Riccardo Peccei

Purpose: Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources framework, this study examines whether and when human resource development (HRD) practices enhance chronically ill employees’ (CIEs’) work engagement and continuance commitment. It compares CIEs and employees without chronic illness in a large Italian company, investigating intrinsic motivation as a moderator. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs multigroup structural equation modelling (SEM) on a sample of 259 CIEs and a referent group of 1,558 employees. Findings: HRD practices are positively associated with work engagement in both groups, but their relationship with continuance commitment is positive yet not significant. Intrinsic motivation strengthens the relationship between HRD practices and work engagement among CIEs, whereas no moderating effect emerges for employees without chronic illness. A similar pattern is observed for continuance commitment: intrinsic motivation marginally strengthens the relationship among CIEs but shows no moderating effect in the referent group. Research limitations/implications: This study has limitations that also suggest directions for future research. Practical implications: Organizations should complement accommodative HR practices with tailored development opportunities to foster CIE’s work engagement and support their retention. Originality/value: This study highlights the positive role of HRD practices for a growing group of vulnerable employees who face an increased risk of marginalization at work.

As chronic illnesses affect more employees, organizations must understand how to support these workers to retain their value and promote well-being. This study draws on the job demands-resources model and conservation of resources theory to examine how ability and motivation shape the engagement of chronically ill employees (CIEs) in response to HR practices that help them recover functioning after a loss (i.e. utilization practices). It also investigates whether perceived illness discrimination moderates this relationship across CIEs subgroups. Survey data from 663 CIEs in an Italian company were analysed using latent profile analysis, identifying three groups: 'thriving employees' (high ability/motivation), 'steady contributors' (moderate ability/motivation), and 'struggling workers' (low ability/motivation). Multi-group SEM showed that utilization practices increased engagement for thriving employees and steady contributors, but not among struggling workers. Perceived illness discrimination weakened this positive effect for steady contributors and struggling workers. By adopting a person-centred approach, the study reveals patterns that would not emerge from traditional variable-based analyses, offering practical guidance for organizations aiming to build more inclusive workplaces.

Performance management is an ongoing process that intends to facilitate employee performance. There are concerns that this may lead to negative employee experiences. In education, an effectively operating performance management process is crucial, considering the challenging and demanding nature of the teaching profession. Drawing on social exchange theory and the job demands-resources model, we propose that when teachers perceive performance management as a process that adheres to the principles of a so-called strong HRM system (i.e. one that communicates distinctively, consistently and reaches high levels of consensus), they will feel more appreciated, valued and energized, as signaled by higher levels of affective organizational commitment and less exhaustion. We hypothesize that, in turn, these outcomes improve teacher performance. We collected data from 458 Flemish teachers and matched these with performance ratings provided by school principals. The results show that the perceived strength of a performance management process relates negatively to teacher exhaustion while relating positively to their performance. Moreover, the relationship between perceived performance management process strength and teacher performance appeared to be indirect, operating primarily through affective organizational commitment. We discuss several theoretical and practical implications.

Due to demographic changes, age diversity is growing in the workplace, creating a potential challenge to social integration. However, who is most affected by working with colleagues of different ages and when is being dissimilar in age from others more likely to hinder organisational identification? Drawing on relational demography and on the social identity approach, we suggest that certain individual and contextual conditions can lead employees to react to greater age dissimilarity by reducing their psychological attachment to the organisation. We propose that negative age stereotypes and perceived age-related treatment affect the salience of age as a social category for employees and threaten their age group identity, thereby creating conditions in which age dissimilarity might hinder organisational identification. We therefore examine the moderating effects of negative age stereotypes and perceived age-related treatment on the relationship between age dissimilarity and organisational identification in a sample of 434 schoolteachers from 16 schools in Italy. Findings show that age dissimilarity per se is not sufficient to hamper employees’ identification with the organisation. However, it has detrimental effects when employees hold negative age stereotypes and/or perceive an unfair organisational treatment towards their own age group. Implications for research are discussed along with practice implications.

This study is designed to contribute to a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the unit-level relationship between employee well-being (job satisfaction and burnout, in the form of emotional exhaustion and cynicism) and service quality in two main ways. First is by adopting a person-oriented approach to identify distinct well-being profiles as a way of capturing the conjoint effect of satisfaction and burnout on service quality. And second is by employing an adapted form of multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) to examine the extent to which the distribution of employee well-being profiles in a work group affects the level of service quality provided by the group, as perceived by customers. These issues were examined using combined employee-customer data based on a sample of 396 employees and 1233 customers from 91 restaurant and reception work units of 42 hotels in Spain. In line with theoretical expectations and consistent with a strong win-win model of the unit level relationship between employee well-being and service quality, the results showed that work groups with a more positive distribution of well-being profiles, that is, with a greater proportion of employees with high levels of job satisfaction combined with low levels of burnout (emotional exhaustion and cynicism), significantly outperformed work groups with a less favourable internal distribution of well-being profiles. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The authors provide an up‐to‐date theoretically based qualitative review of research dealing with the relationship between HRM, employee well‐being, and individual/organisational performance (HRM‐WB‐IOP research). The review is based on a systematic critical analysis of all HRM‐WB‐IOP studies (N = 46) published in 13 core HRM and management journals in the 2000 to 2018 period. The authors first identify different theoretical models of the HRM‐WB‐IOP relationship, which they then use to map research in the area. The results show that mutual gains conceptualisations play a dominant role in extant HRM‐WB‐IOP research, at the expense of alternative conflicting outcomes and mutual losses models, which are also shown to receive very limited empirical support across the 46 studies. As part of this mapping exercise, the authors identify important knowledge gaps in the area and conclude by setting out a number of key recommendations for future research to address these gaps.

Although initially studies examining human resource management (HRM)–outcome relationships only used management‐based ratings of HR practices, arguments have been advanced in favour of using employee‐based ratings. To examine this, a systematic analysis of HRM–outcome studies published between 2000 and 2017 is performed, which shows that over time studies have indeed increasingly made use of employees as respondents to measures of human resource (HR) practices. An in‐depth analysis of these measures of perceived HR practices revealed that various problems and issues can be identified when critically reviewing these measures. It is observed that considerable idiosyncrasy exists in measures of perceived HR practices, coupled with a lack of transparency in how these measures are often reported in existing studies. Also, a mixture of evaluative and descriptive items creates concerns about jingle fallacies in extant research and in turn about the validity of HRM–outcome results. Recommendations are provided to further advance the measurement and conceptualisation of this core construct.

Purpose: Addressing the continuing productivity challenge, the purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the National Health Service on employee involvement (EI) in order to gain critical insights into how employees’ shared perception of EI in organizational decision making (i.e. EI climate) might address two persistent issues: how to enhance positive staff attitudes and improve organizational performance. In doing so, the authors respond to recent calls for more multilevel research and extend previous research on EI climate by attending to both EI climate level and EI climate strength.Design/methodology/approach: Data from 4,702 employees nested in 33 UK hospitals were used to test the moderating role of EI climate strength in the cross-level EI climate level employee level-attitudes relationship and in the organizational-level EI climate-organizational effectiveness relationship.Findings: The results of the multilevel analyses showed that EI climate level was positively associated with individual-level employee attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment). Further the results of the hierarchical regression analysis and the ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that EI climate level was also related to organizational effectiveness (i.e. lower outpatient waiting times, higher performance quality). In addition, both analyses demonstrated the moderating role of EI climate strength, in that the positive impact of EI climate level on employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness was more marked in the presence of a strong climate compared to a weak EI climate.Practical implications: By creating and maintaining a positive and strong climate for involvement, hospital managers can tackle the productivity challenge that UK hospitals and health care institutions more generally are currently facing while improving the attitudes of their employees who are critical in the transformative process and ultimately underpin the organizational success.Originality/value: This is the first study which provides evidence that favorable and consistent collective recognition of EI opportunities by staff contributes to enhance both employee attitudes and hospital performance. Results highlight the role of EI climate strength and underscore its importance in future research and practice.

The authors provide a systematic evaluation of the emerging multilevel paradigm in human resource management (HRM) research focusing, in particular, on multilevel mediation analyses of the HRM-outcomes relationship. They first distinguish different types of multilevel models and then identify a number of best practice theoretical and methodological criteria for the conduct of multilevel research derived from the literature. These criteria are used to analyze and evaluate all multilevel mediation studies ( N = 46) of the HRM-outcomes relationship published in 11 core management and HRM journals in the 2000 to 2016 period. The results suggest that progress in the application of the multilevel paradigm has been slow and uneven and that the new paradigm has not as yet taken firm root in the field of HRM. On the basis of this evaluation, the authors identify key areas for improvement in the application of the multilevel approach to the analysis of the HRM-outcomes relationship. In the process, they highlight important ways in which the further development of a multilevel perspective can enhance both strategic and employee-centered HRM research by contributing to a fuller substantive understanding of the processes and mechanisms through which HRM systems affect outcomes of interest at different levels of analysis.