There is a lack of consensus on the role of employee well‐being in the human resource management–organizational performance relationship. This review examines which of the competing perspectives ...–‘mutual gains’ or ‘conflicting outcomes’– is more appropriate for describing this role of employee well‐being. In addition, this review examines whether study attributes such as the measurement of key variables, the level of analysis and the study design affect a study's outcomes. The review covers 36 quantitative studies published from 1995 to May 2010. Employee well‐being is described here using three dimensions: happiness, health and relationship. The main findings are that employee well‐being in terms of happiness and relationship is congruent with organizational performance (mutual gains perspective), but that health‐related well‐being appears to function as a conflicting outcome. Directions for future research and theoretical development are suggested.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the relationship between the agile way of working and team performance and engagement. Furthermore, psychological safety climate was investigated as a mediator of ...this relationship. As organizations are increasingly adopting the agile way of working method beyond the information technology (IT) setting, the authors researched its effects in teams across a variety of functional domains.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data was collected from 97 agile teams working in various functional domains in a multinational bank. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
Results indicated that the agile way of working is directly and positively related to team engagement and performance. Moreover, psychological safety climate acted as a partial mediator of each of the respective outcomes.
Originality/value
This study illustrated that the agile way of working is beneficial for teams beyond the IT setting, as it is positively associated with psychological safety climate, engagement and performance across functional domains.
Speaking up is important for patient safety, but healthcare professionals often hesitate to voice their concerns. Direct supervisors have an important role in influencing speaking up. However, good ...insight into the relationship between managers' behaviour and employees' perceptions about whether speaking up is safe and worthwhile is still lacking.
To explore the relationships between control-based and commitment-based safety management, climate for safety, psychological safety and nurses' willingness to speak up.
We conducted a cross-sectional survey study, resulting in a sample of 980 nurses and 93 nurse managers working in Dutch clinical hospital wards. To test our hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses (at ward level) and multilevel regression analyses were conducted.
Significantly positive associations were found between nurses' perceptions of control-based safety management and climate for safety (β=0.74; p<0.001), and between the perceived levels of commitment-based management and team psychological safety (β=0.36; p<0.01). Furthermore, team psychological safety is found to be positively related to nurses' speaking up attitudes (B=0.24; t=2.04; p<0.05). The relationship between nurse-rated commitment-based safety management and nurses' willingness to speak up is fully mediated by team psychological safety.
Results provide initial support that nurses who perceive higher levels of commitment-based safety management feel safer to take interpersonal risks and are more willing to speak up about patient safety concerns. Furthermore, nurses' perceptions of control-based safety management are found to be positively related to a climate for safety, although no association was found with speaking up. Both control-based and commitment-based management approaches seem to be relevant for managing patient safety, but when it comes to encouraging speaking up, a commitment-based safety management approach seems to be most valuable.
One of the more fundamental aspects of the ongoing debate about the added value of HRM relates to ‘best’ practice versus ‘best‐fit’. Best practice suggests the universal success of certain HR ...practices, while best‐fit acknowledges the relevant impact of contextual factors. We argue that differences in embeddedness and in institutional settings between, for example, countries affect the nature of HRM. To understand this phenomenon, we are in need of additional theory. In this article we will use the theory of new institutionalism as a better way to understand the shaping of HR policies and practices in different settings. After a concise review of the latest debates in the area of strategic HRM, in which the resource‐based view is the dominant perspective, we turn to an analysis of HRM in different institutional settings, which suggests the need for additional theory: ie new institutionalism. We offer propositions to explain the impact of different institutional mechanisms, including coercive, normative and mimetic ones, on the shaping of HR policies and practices in organisations. The remainder of the article then focuses on possible implications for practitioners, theoretical implications for future research, and challenges for strategic HRM.
In the context of economic stagnation and recession, retailers face fierce competition and experience enormous pressure to increase their sales. In this study, we focus on the potential costs of ...higher store sales for retail workers by examining its effect on work engagement. Drawing on work intensification literature and the job demand-resources model, we study how job variety and workload, two job characteristics, mediate the relationship between store sales and engagement. Store revenue data and survey data of 525 sales employees, embedded in 110 stores of a large Dutch retail organization were used, to perform mixed models analyses. The analyses demonstrate that store sales is negatively related to job variety and positively related to workload. In turn, job variety positively affects work engagement, while workload negatively affects work engagement. Based on multi-source, multilevel data it is thus shown that there are negative effects of store sales in retail. More insight is created into the job characteristics that explain the negative link between store sales and engagement. As it is empirically demonstrated that there are indeed costs associated with improved performance in retail, it is crucial that organizations ensure investments in maintaining resourceful work environments.
The diversity of practices observed in small enterprises demands a new evaluation of HRM with respect to its phenotypes and functions. By bringing HRM back to its functional requirements as ...represented by the need to control the human side of work as well as the differentiation and integration of tasks, we develop a configurational model of eight ideal types of HRM, that resonate in previous research as well as in emerging organization types in the networked economy. Based on varying positions along the hierarchy, formalities and input- or output-oriented dimensions of control, we discern craft employers, traditional owner-managers, and strategic-, knowledge-, and bleak house entrepreneurs from subcontracted work, alliances and partnerships. Because control serves as a bridge between agency and structure, the proposed classification offers an analytical starting point for detecting, describing, contrasting, comparing and contextualizing empirically observed HRM configurations in a broad diversity of small enterprises. The approach offers a mid-range theory, which allows for generalization across small enterprises without the risk of losing peculiar responses to enacting HRM.
Older patients are increasingly encouraged to be actively involved but how they perceive their role in the decision-making process varies according to their health care providers and their health ...situation. Their role could be influenced by their social context but more specifically by subjective norms (i.e. patients' view of the role that significant others expect them to play in the decision-making process) and perceived social support. We explore how social context (i.e. subjective norms and social support) relates to how the patient perceives their role in the decision-making process. Also, we explore the level of alignment on subjective norms between patients and their informal caregivers and nurses.
Mixed-method study among older patients, informal caregivers and nurses. For the quantitative questionnaire, a home care organisation randomly selected patients. The patients were asked to identify their informal caregiver and the home care organisation was asked to identify the nurse who was most involved in their care. In total 133 patients, 64 informal caregivers and 72 nurses were questioned. Participants for the qualitative interviews were selected using convenience sampling, resulting in the inclusion of ten patients, five informal caregivers and six nurses. Subjective norms were based on a previous study. Social support was measured with the 'social support for health scale' of the Health Literacy Questionnaire. The Control Preference Scale was used as outcome variable. The interviews focused on subjective norms, social support and how the patient perceived their role. Quantitative analysis included the calculation of subjective norm difference scores between respondent groups, one-way analysis of variance and multinomial logistic regression analysis. Directed content analysis was applied to the interviews using Atlas TI.
Lower difference scores were found for patient-informal caregiver dyads (mean = 0.95), implying more alignment than in patient-nurse dyads (mean = 2.12). Patients perceiving themselves to have a shared or passive role tend to believe that they are expected to leave decision-making to the health care provider. Higher social support scores related more to a shared role. Alignment relates to: familiarity with the patient's preferences, overprotectiveness or valuing the care provider's opinion and the severity of the patient's medical history.
Patients and informal caregivers align on whether the patient should make decisions. The more patients believe that they are expected to leave decision-making to the health care provider, the more they perceive themselves as having a passive role. The more patients who feel they have support, the more they perceive themselves as having a shared role. Patients and caregivers could be facilitated to make role expectations explicit. Examining support resources in the social network is desirable.
Hospitals are confronted with increasing safety demands from a diverse set of stakeholders, including governmental organisations, professional associations, health insurance companies, patient ...associations and the media. However, little is known about the effects of these institutional and competitive pressures on hospital safety management. Previous research has shown that organisations generally shape their safety management approach along the lines of control- or commitment-based management. Using a heuristic framework, based on the contextually-based human resource theory, we analysed how environmental pressures affect the safety management approach used by hospitals.
A qualitative study was conducted into hospital care in the Netherlands. Five hospitals were selected for participation, based on organisational characteristics as well as variation in their reputation for patient safety. We interviewed hospital managers and staff with a central role in safety management. A total of 43 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 48 respondents. The heuristic framework was used as an initial model for analysing the data, though new codes emerged from the data as well.
In order to ensure safe care delivery, institutional and competitive stakeholders often impose detailed safety requirements, strong forces for compliance and growing demands for accountability. As a consequence, hospitals experience a decrease in the room to manoeuvre. Hence, organisations increasingly choose a control-based management approach to make sure that safety demands are met. In contrast, in case of more abstract safety demands and an organisational culture which favours patient safety, hospitals generally experience more leeway. This often results in a stronger focus on commitment-based management.
Institutional and competitive conditions as well as strategic choices that hospitals make have resulted in various combinations of control- and commitment-based safety management. A balanced approach is required. A strong focus on control-based management generates extrinsic motivation in employees but may, at the same time, undermine or even diminish intrinsic motivation to work on patient safety. Emphasising commitment-based management may, in contrast, strengthen intrinsic motivation but increases the risk of priorities being set elsewhere. Currently, external pressures frequently lead to the adoption of control-based management. A balanced approach requires a shift towards more trust-based safety demands.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to raise awareness that despite many calls for attention to a firm’s context in considering consequences for human resource management (HRM) and performance, ...research progress to date has been limited at best, although promising signs of change are emerging. Moreover, what has been defined as “performance” is coming under increasing scrutiny, with a more holistic concept emerging that balances both a firm’s financial performance and employee well-being. The question remains whether this is a mutual gains or conflicting outcomes situation for the firm vis-á-vis the employee.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a framework that facilitates a broader context-centric analysis of the HRM and performance relationship. In so doing, the authors posit that context should no longer merely be an obligatory control variable in a research design, but instead should be explicitly incorporated in both theory development and empirical model testing.FindingsThe Contextual SHRM Framework demonstrates how key organizational actors can balance competitive, heritage and institutional mechanisms to create an appropriate strategic HRM (SHRM) system capable of delivering organizational outcomes that balance financial and employee well-being outcomes, which in the long run impact societal well-being that, in turn, recreates the firm’s operating context. At the heart of the framework is an iterative process between context and the SHRM system, achieving an appropriate level of dynamic fit across the various components.Practical implicationsIn addition to empirical research, the framework has to date been widely used in executive development training, serving as a force field analysis tool allowing simultaneous consideration of the external and internal elements of a firm’s context, key organizational actors and SHRM system outcomes. HR professionals applying the framework to their organization can add value by demonstrating the clear linkage between the business strategy, the HRM system and the firm’s operating context.Originality/valueThis paper is designed to encourage new directions in future research and practice. The Contextual SHRM Framework is presented as a novel tool to facilitate advancement of the HRM and performance field of study.
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