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.

The environmental pollution caused by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering in October 2013 in Taiwan highlighted the fact that foreign investors tend to support the classical economic ideas of arbitrage and shareholder wealth maximization, which is in conflict with the fact that institutional investors in the current global capital market lean towards the stakeholder theory in ethical investments. Will local investors’ decision-making also be influenced by differences in the perceived ethics of negative environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR)? Compared to the remedial measures implemented by British Petroleum for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, another international corporation, decided to not respond to any news regarding the toxic wastewater incident. In contrast, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering only made clearer promises after extreme public pressure. This study investigated whether remedial measures for negative ECSR are an important factor influencing investors’ decisions. The purpose is to clarify the interactions among perceived moral intensity of negative ECSR, the implementation of remedial measures, and the intention of ethical investment. An experimental design was employed to test the hypotheses. The results indicated that perceived moral intensity has a significant negative impact on the intention of ethical investment. The implementation of remedial measures for negative ECSR affects investors’ intent to invest. Finally, positive ECSR remedial measures also serve as a key moderating variable in the relationship between perceived moral intensity and the intention of ethical investment. This study clarified whether the provision of remedial mechanisms can effectively recover or maintain investor investment intent when companies experience negative ECSR.

This research examined the validity of Performance Environment Perception Scales (PEPS), a new instrument designed to assess performance-relevant aspects of the work environment. A sample of 156 employees of an Australian university completed PEPS and their supervisors rated their task and citizenship performance. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed PEPS to have a valid factor structure, and PEPS were found to be significantly correlated with citizenship performance, but not with task performance. Although this finding is consistent with theoretical predictions, PEPS are apparently the first measures of work environment perceptions that have confirmed this. Thus PEPS show promise as measures for use in future research and organizational development projects that focus on relationships between the work environment and performance. Limitations of the research and implications for the validity of PEPS, as well as for future research and practice, are discussed.

Research on top management team (TMT) diversity suggests that diverse backgrounds improve technological exploration. However, this diversity may also cause demographic faultlines that break a team into subgroups and undermine team performance, and the status difference between CEO and top managers may change inter-subgroup dynamics. We predicted that TMT faultline had an inverted U-shape relationship with technological exploration. Further, we predicted that the effects of TMT faultline were more prominent when the CEO is in the minority subgroup than when the CEO was in the majority subgroup. Using a longitudinal sample from the US IT services industry, the results found that TMT faultline exhibited an inverted U-shape relationship with technological exploration only when the CEO was in the minority subgroup, and such relationship disappeared when the CEO was in the majority subgroup.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether outsourcing frontline functions warrants equivalent level of customer-orientated behaviors as provided by a principal organization, and, if not, what the causes of the differences are. A total of 753 frontline workers of a leading South Korean telecommunications company and its partner companies responded to a survey regarding their levels of customer-oriented behaviors, their supervisor's degree of customer orientation, and their organization's training on customer orientation. Structural equation models were then utilized to examine the proposed relationships. The results show that the frontline workers of the partner organizations have a significantly lower level of customer-oriented behaviors compared with those of the principal organization. The immediate supervisor's degree of customer orientation and customer-orientation training accounted for a significant amount of difference found between the principal and partner organizations.

The increasing globalisation, the multiculturality of workplaces and the current challenges for organisations generated the need for researchers to support them to manage the workforce. Although the relevance of employee voice for these themes, a lack of shared understanding about this topic results in fragmented literature across and within research fields that limits theoretical advancement and deep comprehension of the phenomenon. Our first aim is to offer a literature review of employee voice by combining systematic and bibliometric methods; the second aim is to understand voice's main issues and implications by considering different research streams. The results present an integrated framework of the leading intellectual knowledge and reveal the main research focuses on voice in domestic contexts. The discussion underlines the cultural issue and context as critical elements for future research by proposing avenues for scholars and some implications for organisations to benefit from the contributions of their members.

We examine the relationship between high-performance work system (HPWS) and job satisfaction, drawing on the ‘too much of a good thing’ theory, to establish whether a non-linear relationship can explain conflicts in previous findings. Moreover, we extend the study by exploring the mediating role of work overload and the moderating role of person–organization fit (P–O fit). Based on a cross-sectional data set of 220 employees and a longitudinal data set of 373 employees from organizations in China, the empirical findings show an inverted U-shaped relationship between HPWS and job satisfaction. Results also indicate that the relationship between HPWS and job satisfaction is fully mediated by work overload, and that P–O fit negatively moderates HPWS-work overload and HPWS-job satisfaction relationships. These results shed new light on how HPWS impacts employee outcomes and practical implications for managers are discussed.

Writing from an autoethnographic perspective, in this paper I re-visit Erving Goffman's ideas to examine impression management tactics used by staff from a large Brazilian mining company. The analysis is based on a 6-week fieldwork trip to Brazil in 2008 for the purpose of gathering qualitative data for a study on corporate social responsibility in the extractivist sector. Post-fieldwork reflections prompted the insight that during the data gathering phase of my research, I was subject to a series of impression management ‘performances’ by my corporate informants, carried out to foster a positive image of their company. In the paper I juxtapose data obtained during fieldwork and my personal reflections with selected excerpts from Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

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.

We argue that social support can be helpful or hurtful in the context of performance outcomes for employees experiencing co-worker exclusion. We contend that employees' perceptions of co-worker exclusion are negatively associated with task performance and citizenship, and positively associated with interpersonal deviance. We further contend that whether social support strengthens or weakens the negative performance outcomes of co-worker exclusion depends on whether the source of social support is from co-workers or family and friends. Using data obtained from 135 supervisor–subordinate dyads across various occupational positions, we find that co-worker support is hurtful, whereas family and friends support is helpful. We also find a three-way interaction: task performance suffers most when employees who feel highly excluded also perceive higher co-worker support and lower family and friends support. These results suggest a need for a more nuanced view of social exchange/support, and build our knowledge about ambivalent relationships.

Local isomorphism constitutes the regulatory, cognitive and normative profile of a host country. The regulatory institutional setting reflects the rules and legislation governing collective bargaining agreements, trade unions, local content laws and employment relationships. The cultural or cognitive dimension supports the widely held cultural and social knowledge and the normative profile acknowledges the influences of social groups and organizations on acceptable normative behaviour. Earlier literature lends support to the importance of institutional profile and its influence on the design and implementation of multinational enterprises’ human resource management policies and practices. This paper seeks to advance the concept of local isomorphism and highlight the implications of local isomorphism for future research on the transfer of multinational enterprises’ human resource management practices across and between subsidiaries.

Arguing that it would serve scholars and practitioners better to view impression management (IM) from a coworker's perspective than from that of an actor's outcomes, this study demonstrates that IM by a coworker triggers a self-serving attributional process. The authors reason that denial of another's relative advantage leads the observing coworker to attribute this behavior to the actor's incompetence, consequently leading to counterproductive behavior toward them in efforts to reduce their own relative disadvantage. Data were collected at T1 and T2 from 142 service sector employees. Our results were consistent with our hypotheses. However, the moderated-mediation models for conditional effects of hostile attributional style were not supported. This study offers an integrated view of previously isolated domains of IM and attribution, suggesting future literature considers a similar perspective for more meaningful investigations.

The power of stories to persuade in infl uencing the process of change is the focus of this article. Attention is given to the importance of stories in making sense of past experience, of unifying groups, and in presenting options for future engagement and action. Unlike the narrative concern with sequencing, coherence and the need for a beginning, middle and end, it is argued that stories are often partial and ongoing, occur at multiple levels compete, complement and redefine positions. The plurality and political nature of stories are illustrated in an analysis of data drawn from a longitudinal study of six health care sites in remote and rural Scotland. The study concludes by arguing that stories are a powerful political vehicle in influencing sense-making and a critical component in maintaining choice and defl ecting the imposition of a single simple solution (hegemonic influence) over various interpretations of what are complex context-based issues.

In recent years the Business Council of Australia (BCA) has drawn attention to the importance of the availability of a well-trained supply of employees for the Australian workplace. Specifically the BCA highlighted the benefits of a quality education imparting skills in the areas of collaboration, teamwork and leadership all of which greatly assist the effective practice of creativity, innovation and strategy. This paper makes a useful contribution to teaching practice in several ways. The paper links comments from the BCA to a significant and ongoing debate in the strategy literature on the best approaches to teaching the practice of strategy. The paper then demonstrates, with case studies from the RMIT University MBA and the Central Queensland University MBA programs, different approaches to how this can be done. This is followed by a critical discussion of the literature and case studies. Suggestions are made for future research and teaching practice.

The case method of teaching and learning is prominent in management education. We know little about the processes involved in writing and learning through cases. One element that may help the beginning of a theoretical understanding of these processes comes from an experiment with students entering organisations and writing cases for use with other management students. Students not only gain more knowledge related to management and organisations than in using prepared cases, but they also gain substantial additional process skills that are far more generalisable and to do with life-long learning – than those developed using traditional case learning.

This study examines whether a responsible downsizing strategy and employee-oriented leadership are complementary in strengthening firm performance after downsizing. This study investigated 154 firms that have used an organizational downsizing strategy with surveys and follow-up focus groups. Results of both the empirical evidence and qualitative data demonstrates that for firms adopting an employee-oriented leadership style, the level of responsible downsizing strategy is high and firm performance is significantly increased. Specifically, the results of the focus groups indicate that a responsible downsizing strategy deepens the loyalty and faith of employees to their employer. These theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.