In an era of globalization, new ventures have become especially active in collaborations with external partners worldwide to overcome the liability of newness and to obtain the resources required to innovate. In this context, this study conceptually analyzes how the geographical and institutional distances between a new venture and its international partners may influence the venture’s ability to benefit from broad external linkages for innovation purposes. It proposes that the interplay of these factors affects not only knowledge transfer, but also business relations. The study advances theory on international collaborative linkages and innovation, by providing a novel framework that explains how contextual factors associated with distance affect the relation between new ventures’ collaborations and their ability to develop innovations.

Attendance is critical to the success of any business or industry. As a result, most businesses and institutions require a system to track staff attendance. On the other hand, cloud computing technology is being utilized in the human resource management sector. It may be an excellent option for processing and storing large amounts of data and improving management effectiveness to a desirable level. Hence, this paper examines cloud infrastructures for employee attendance management in which the articles are categorized into three groups. The results show that cloud infrastructure has a significant and positive impact on the management of employee attendance systems. Also, the results reveal that the radio frequency identification authentication protocol protects the privacy of tags and readers against database memory. When references operate properly, they help the people concerned and society by making workplaces more efficient and safer.

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory and self-determination theory, this study examines the subjective social status (SSS) of employees and how it moderates the two-way interaction effect of job insecurity and perceived organizational politics on the types of silence (i.e., acquiescent, and defensive silence [DS]). Using data of about 350 employees in South Korea, it was found that the relationship between job insecurity and employees' acquiescent silence (AS) was stronger for individuals who perceived their organizations as highly political. The results also indicated a three-way interaction between job insecurity, perceived organizational politics, and employees' SSS on employees' AS, such that in a highly political work environment, the relationship between job insecurity and employees' AS was stronger especially for employees with low social status. However, the same pattern did not exist between job insecurity and DS.

We revisit predictions about the relationship between gender diversity and firm productivity using data on 1,082 manufacturing firms from six Sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Kenya. Recent evidence suggests that a gender-diverse workforce opens up a firm to a vast range of talent, knowledge and perspectives critical to enhancing innovation and problem solving, and thereby, increasing firm productivity. Given the importance of manufacturing for employment and structural transformation in Africa, we test the gender diversity–productivity proposition by exploring structural differences (heterogeneity) across manufacturing firms using the Industry without Smokestacks (IWOSS) classification. We find that while gender diversity promotes firm productivity at lower levels, this effect is displaced with further increases. Our results did not show that IWOSS firms do any better in promoting the diversity–productivity link. Implications of this finding and areas for future studies are also discussed.

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 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.

Modern challenges require modern solutions. The recent introduction of gamification in businesses’ organisational processes represents a change of route for managerial and accounting practices. In this context, the challenges addressed by the United Nations Agenda 2030 are still marginal and difficult to achieve for many businesses. Following the experience of an innovative small-medium enterprise named ‘AWorld’, this study aims to explore how gamification can be both a tool of contribution and accountability towards sustainable development goals. Specifically, by tracking the progress and offering rewards, gamification can provide a tangible incentive to motivate sustained engagement and behaviour change. A case study has been developed and insights collected and triangulated through an interview with the corporate president. Findings revealed how incorporating gamification in the small- and medium-sized enterprises context is a valuable way to promote sustainable development goals and foster a sense of communal responsibility towards sustainable behaviours among employees and external individuals.

In this study, we examine the impact of portfolio configuration on corporate performance in a technological vertical downstream alliance portfolio. First, we explore whether differences in characteristics such as innovativeness, reputation, and bargaining power between a focal firm and its partners affect corporate performance. Second, considering these differences between a focal firm and its partners, we analyze whether an alliance portfolio structure spanning structural holes or a densely embedded network is preferable. We examine 44 leading Korean defense firms over the period 1995–2010 using the two-step generalized method of moments. Our principal arguments emphasize that differences between a focal firm and its partners (in terms of innovativeness, reputation, and bargaining power) affect corporate performance differently. This concept contrasts that of previous studies, which argued that allying with dominant partners is generally better. The arguments also emphasize that the alliance portfolio structure should differ depending on the differences in terms of the three capabilities between a focal firm and its corporate partners.

The scholarship on political skill documents that it is a social savvy, personal style construct, associated with positive personal and organizational outcomes. However, this study takes a counterintuitive view and demonstrates that despite being a positive resource, political skill also has the potential to be used as a self-serving device to achieve one's personal agendas in the form of self-serving counterproductive work behaviors. Borrowing insights from the trait activation theory, this study demonstrates that a context, high in political perceptions, acts as an incentivized condition for politically skilled people to execute its dark side. The results supported the hypothesis and revealed that under high perceptions of organizational politics, political skill will have a significant, positive relation with self-serving counterproductive work behaviors. The study discusses important theoretical and practical implications of these results and extends the domains of political skill and counterproductive work behaviors.

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 objective of this paper is to deepen our understanding of the role of absorptive capacity in enabling interorganizational new product development (INPD). We contend that despite what is known about the benefits of absorptive capacity to innovating firms, this research is dominated by firm-level analyses using cross-sectional data. The accumulated knowledge about absorptive capacity thus does not help with understanding how absorptive capacity unfolds as a process within and between firms such as when firms collaborate in new product development. Using a longitudinal case study, we build new theory at the INPD system level of analysis that leads us to shed new light on the cross-level interactions between firm- and alliance-level absorptive capacities.

This article reports on a case study of a decade-long organizing forms response to the need for groundbreaking innovation while maintaining existing operational performance – the explore–exploit conundrum. Employing ‘grounded research,’ data were collected on the experiences of the Asia-Pacific arm of a multinational professional service firm’s key decision-makers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The findings reveal a three-tiered organizing forms response to the explore–exploit paradox, characterized by a novel combination of heavy exploitation-driven actions alongside deep exploration projects. This case suggests that one successful approach to delivering on both explore and exploit focuses on a productive tension that emerges by enacting innovative organizing forms with contextual awareness. This productive tension was sufficiently powerful to impel individuals to innovate, but also sufficiently contained to avoid interfering with commercial outcomes. An explore–exploit framework conceptualizes organizational changes incorporating complexity and contradiction, without the implicit emphasis on removing or denying the existing tension.

This study explores the impact of socially responsible human resource management (SR-HRM) on the turnover intention by exploring the effects of psychological contract violation (PCV) and moral identity. Using a sample of 284 employees in China, we found that PCV mediated the negative relationship between SR-HRM and turnover intention. Moral identity moderated the direct effect of PCV on turnover intention as well as the indirect effect of SR-HRM on turnover intention via PCV, such that both the direct and indirect effects were stronger for employees with a low level of moral identity compared to those with the high level of moral identity. Findings from this study provide a greater understanding of the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions of SR-HRM that affect turnover intentions. Study findings also provide guidance to organizations seeking to reduce employee turnover.

This research examined the relationships between work environment (i.e., workload and development opportunities), heavy work investment (i.e., work engagement and workaholism) and work-to-family conflict (WFC) over time. A three-wave longitudinal study was conducted among 464 employees from a Belgian public administration. Workload and opportunities for development at Time 1 were found to be respectively negatively and positively associated with work engagement at Time 2, which in turn was negatively associated with WFC at Time 3. Only workload at Time 1 was positively associated with workaholism at Time 2 which, in turn, was positively associated with WFC at Time 3. In the interests of both organizational effectiveness and employees’ well-being, it is important to identify the work-related variables that influence perceptions of WFC. Moreover, in order to manage human resources effectively in companies, it is important to understand the mechanisms by which the work environment influences WFC.

Responding to the call for more research on cognitive crafting, this study focuses on employees' reframing of their job characteristics to assign higher importance to job resources and downplay the relevance of costly job demands. Furthermore, it examines how these proactive cognitive strategies are embedded in an overall job crafting process, including both cognitive and behavioral aspects, and linked with work engagement. Preliminary results (n = 247) support the conceptualization of cognitive crafting encompassing approach and avoidance aspects targeting resources and demands, respectively. Moreover, three-wave data (n = 84) show that employees' cognitive efforts to highlight the centrality of job resources influence work engagement over time. Importantly, proactively organizing work leads to higher work engagement by prompting cognitive reframing of the relevance of job resources as central to one's work. Differently, cognitive efforts to downplay the relevance of hindering job demands are unrelated to following proactive behaviors and work engagement.

Surprisingly, the strategic management literature has had little to say of an explicit nature on the topic of capitalism. However, the discourse on capitalism is vast in economics and many would say the writings of some economists on the topic of capitalism have been inordinately influential. Bearing this in mind, the differences between three world renowned economists on the topic of capitalism are examined with the intention of identifying where scope exists for strategic management to contribute to the discourse on capitalism. The paper concludes that strategic management is well placed to develop its own organization-centric discourse on the subject.

Strategies to integrate work and family have caught the attention of organizations, institutions, academics and families, and many people are motivated to find ways to blend these two domains. Spillover theory, whose tenets surround the mutual influence of home and work, provides a useful framework for understanding better what contributes to achieving work–family integration. Although much of the existing research focuses on the negative influence of these domains, some evidence exists that they positively influence one another as well. This study uses hierarchical multiple regression to test hypotheses about relational identity on positive and negative work–family spillover and considers perceived spousal support and relational equity as moderators. Results reveal that perceived spousal support predicts positive spillover and that it moderates the relationship between relational identity and negative spillover. Other results are discussed as well as limitations and future directions.

This paper investigates the mediating role of work engagement in the relationship between employees' perceptions of work–family conflict – defined as the extent to which the quality of their family life suffers due to work obligations – and their job performance. It also notes a buffering role of the satisfaction that employees feel about how their career has progressed since they joined the employing organization. Three-wave, time-lagged data reveal that an important reason work–family conflict diminishes job performance is that employees become less engaged with their work. Yet, this mediating role of work engagement is less salient to the extent that employees are satisfied with how their organization has supported their career goals over the course of their employment. This study accordingly pinpoints a prominent risk for employees who suffer from negative spillovers of work stress into the family domain, then make this situation worse by failing to meet organization-set performance expectations, which can generate even more stress. Employers can mitigate this risk though, by ensuring that their employees feel satisfied with how their career has progressed.

Organizations today expect employees to manage their own career development although some will provide extra opportunities. We do not know exactly how career self-management impacts on employees' organizational commitment in terms of affective, normative and continuance components. This paper is based on the model of organizational commitment put forward by Meyer and Allen (1997). We propose that organizational HRM and career self-management influence employee perceptions (such as perceived support) and the three components of commitment in different ways. Data from 196 managers showed that organizational career development (OCD) practices, were positively related to employee perceptions and the three components of commitment. On the other hand, career self-management was negatively correlated with normative commitment. These results have implications for the career development alternatives that organizations provide to employees.