Teixiera Dulal-Arthur, Juliet Hassard, Jane Bourke, Maria Wishart, Craig Bartle, Stephen Roper, Vicki Belt, Stavroula Leka, Nick Pahl, Louise Thomson, Holly Blake
Presenteeism (working while ill) due to mental ill-health is estimated to be one of the largest economic costs to employers. We seek to investigate the relationship between line manager training in mental health (MH) and presenteeism trends at work. The aim of this study was twofold: (i) to examine the relationship between the provision of a new and emerging workplace MH and wellbeing (MH&WB) initiative - line manager (LM) training in MH - and presenteeism as reported by organisations, and (ii) to examine the reasons for presenteeism, and organisational-level strategies used to action it. To address these questions, we conducted a secondary data analysis using panel data from 7139 firms in England over four time points (2020-2023). Probit regression analysis revealed that organisations offering LM training are less likely to report presenteeism. Our analysis revealed that providing LM training may increase awareness and readiness to tackle presenteeism within the organisation, but this does not always translate into actionable strategies. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed.
Anastasia Kulichyova, Stefan Jooss, Thomas Garavan
Literature on academic-stakeholder collaboration in the context of HRM is scarce and highlights the challenges linking theory to practice. Drawing on Mode 2 research, we theorise how a structured intervention enables the generation of theoretical insights concerning the development of employee creativity knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs). Utilising event system theory, we reveal how the novelty, criticality, and disruption of a structured intervention fuel an experiential learning process. This process facilitates the development of important individual and team-based creativity KSAs and is sustained through a learning mindset. We develop insights about theories-in-use, HRM theory development, and the micro processes involved in an academic-stakeholder collaboration including areas of potential tension. From a practice perspective, we highlight the value of structured interventions for creativity KSA development and a strategy to facilitate academic-stakeholder collaboration.
Shuang Ren, Mary B. Mawritz, Rebecca L. Greenbaum, Mayowa T. Babalola, Zhining Wang
Leader bottom-line mentality (LBLM) exists when leaders solely focus on securing bottom-line outcomes to the exclusion of alternative considerations. Our research examines why leaders adopt LBLMs and the implications of this focused leadership strategy on team sales performance and pro-environmental behavior. Utilizing social information processing theory, we examine LBLM as a mediator and contend that competitive action intensity in the work environment provokes LBLM, which then signals to teams the importance of raising sales performance and reducing pro-environmental behavior. We also suggest that leader performance reward expectancy (i.e., perceptions that rewards are directly tied to high performance) serves as a first-stage moderator and team performance reward expectancy serves as a second-stage moderator, with higher (vs. lower) levels of each strengthening the indirect effects of competitive action intensity, through LBLM, onto team sales performance and pro-environmental behavior. Utilizing field data from a large pharmaceutical company (Study 1) as well as an experimental causal chain design (Studies 2a and 2b), we found support for our theoretical model.
Yiwei Yuan, Shuang Ren, Guiyao Tang, Haochen Ji, Fang Lee Cooke, Zhining Wang
Green human resource management (GHRM), a set of HRM practices targeted at environmental goals, has been proposed as the key to achieving organisational sustainable development. However, the mechanisms through which GHRM influences employee green behaviour are not yet well understood. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study presents an integrated model revealing the mixed effects of GHRM on employees' voluntary workplace green behaviour (VWGB). Path analysis based on two studies undertaken in China largely supported our hypotheses. Specifically, GHRM was found to positively influence employees' VWGB through environmental commitment, while simultaneously decreasing their VWGB through emotional exhaustion. Meanwhile, supervisory support for environmental behaviour mitigated the impact of GHRM on emotional exhaustion as well as the relationship between GHRM and employee VWGB via emotional exhaustion. This study contributes to the GHRM literature in particular and organisational environmental management literature in general.
Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Mayowa T. Babalola, Moazzam Ali, Shuang Ren, Muhammed Usman, Zhining Wang
The COVID-19 crisis has been associated with existential concerns regarding mortality. These concerns, described as ‘mortality cues’, can influence people's emotions, behaviours, and the quality of leadership in organizations. Using the contingency model of death awareness (CMDA; Grant and Wade-Benzoni, 2009), we provide new evidence on how mortality cues can incite negative and positive leadership behaviours via two forms of death awareness: death anxiety and death reflection. Specifically, we theorize that mortality cues can increase leader death anxiety, giving rise to leader expediency (a leader's use of unethical practices to expedite work for self-serving purposes); however, mortality cues can also facilitate leader death reflection and, consequently, servant leadership behaviour. We further suggest that leaders’ responses to mortality cues depend on their psychological capital (PsyCap), such that leaders with high (vs. low) PsyCap respond to mortality cues with less expediency (via death anxiety) and more servant leader behaviours (via death reflection). We support our hypotheses through three separate studies using an experiment, time-lagged data from healthcare workers, and daily diary data from non-healthcare professionals. We conclude that mortality cues have a double-edged influence on leadership behaviour. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.
Wojdan Omran, Shumaila Yousafzai
What exactly is gaslighting and how does it play out in the gendered context of women’s entrepreneurship? We contribute to Stern’s three-stage model of gaslighting by presenting a contextualised perspective through a ‘twisted path’ of gaslighting that maps out gaslighting interactions and consequences, reflecting how our findings coincide with, depart from and enrich this model; meanwhile identifying primary and subsequent (secondary and tertiary) gaslighting interactions. By examining gaslighting through the lens of epistemic injustice and testimonial injustice, we explain why some women entrepreneurs succumb to gaslighting, while others strategically employ testimonial smothering and infrapolitics as an empowered agential strategy rather than a disenfranchised consequence. Considering the lack of research on gaslighting in entrepreneurship, our geopolitical context emphasises the role of spatial position and identity within multiple systems of injustice, such as occupation and patriarchy, adding novel insights theorised and grounded in lived experiences. In doing so, we disrupt the influence of western feminism by embracing a postcolonial feminist perspective and promoting social justice through centring the voices of 40 internally displaced Palestinian women entrepreneurs. Policy implications underscore the need to raise awareness of gaslighting, facilitate its identification and promote preventive measures to hold gaslighters accountable.
Olivia Brown, Robert M. Davison, Stephanie Decker, David A. Ellis, James Faulconbridge, Julie Gore, Michelle Greenwood, Gazi Islam, Christina Lubinski, Niall G. MacKenzie, Renate Meyer, Daniel Muzio, Paolo Quattrone, M. N. Ravishankar, Tammar Zilber, Shuang Ren, Riikka M. Sarala, Paul Hibbert
The advent of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has sparked both enthusiasm and anxiety as different stakeholders grapple with the potential to reshape the business and management landscape. This dynamic discourse extends beyond GAI itself to encompass closely related innovations that have existed for some time, for example, machine learning, thereby creating a collective anticipation of opportunities and dilemmas surrounding the transformative or disruptive capacities of these emerging technologies.
Mayowa T. Babalola, Samantha L. Jordan, Shuang Ren, Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Wayne A. Hochwarter, Gbemisola T. Soetan
Extending existing bottom-line mentality (BLM) perspectives, we provide a new theoretical account of how supervisors’ perceptions of top management BLM influence supervisors’ servant leadership (SL) behavior. Using role theory, we propose that these perceptions inhibit supervisors’ SL behavior by reducing their SL role conceptualization or the extent to which supervisors consider SL part of their work responsibility. Further, given that the process underlying the relationship between perceived top management BLM and supervisor SL behavior may be explained by social learning theory and human adaptive capacity perspectives, we examine the incremental validity of supervisor SL role conceptualization versus supervisor BLM and empathy as mediating mechanisms. We also propose low perspective-taking among supervisors as a boundary condition that exacerbates the negative effect of perceived top management BLM on SL role conceptualization, which then results in less servant leader behavior. Data from two multiwave field studies in China and the United Kingdom provided some support for our hypotheses. Across unique cultural contexts, our findings highlight the value of a role theory perspective in understanding perceptions of top management BLM. We discuss critical theoretical and practical implications of these findings and avenues for subsequent research.
Pawan Budhwar, Soumyadeb Chowdhury, Geoffrey Wood, Herman Aguinis, Greg J. Bamber, Jose R. Beltran, Paul Boselie, Fang Lee Cooke, Stephanie Decker, Angelo DeNisi, Prasanta Kumar Dey, David Guest, Andrew J. Knoblich, Ashish Malik, Jaap Paauwe, Savvas Papagiannidis, Charmi Patel, Vijay Pereira, Shuang Ren, Steven Rogelberg, Mark N. K. Saunders, Rosalie L. Tung, Arup Varma
ChatGPT and its variants that use generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have rapidly become a focal point in academic and media discussions about their potential benefits and drawbacks across various sectors of the economy, democracy, society, and environment. It remains unclear whether these technologies result in job displacement or creation, or if they merely shift human labour by generating new, potentially trivial or practically irrelevant, information and decisions. According to the CEO of ChatGPT, the potential impact of this new family of AI technology could be as big as “the printing press”, with significant implications for employment, stakeholder relationships, business models, and academic research, and its full consequences are largely undiscovered and uncertain. The introduction of more advanced and potent generative AI tools in the AI market, following the launch of ChatGPT, has ramped up the “AI arms race”, creating continuing uncertainty for workers, expanding their business applications, while heightening risks related to well‐being, bias, misinformation, context insensitivity, privacy issues, ethical dilemmas, and security. Given these developments, this perspectives editorial offers a collection of perspectives and research pathways to extend HRM scholarship in the realm of generative AI. In doing so, the discussion synthesizes the literature on AI and generative AI, connecting it to various aspects of HRM processes, practices, relationships, and outcomes, thereby contributing to shaping the future of HRM research.
Shuang Ren, Fang Lee Cooke, Günter K. Stahl, Di Fan, Andrew R. Timming
How can human resource management (HRM), as both a scholarly discourse and a corporate strategic function, advance the sustainability agenda? We endeavor to answer this question by drawing together insights gleamed from the emerging sustainable HRM literature. First, we synthesize various conceptualizations and theoretical perspectives on the topic, including frames of reference from strategic HRM, institutional theory and institutional logics, stakeholder theory, and sustainable careers/ life cycle theory. Second, we unpack and contextualize the sustainable HRM literature through the lens of international HRM. Third, we consolidate the extant literature and present an agenda for future research, calling for further exploration of topics that are likely to hit the next high wave of generating new strategic HRM insights and sustainable HRM knowledge.
Babatunde Ogunfowora, Viet Quan Nguyen, Clara S. Lee, Mayowa T. Babalola, Shuang Ren
According to Bandura, moral disengagement facilitates misconduct by minimizing feelings of guilt that normally arise when one contemplates wrongdoing. While trait moral disengagement has been negatively associated with anticipatory guilt, scholars have yet to fully consider its impact on guilt post-misconduct. In this paper, we examine the indirect effects of trait moral disengagement on post-misconduct guilt, and downstream effects on employees' mental health and performance. Lastly, we explore the moderating role of post-misconduct state moral disengagement in shaping the effects of trait moral disengagement. Across three studies, we find that trait moral disengagement is positively linked to guilt following interpersonal deviance, unethical work behavior, and objective cheating behavior. Further, trait moral disengagement is indirectly, positively linked to emotional exhaustion and negatively related to executive function (specifically, the capacity to inhibit distraction during tasks). In a fourth study, we find that trait moral disengagement is positively associated with guilt and subsequent emotional exhaustion when individuals employ little to no state moral disengagement immediately post-misconduct. In contrast, trait moral disengagement is negatively linked to guilt and emotional exhaustion when individuals employ state moral disengagement post-misconduct. We discuss the implications of these findings for advancing moral disengagement theory and research.
Yuanmei (Elly) Qu, Mayowa T Babalola, Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Shuang Ren, Lu Chen, Mengxi Yang
With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, among other crises (e.g., Russia–Ukraine conflicts and recession projections) threatening organizations’ financial conditions across the globe, supervisors may not only encounter challenges such as job cuts that test their ethical leadership, but also experience financial insecurity themselves. However, our knowledge of why and when supervisors’ ethical leadership behaviors may be affected in such a situation remains quite limited. In this research, we draw on uncertainty management theory (UMT) to examine the potential influence of financial insecurity on ethical leadership. Specifically, we suggest that financial insecurity triggers anxiety in supervisors, which inhibits their demonstration of ethical leadership. We also propose organizational pay fairness as a boundary condition for this process, such that supervisors who perceive their pay as fair are less susceptible to the anxiety resulting from financial insecurity than those who perceive their pay as unfair. Results from two multi-source, multi-wave studies supported our hypothesized model. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
Haiyun (Melody) Zou, Israr Qureshi, Yulin Fang, Heshan Sun, Kai H. Lim, Elaine Ramsey, Patrick McCole
Trust is paramount to developing and maintaining long-term relationships in all stages of the customer lifecycle, including the repurchase stage. This research goes beyond the simple finding documented in the extant trust literature that the effect of trust will diminish. It sheds light on the role of institutional contexts and develops a nuanced understanding of the boundary conditions under which trust operates in the repurchase stage, where knowledge-based trust becomes more predominant. Drawing on a different theoretical tenet, prospect theory, we find that customers exhibit distinctively different transaction intentions in the two perceptual conditions of high and low trust in institutional contexts. Specifically, the nonlinear relationship between trust and repeat online transaction intention is inverted U-shaped curvilinear when trust in institutional contexts is high, but is U-shaped when trust in institutional contexts is low. With data collected from both e-commerce and mobile banking contexts using two different measures of institutional contexts, we employed a new and advanced latent moderated structural (LMS) equations approach for analysis and provided robust results. Our findings largely confirm the hypotheses and offer theoretical, methodological, and practical implications.
