Human Resources Management

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Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Open Access
From Resisting to Sustaining: Exploring Skilled Migrants’ Alternative Career Pathways
(2025-04-10) Mansoori, Soodabeh; Zikic, Jelena
This qualitative study employs a grounded theory approach to explore the lived experiences of skilled migrants in Canada who engage in alternative careers. The study investigates identity work and meaning-making processes of career actors who perceive alternative career options as “beginning again.” Through 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews, the findings identify three distinct alternative career pathways: provisional, experimental, and reformist; each characterized by a unique form of identity work and accompanying types of meaning-making. Each path provides distinctive insights into how skilled migrants cope with, and adapt to, the mismatches between their skills and new job demands, challenging and redefining their professional identities. Additionally, it highlights how each career pathway may shape migrants’ subjective well-being. This study advances the existing literature on major career transitions, specifically skilled migrant career trajectories inside local organizations, by highlighting how they reconstruct new professional identities and derive meaning in contexts that often fall below their qualifications and career aspirations. This study extends existing research on employability and career sustainability by integrating the dynamic processes of identity negotiation and meaning-making in the face of career transitions. It also builds on the existing meaning-making literature by highlighting the career narratives of those who must search for new meanings while pursuing “less than ideal” career opportunities. Finally, the findings provide practical implications related to outcomes of alternative career opportunities on migrant career success and, more broadly, for employers and policymakers.
Open Access
How Organizational Diversity Cues Affect Career-Related Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Belonging
(2024-07-18) Chummar, Sheryl Anne; Budworth, Marie-Helene
Advancing existing literature, this dissertation bridges social psychological and organizational research by investigating how belonging mediates the relationship between organizational diversity cues and career-related outcomes, with a specific focus on the underrepresentation of racialized groups in senior organizational roles. Specifically, I address fundamental research questions surrounding the mediating role of belonging through the impact of two organizational diversity cues, perceived workplace racial discrimination and racial/ethnic representation, on individuals' sense of belonging at work and the subsequent implications of belonging on individuals’ career aspirations, turnover intentions, and job application intentions. In the first study, a field investigation explores the effects of perceived workplace racial discrimination on belonging for lawyers in medium to large-sized law firms in Canada. The findings reveal a compelling negative association between perceived workplace discrimination and belonging, with organizational justice emerging as a critical explanatory factor. Moreover, belonging is identified as a predictor for both career aspirations and turnover intentions. Sequential mediation analyses emphasize the robustness of these relationships. Results of the second study, an experimental exploration, affirm a positive connection between racial/ethnic representation and belonging, highlighting the mediating role of belonging in the relationship between representation and job application intentions, as well as career aspirations. Interestingly, the studies unveil moderating effects based on race/ethnicity, particularly pronounced for racialized individuals. Synthesizing the findings from both studies, belonging emerges as a pivotal psychological process mediating the influence of perceived workplace racial discrimination and racial/ethnic representation on career aspirations and turnover intentions. Furthermore, the inclusion of a diverse sample comprising both White and racialized individuals allows for a nuanced examination of the moderating effects of race/ethnicity. The theoretical and practical implications of this research extend to the realm of workplace equity, diversity, and inclusion. By understanding organizational antecedents of belonging and its subsequent effect on the career aspirations and intentions of individuals, we gain additional insights into addressing underrepresentation and fostering inclusive environments.
Open Access
Knowledge Hiding and Knowledge Manipulation; An Investigation from a Contexual, Relational and Dyadic Perspective
(2023-03-28) Good, Jessica Ruth Lenore; Chuang, You-Ta
Given that knowledge gives firms a competitive advantage, interest in knowledge management is expanding (Bibi et al., 2021; Jasimuddin, 2006; Wang & Noe, 2010). To gain knowledge, organizations must ensure that knowledge is shared amongst their employees (Hinds et al., 2001; Wang & Noe, 2010). Although knowledge sharing has been the subject of much research (Wang & Noe, 2010), we still have more to learn about other knowledge-management behaviours, such as knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation (Rhee & Choi, 2017). In this dissertation, I will investigate the antecedents of knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation in three studies from a contextual, relational, and dyadic perspective. In study 1, I explore the contextual factors of the work environment and how they impact knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation. In study 2, I explore the relational factors by investigating the mechanism that impacts work engagement, knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation through team member exchange. In study 3, I explore knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation from a dyadic perspective in a purely theoretical piece. In addition to theoretical contribution by extending the literature on knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation, this research offers important implications for managers and employees on how contextual, relational, and dyadic factors can be modified to decrease knowledge hiding and knowledge manipulation.
Open Access
How Managerial Job Demands Influence Employee Stress: An Interpersonal Perspective
(2022-12-14) Masood, Huda; Budworth, Marie-Helene
Research has shown that compared to average workers, managers are more likely to experience stressful job demands. This phenomenon has become more prominent throughout the course of the COVID-19 crisis. I see this as an opportunity to examine a cross-level interplay between managers’ job demands and employee stress. Evidence suggests that at least half of the workplace stress can be attributed to interpersonal interactions. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of how managers’ work stressors impact their tendency to expand or contract their relational network through relational job crafting (or modification in the frequency and quality of relationships for work-related purposes). Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach (i.e., quantitative and qualitative), the current study investigates how managerial job demands impact their interpersonal exchanges with others, which then inform employee stress. The multi-level quantitative inquiry (254 employees nested in 64 managers) found significant relationships between managers’ job demands and relational job crafting, which then leads to managers’ ability to be interpersonally fair. There was a significant relationship between managers’ implementation of interpersonal justice and employee stress. Further, both expansion and contraction-oriented relational job crafting significantly mediate the relationship between job demands and interpersonal justice. Managers’ relational job crafting was found to be a significant moderator to the relationship between employee perceptions of leader-member exchange and stress. Contrary to the theorized expectation, managers’ relational job crafting activities do not transform into employee stress through interpersonal justice. Nonetheless, the relationship between managers’ relational job crafting and employee stress was found to be significant. In the qualitative phase of the study, I conducted over thirty hours of interviews with 14 managers and 19 employees. The interview transcripts were analyzed thematically on (i) managerial, (ii) employee, and (iii) nested datasets, to account for within and between-level phenomena. The findings from the two studies converged to elucidate stress as a trickle-down phenomenon from managers to employees through interpersonal exchanges. The study contributes to our understanding of job design, justice, and stress scholarship, to understand the impact of managerial job demands on employee wellbeing. Theoretical, managerial, and policy implications are discussed in the final chapter of this dissertation.
Open Access
You are not alone: An examination of lesbian and gay (LG) employees changing workplace heterosexism in China
(2022-03-03) Zhang, Guolei; Chuang, You-Ta
Although research on the experiences of sexual minority employees has made significant progress in the past two decades, most studies have focused predominantly on the negative consequences sexual minority employees encounter in the face of workplace heterosexism. The role of change agent that sexual minority employees may play in terms of disrupting and advocating equal treatment has been overlooked. Further, very few studies related to sexual minority employees were conducted outside of USA. In my dissertation, I link the literature from institutional change and reasoned action theory to examine three research questions in China's context: RQ1: What factors would trigger lesbian and gay (LG) employees to engage in changing workplace heterosexism? RQ2: What behaviors would LG employees display to change workplace heterosexism? RQ3: What factors would impede/facilitate LG employees' engagement in changing workplace heterosexism? Through three studies, this dissertation found that the experience of institutional contradiction derived from LG employees' personal interest of receiving equal treatment and workplace heterosexism is the trigger for LG employees to have the intention to change workplace heterosexism and subsequently display change-oriented behaviors. Once LG employees form the intention to change workplace heterosexism, they display different types of change-oriented behavior (explicit and implicit) in the workplace. In addition, LG employees' organizational continuance commitment and perceived changeability play different roles in shaping LG employees' intention to change and change-oriented behaviors. Taken together, these findings contribute to literature on the experience of sexual minority employees to give researchers and practitioners a deeper understanding of the dynamics of sexual minority employees' behavior. Also, these findings are relevant and important to individuals as well as organizations as they can make extra efforts to build a diverse and inclusive workplace environment.
Open Access
Work-Life Balance Among Dual-Career Couples Without Children: A Qualitative Study
(2021-07-06) Boiarintseva, Galina; Richardson, Julia
Dual-career professional couples are becoming common in many countries. In North America, previous generations of dual-career professional couples were likely to have children, but today many such couples forego parenthood. Increased attention in management literature has been given to work-life balance of dual-career professional couples with children, but there is a paucity of qualitative research on work-life balance of dual-career professional couples without children. Given current social transformations, evolving work values, career aspirations, and changing family structures, more investigation into this demographic group is needed. This study sets out to examine how individuals in dual-career professional couples without children understand and experience work-life balance. This qualitative study draws on interview data collected from 21 couples to explore the following research questions: 1) How do dual-career professional couples without children define work-life balance? 2) What are the main influences on the work-life balance of dual-career professional couples without children? 3) How do dual-career professional couples without children experience work-life balance? and 4) How do dual-career professional couples without children manage their work-life balance? This study adds to contemporary academic literature by exploring the experiences of professional dual-career couples without children, within an interpretive ontology. This study also challenges the call in management scholarship to develop one clear definition of work-life balance. It indicates that work-life balance is a subjective construct that differs from individual to individual and from couple to couple, even those who share many similarities. Finally, this study demonstrates that work-life balance in professional dual-career couples is a social-relational process.
Open Access
Bright Side of Leader Emotional Labour: Impact of Leader Emotion Regulation on Employee Outcomes
(2020-08-11) Alam, Md. Mahbubul; Singh, Parbudyal
The concept of emotion regulation has been a major topic of affect-based research in organizational studies. However, it has been studied mostly in service contexts as a form of labour that is stressful and impairs the well-being of service workers. Despite the potential of applying this construct beyond service occupations with a focus on the beneficial aspects of it, the call for expansion of this literature has largely been unattended. Although studying emotions of leadership opens a wide range of opportunities, extension of emotional labour research is distinctly underdeveloped in this area. In response to this state of affairs, my research empirically explores the bright side of leaders emotion regulation in leadership context. Drawing on emotional labour theory, affective events theory (AET), emotional expressivity of leadership theories, and conservation of resources (COR) theory, I propose that leaders emotion regulation may, in fact, result in beneficial employee outcomes without harming leaders well-being. In order to support my hypotheses, I conducted two studies. At an interpersonal level, study 1 ( cross-sectional, n = 175) examines the beneficial impact of employee perceptions leader emotion regulation strategies (viz. surface acting and deep acting) on key employee outcomes. The results support the hypotheses that 1) employee perception of leader deep acting was favourably related to employees job satisfaction and perceived leadership effectiveness and 2) these relationships were mediated by employee perception of leader authenticity. The purpose of study 2 (daily experience sampling, n = 81) was to test the other key argument of this research: that while surface acting can impair well-being, leader deep acting does not necessarily hinder their personal well-being. As hypothesized, I found a significant positive relationship between leader surface acting and emotional exhaustion, and the relationship was mediated by daily emotional dissonance. However, as expected, leader daily deep acting was not related to their daily well-being outcomes of emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion. In addition to theoretical contribution by extending the study of emotion regulation in leadership with a focus of the beneficial aspect of it, this research offers important implications for the practicing managers and human resource management (HRM) functions.
Open Access
The Phenomenon of Failure Sharing
(2020-05-11) Boey, Anita Xiao Hua; Chuang, You-Ta
Individuals in organizations are often confronted with failure. Failure can be costly for organizations and may stigmatize individual careers and organizations reputations. Failure can, however, be a valuable opportunity that allows individuals and organizations to learn from it to improve performance. Current learning from failure literature implicitly assumes that failure is shared at work. However, no empirical study has investigated the behavior of sharing failure. Therefore, this study explores sharing failure and failure experience in the workplace by asking three major research questions: RQ1: Why do individuals share, or not share, failure with others? RQ2: When they do share failure, why did individuals choose the respective target to share failure with? RQ3: What do individuals learn from sharing failure? This study found that two factors motivate individuals to share their failures with others: help seeking and help giving. On the other hand, several other factors deter individuals from sharing their failures with others: fear of repercussions, managing impressions, and protecting others. Once an individual decides to share their failure and failure experiences with others, the individual is selective about whom they will share their failure with. Several attributes of the potential target(s) influence this choice: perceived ability of the target, desired help, and proximity. This study found that post sharing failure with others, sharers learned more about their failure and their failure sharing behavior and/or gained psychological benefits. The three research questions are independent, but findings are interdependent, such that each part is required for learning from sharing failure. Taken together, these findings contribute to the learning from failure and knowledge sharing literature to give researchers and practitioners a deeper understanding of the dynamics of sharing failure and failure experiences. Also, these findings are relevant and important to individuals as well as organizations as they can modify their failure sharing behaviors with the goal of learning from failures.
Open Access
The Quest for Gainful Employment: Former Prisoner Experiences Managing a Socially Stigmatized Invisible Identity
(2019-07-02) Anazodo, Fola-Kemi Salawu; Chan, Paul Christopher
The former prisoner identity can be described as a socially devalued identity that is not visible or readily apparent to others (i.e. Chaudoir & Fisher, 2010). Employment is an essential means through which former prisoners can be successfully reintegrated into society (Visher, Winterfield, & Coggeshall, 2005). However, former prisoners are faced with the challenge of navigating through a labor market filled with numerous barriers and social stigmas. Former prisoners represent a population whose voices are typically left unheard in organizational practice and in the management literature. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms that inform identity management post-release and the associated employment effects. To address this purpose, this study employed an explanatory mixed methods design. This involved the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative inquiry found significant relationships between internalized stigma and disclosure and concealment such that those who engaged in disclosure strategies were less likely to engage in concealment strategies. The results suggest that individuals do internalize stigma post-release, and that this affects their employment outcomes. However, contrary to the theorized expectations, identity management does not appear to explain this link. In light of the limited knowledge pertaining to managing an invisible stigmatized identity throughout the employment process, I was prompted to further explore the depth of individual experiences with employment post-incarceration. In the qualitative portion of this study, I reflect on interviews with twenty-two formerly federally incarcerated men, released on parole, to understand how their self-identification is shaped within and across their experiences of employment seeking or attaining after prison. Specifically, I explore developments in the identity management experiences and practices releasees engage in as they navigate the pre-employment and later employment processes as well as the interplay between the effects of pre-and post-incarceration experiences on releasee interpretations of self and of work. This study contributes to our understanding of identity sensemaking as well as to our understanding of the experiences of social stigma and identity invisibility through the employment reintegration process.
Open Access
The Decision to Comply With Workplace Law: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Human Resource Practitioners
(2019-03-05) Frawley, Shayna; Doorey, David J.
Violations of labour and employment laws governing workers (e.g. workplace law) are a widespread issue in industrialized counties. While human resource (HR) practitioners play a central role in responding to workplace law in organizations, limited empirical research has explored HR and legal compliance. This mixed-methods dissertation aims to increase our understanding of how and why Canadian HR practitioners decide to comply (or not comply) with legal requirements. Drawing on the Reasoned Action Approach as a theoretical framework, Study 1 and Study 2 explore how HR practitioners beliefs, attitudes, perceived norms, perceived behavioural control (self-efficacy), perceived risk, unionization, professional HR designations, self-assessed knowledge, tenure and sector influence self-reported compliance. Study 1 identified practitioners salient behavioural, normative, and control beliefs through a Belief Elicitation Study. Using bootstrapped multiple regression, Study 2 consisted of a test of the full theoretical model. Study 2 found perceived norms, attitudes, behavioural beliefs (advantages and disadvantages of compliance), control beliefs (resources that would facilitate compliance), and perceived behavioural control directly influenced compliance. A number of indirect relationships were also significant, particularly involving perceived risk and self-assessed knowledge. Study 3 consisted of qualitative interviews with HR practitioners to gain increased insight into the lived experience of HR professionals. Study 3 was largely consistent with the quantitative findings. Practitioners also emphasized tensions between staff and line authority, the influential role played by senior leaders, that compliance is strategic, that HR has responsibility to act as an expert guide and ethical steward when promoting compliance, and that risk and knowledge act as key drivers of compliance.
Open Access
Experiencing and Negotiating (Ambivalent) Career Boundaries: A Study of SIE Accountants in the UAE
(2017-07-27) Degama, Nadia Christine; Budworth, Marie-Helene E.
Career boundaries are at the centre of this study. Through a qualitative inquiry, based on 30 semi-structured, thematically driven interviews of SIE accountants from the Asian subcontinent, who are living and working in the UAE, this study offers a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which individuals experience career boundaries and how they may or may not navigate their way around these boundaries via various strategies. A key contribution of this study to the careers literature is its focus on the versatility and richness of boundaries and its examination of how individuals negotiate with a range of multiple and co-existing boundaries as they structure their careers. In particular, the findings of this study demonstrated that participants were ambivalent about their choices of coping strategies, either because they were faced with doubt (psychological ambivalence) or because contradictions within the system (sociological ambivalence) prevented them from taking an alternative strategy. Examining how individuals experience ambivalence in their careers offers a valuable contribution to the careers literature as little attention has been paid to acknowledge uncertainties and contractions in how individuals perceive and experience a career and career boundaries. By illuminating the dynamics within ambivalent career experiences and comparing these experiences with career literature generally and career boundaries specifically, this study therefore theoretically contributes to our understanding of why individuals may or may not adopt certain modes of engagement in dealing with their perceived career boundaries.
Open Access
Exploring the Identities of North American Yoga Teachers From Different Perspectives on the Self
(2016-11-25) Peticca-Harris, Amanda M.; Ducharme, Mary Jo
This qualitative study explores the work and identities of a sample of twenty-seven North American yoga teachers from two different ontological, epistemological and methodological perspectives. This study illustrates how the self can be understood and constructed in different ways using different readings of the interview material. The first reading of the interview material uses a symbolic interactionist approach and illustrates how a yoga teacher creates a sense of self using the meanings that they assign to their experiences. The second reading of the interview material employs Foucaults notions of power/knowledge and subjectivity and suggests that yoga teachers sense of self is constituted by various discourses. Here, yoga teachers have agency in selecting their subject position and how they wish to locate themselves within the discourses, but they are not able to operate outside of discourse. These readings of the self and identities are at times complementary and, at others, contradictory. Taking these readings together, this study contributes some important insights to the body work literature surrounding womens motivations for this form of body work/ care work, the interconnections between care roles and the leisure-framing of work that individuals may undergo for their own physical and emotional well-being.
Open Access
High Potential Programs and Employee Outcomes: The Roles of Organizational Trust and Employee Attributions
(2016-11-25) Malik, Amina Raza; Singh, Parbudyal
Organizations implement high potential (HiPo) programs to identify, develop and retain their most talented employees (also known as high potential employees). However, much is still unknown regarding how these programs affect employees, and the link through which employee participation in HiPo programs affects employee outcomes remains a black box. This research aims to open this black box and examines the underlying mechanism through which HiPo program participation impacts employee outcomes. Drawing on social exchange, psychological contract and attribution theories, I conduct two studies to examine the impacts of HiPo program participation on various employee outcomes. In the first study, I hypothesize that employees who are included in HiPo programs (i.e., HiPo employees) will have higher affective commitment, lower turnover intent, and higher levels of organizational trust. Moreover, I hypothesize that organizational trust will mediate the relationships between HiPo program participation and employee outcomes (i.e., affective commitment and turnover intent). A cross sectional survey was used to collect data from one division of a large multinational company (n= 65). The results provided support for all hypotheses. The second study aims to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1. In this study, I examine the process through which HiPo program participation impacts employee outcomes by incorporating other important variables. I test four mediated models to understand whether HiPo attributions (commitment-focused and control-focused) mediate the relationships between HiPo program participation and employee outcomes (i.e., affective commitment, job satisfaction, turnover intent, and OCBs), and whether organizational trust moderates the relationships between HiPo program participation and HiPo attributions. Using a cross sectional survey design, a sample of 242 employees provided support for the four mediated relationships for commitment-focused HiPo attributions, but not for control-focused HiPo attributions. The results showed significant interaction effects of HiPo program participation and organizational trust on commitment-focused attributions. However, no support was found for the interaction effects of HiPo program participation and organizational trust on control-focused HiPo attributions. Additionally, the results provided support for several mediated moderated models. This research highlights a key role of organizational trust in understanding the impact of HiPo program participation on employee outcomes.
Open Access
Human Resource Management Practices, Work Intensity, and Workplace Deviance: Exploring the Moderating Role of Core Self-Evaluations
(2015-12-16) Boekhorst, Janet Agnes; Singh, Parbudyal
Drawing on social exchange, conservation of resources, and self-verification theories, I conduct two studies to examine the impact of perceived human resource management (HRM) practices on workplace deviance. The first study hypothesizes that perceived maintenance and development HRM bundles have a negative indirect effect on deviance via work intensity. Using a two-wave research design (n = 69), the results demonstrated that both HRM bundles were negatively related to deviance via work intensity. The post-hoc analyses revealed that both HRM bundles had an indirect negative effect on organizational deviance, but were not indirectly related to interpersonal deviance. The second study hypothesizes two moderated mediated models to understand some key moderating effects in the HRM practices and organizational deviance relationship. I first examine a three-way interaction between work intensity, core self-evaluations (CSE), and identity threat on organizational deviance. Afterwards, I hypothesize that this three-way interaction shapes the negative indirect effect of both perceived HRM bundles on organizational deviance via work intensity. Using a cross-sectional research design (n = 125), the results revealed a significant three-way interaction between work intensity, CSE, and identity threat on organizational deviance. The results further revealed that this three-way interaction moderated the indirect effect of perceived development HRM practices (but not perceived maintenance HRM practices) on organizational deviance through work intensity. Consistent with social exchange theory, this research demonstrates that work intensity mediates the relationship between perceived HRM practices and deviance, thereby advancing our understanding of the ‘black box’ between HRM practices and employee outcomes. This research also highlights the moderating roles of CSE and identity threat in the work intensity and organizational deviance relationship. These results demonstrate that the negative relationship between work intensity and organizational deviance strengthens when high CSE employees experience low identity threat. That is, this three-way interaction supports much of the CSE literature that points to the positive implications associated with high CSE, but it also contrasts the mainstream literature by revealing that high CSE may not always be desirable. This research also reveals some of the boundary conditions, namely, CSE and identity threat, in the perceived HRM practices and organizational deviance relationship.

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