Jean M. Phillips

We examine how a single exploitative employer decision event, conceptualized as a shock, interacts with employees' accumulated perceived employer exploitation to amplify feelings of violation and influence adverse employee reactions. This interaction effect, and its boundary conditions, constitutes the primary theoretical contribution of the study. Drawing primarily on social exchange theory and informed by psychological contract theory, and the unfolding model of turnover as complementary explanatory lenses, we test this model across two experiments and find that feelings of violation resulting from an exploitative employer decision are stronger if the event occurred in the context of a more exploitative employment relationship. The mediating effects of feelings of violation on the relationship between accumulated perceived employer exploitation and an exploitative employer decision, and the employee reactions of turnover intentions and loyal boosterism are novel. Together, these results contribute to advancing research and theory on employer exploitation, psychological contracts, social exchange theory, and the unfolding model of turnover by establishing boundary conditions for the relationship among an affective event, exploitative employment relationship perceptions, and employee reactions. These results advance employer exploitation research by establishing that accumulated exploitative relationship history moderates the intensity of employee reactions to discrete shock events, a distinction prior research has not empirically tested.

Globalization increases national culture and language diversity, which, if well managed, can benefit organizational performance. National culture is comprised of both language and country of origin, yet until relatively recently research has tended to focus on one or the other. We use person-organization fit theory and the meaning-based model of advertisement experience to propose that other-group orientation, a characteristic supportive of a pro-diversity climate, influences the relationship between language and national culture diversity recruiting messages and perceived person-organization fit. We used two randomized field experiments, one with 458 currently or recently employed people and one with 327 real job seekers, to test our model. Language and national culture diversity messages independently decreased perceived fit among those lower in other-group orientation and increased perceived fit among those higher in other-group orientation. A combined language and national cultural diversity message had the strongest effect by both decreasing fit perceptions among job seekers lower in other-group orientation and increasing fit perceptions among those higher in other-group orientation. These results refine both existing theory on and the practice of recruiting for pro-global diversity values by demonstrating that the relationship between recruiting message wording about an employer’s pro-national culture and pro-language diversity values and person-organization fit is moderated by other-group orientation. These findings can help employers better understand how recruiting messages can play a strategic role in hiring pro-global diversity talent.

Social exchange theory suggests that team members are willing to share their knowledge with each other due to the reciprocity motive stimulated by high-quality exchange relationships with their leader (LMX). However, the relationship may not be this simple. Applying the social learning and self-efficacy elements of social cognitive theory, we propose that team members with higher general self-efficacy are more likely to share knowledge with their teammates when they also enjoy high-quality LMX with the leader. In addition, we hypothesize that this effect is stronger when team members learn how to effectively share knowledge by observing their leader share knowledge or when the variances in LMX qualities within a team (LMX differentiation) are smaller. We also propose that knowledge sharing has a meaningful impact on performance at the team level and hypothesize that team-level knowledge sharing is positively related to team-level performance. Using a field sample of 342 individuals in 56 teams, we find support for our model. These findings advance our understanding of when and why individuals are willing to reciprocate higher-quality LMX relationships by sharing their knowledge with other teammates, and the positive effect this has on team performance.

International human resource management (IHRM) as a field of practice involves heightened levels of complexity compared to domestic HRM based on the multitude of contexts in which multinational firms operate. As complexity increases, so do levels of risk and the chance the firm must deal with crisis situations. Based on articles presented at the 3rd Global Conference on IHRM, this special issue focuses on how IHRM can contribute to organization success when faced with extreme operating conditions. This editorial provides a backdrop to the articles by describing the challenging economic, political, and social environments impacting organizations, exploring conditions from the recent past and current day such as the global financial crisis, trends toward political nationalism, aging populations, and growing immigrant workforces. The focus lies on exploring how HRM can respond to such challenging external contexts to continue to contribute added value to the firm.

This editorial was written as a vision of IHRM research, to be both thought-provoking and to start a conversation that can continue to move the field forward. Starting with a brief outline of the field, the editorial emphasizes distinct research route trajectories charting the landscape and anatomy of HRM in an international context, focusing on HRM in multinational corporations (MNCs) as well as Comparative HRM and the related, but distinct, cross-cultural management thread. Additionally, the editorial accentuates the importance of context in IHRM research, explaining the resultant debate on adopting a universalist vs. a contextual paradigm. The editorial presents a future agenda for IHRM research, focusing on challenges of research sampling, appropriate methodologies, social impact and interdisciplinary research. Finally, the editorial introduces four featured articles from the 2nd Global Conference on IHRM. Each article represents an interesting take on comparative HRM and/or strategic IHRM in MNCs. The studies are clear examples of how context can be used to explain the phenomena being studied.

It is hard to argue with the central thesis of the focal article (Ruggs et al., 2016) that industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology has much to offer police departments in helping them meet their mission. As an example, the Los Angeles Police Department provides a clear statement that is representative of most police agencies: It is the mission of the Los Angeles Police Department to safeguard the lives and property of the people we serve, to reduce the incidence and fear of crime, and to enhance public safety while working with the diverse communities to improve their quality of life. Our mandate is to do so with honor and integrity, while at all times conducting ourselves with the highest ethical standards to maintain public confidence. (Los Angeles Police Foundation & LAPD, 2016)

Recruiting influences employees’ motivation, performance, and retention. Because an organization’s talent influences its capabilities, strategic execution, and competitive advantage, recruiting is a foundation of organizational performance. Strategic recruitment refers to recruitment practices that are connected across levels of analysis and aligned with the goals, strategies, context, and characteristics of the organization. It differs from traditional recruitment perspectives by explicitly connecting firm strategy and context to recruitment practices and activities within that firm. Strategic recruitment lies at the nexus of four important topics: resource-based theory, strategic human resource management, human capital, and levels of analysis. In this review, we first define strategic recruitment and explain its importance. Next, we briefly review why strategic recruitment is a critical yet underexplored area of research despite decades of research on strategic human resource management in general and recruitment in particular. Finally, we introduce a model that advances our understanding of strategic recruitment. We introduce two new concepts, horizontal strategic recruitment and vertical strategic recruitment, which connect to the ideas of horizontal and vertical alignment in the strategic human resource management literature but focus explicitly on the notion of strategic recruitment. This model highlights a variety of opportunities for future recruitment research relevant to resource-based theory, strategic human resource management, human capital, and levels of analysis.