In this study, we investigated the commitment of cultural minorities and majorities in organizations. We examined how contextual factors, such as pressure to conform and leadership styles, affect the commitment of minority and majority members. We hypothesize and found that cultural minorities felt more committed to the organization than majority members, thereby challenging the existing theoretical view that cultural minorities will feel less committed. We also found that organizational pressure to conform and effective leadership increased the commitment of minorities. Our findings indicate that organizational leaders and researchers should not only focus on increasing and maintaining the commitment of minority members, but should also consider how majority members react to cultural socialization and integration processes. The commitment of minority members can be further enhanced by effective leadership. In this study, we challenge the existing theoretical view based on similarity attraction theory and relational demography theory, that cultural minorities would feel less committed to the organization. Past research has mainly focused on minority groups, thereby ignoring the reaction of the majority to socialization processes. In this study, we show that cultural minorities can be more committed than majority members in organizations. Therefore, the perceptions of cultural majority members of socialization processes should also be considered in research on cultural diversity and acculturation.

The purpose of this paper is to compare conflict management behaviors of American and Chinese managers. Its main aim is to uncover cultural differences in the way Chinese and American managers approach conflict – thereby developing a more thorough understanding of conflict management across cultures.

Contrary to much boundary spanning research, we examined the negative consequences of boundary spanning contact in multi-organizational contexts. Results from a sample of 833 Dutch peacekeepers show that employees' boundary spanning contact with members of other organizations was associated with reports of negative relationships with external parties (e.g., work-specific problems, culture-specific problems). These negative relationships also had a spillover effect such that they mediated the effect of boundary spanning contact on boundary spanners' negative attitudes toward their own jobs and organization (e.g., job attractiveness and confidence in the organization).

The transition from ‘personnel’ to ‘human resource management’ took place in Australia in the latter part of the twentieth century. The change in nomenclature reflects a change in the nature of the work: from an employee-centred role to a management-centred role. In this paper we examine the relationship between these two roles, with a particular emphasis on their compatibility. Using interview data we find that HR managers devote considerable time to employee-centred activities. HR managers philosophically reconcile these activities with their responsibilities as a strategic partner by identifying the benefits of their employee-centred efforts for management. HR managers do, however, experience some operational challenges when they attempt to be a strategic partner and simultaneously promote employee well-being.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2008.00376.x/abst...

While service quality, trust and commitment are frequently cited as critical to achieving important firm outcomes, the role of service differentiation in this framework is largely unknown. Yet, differentiation is important because a firm's distinctiveness is linked to client-perceived value, competitive advantage, and a target market focus. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the role of service differentiation in business-to-business relationships. Results indicated that service quality had an impact on trust, differentiation and relationship outcomes. Trust was found to drive service differentiation. Differentiation, in turn, drove commitment which ultimately had an impact on both satisfaction and word-of-mouth. Importantly, it was found that service differentiation is a full mediator of the impact that service quality and trust have on client commitment towards the firm. The findings clearly show the importance of service differentiation in achieving high levels of relationship commitment and ultimately satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth. As the role of differentiation in business-to-business relationships has received limited research focus, this paper offers managers new insights into relationship development. Importantly, differentiation is a managerially controlled variable that firms can use to influence relationship outcomes.

The present study examined the viability of incorporating task-contingent units into the study of personality at work, using conscientiousness as an illustrative example. We used experience-sampling data from 123 managers to show that (a) momentary conscientiousness at work is contingent on the difficulty and urgency demands of the tasks people are engaged in, (b) there are significant and stable differences between people in the extent to which their conscientiousness behaviors are contingent on task demands, and (c) individual differences in task-contingent conscientiousness are related to, though distinct from, individual differences in trait conscientiousness. We also provide evidence in relation to (a) need for cognition as a possible antecedent of task-contingent conscientiousness and (b) adaptive performance on a cognitive task as a possible consequence of it. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings for the cognitive nature of personality and the way in which conscientiousness is expressed at work. Practical implications in relation to the predictive function of personality and applications that focus on behavioral change are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

This paper examines the role that social attributes—environmental and labour conditions—play in product choice across a range of developed and emerging economies. We use a multi-attribute design to force consumers to not only trade-off social attributes with tangible attributes but also make trade-offs with other intangible attributes, namely brand and country of origin. Our results show that: (1) social attributes are generally more influential in developed than in emerging economies, (2) the importance of social attributes holds across high and low involvement products, and (3) social attributes can influence product choice even when other intangible attributes are included in the design. We believe that our results offer a more accurate picture of the role of social attributes since they are based on a multi-cue, multi-product design that forced consumers to make tradeoffs between tangible and intangible attributes.

This paper examines the literature and research on unions relevant to the effective adoption of High Performance Work Practices. It demonstrates that unions that have a cooperative relationship with management can play an important role in overcoming barriers to the effective adoption of practices that have been linked to organizational competitiveness through the development and application of human capital. In particular, unions have the unique advantage of delivering independent voice that cannot be substituted by management. Not only can unions make a contribution to organization competitiveness but they can also ensure that employees benefit from High Performance Work Practice adoption and in doing so secure their own relevance. The contribution that unions can make is inhibited by management and union's reluctance to engage in an integrative relationship and an institutional context that does not value unions. Organizations that want to capture the value that unions can add must move away from a pluralist model of autocratic management, hostile unions and adversarial industrial relations, beyond a unitarist model that sees no role for unions, to a cooperative partnership with unions that shares the gains of implementing High Performance Work Practices.