historical analysis of some of the most popular RIF concepts that have been adopted by companies and governmental agencies on a global scale since the late 1970s. The research found that most RIF tools have their root in the core-periphery model. While some of the more ‘classic’ RIF strategies have remained popular, the paper showcases two contemporary practices, the traditional (non-selective) layoffs and stealth layoffs, that currently impact the corporate landscape. A discussion of modern-day restructuring and RIF practices is timely given the high levels of layoffs currently occurring in the global automotive, retail, and finance-related industries. In this paper, a particular focus is placed on presenting practical implications of the conduct of RIF for the firm, the managers, and the individual employees.

A growing emphasis on the discourse of ‘student as customer’ has increased the salience of the concept of service climate in universities and anecdotal evidence suggests that this may have placed increased pressure on staff. This study investigated the relationship between service climate and psychological well being in a sample of 340 university staff. Questionnaire data was analysed using structural equation modelling showed that a positive service climate was negatively related to job-induced tension and positively related to job satisfaction. Job-induced tension also mediated the effects of service climate on psychological dysfunction and job satisfaction. Implications for management of university stakeholder relationships and directions for future research are discussed.

The growing trend towards IT outsourcing within the United Kingdom (UK) public sector is analysed. Factors influencing the degree of success experienced in a range of IT outsourcing deals are detailed, and then used as a framework for analysing and discussing two case histories — of selective and large-scale IT outsourcing — drawn from different parts of the public sector. Both examples demonstrate how distinctive public sector contexts influence the direction and degree of outsourcing. At the same time, they highlight a range of managerial and organisational issues raised by moves towards contractual, core competence forms of organising. Selective outsourcing is revealed as effective provided key decisions and actions are taken. The large-scale outsourcing case raises a number of critical issues not just for how it can be conducted in public sector contexts, but also about the efficacy of such arrangements in terms of cost savings, possible over-dependence on a few suppliers, and ability to respond flexibly to changing political requirements and legislation.

On-demand and gig economy are names commonly used when discussing issues related to labor in the collaborative economy. Some of the specific digital platforms in this economy, including Uber and TaskRabbit, and Upwork are quite popular. The term digital labor market has been suggested to distinguish the work mediated by these platforms from that of the traditional labor market. The theoretical work conditions and characteristics of this digital labor market are similar to those of negative nonstandard work arrangements. However, more empirical evidence is required because most of the findings about work conditions are based on anecdotal evidence and the analysis of the platforms’ rules. This study collects the characteristics commonly attributed to the digital labor market and analyzes them based on data about 465 workers extracted from two important digital labor platforms. Our results confirm and refine some of the beliefs found in the literature.