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To operationalize the extent to which firms place a strategic emphasis on human capital and human resource management (HRM), we draw on the strategy field's dominant logic theory and on the emerging literature on executive compensation for the heads of major firm functions, such as HRM. Specifically, we investigate whether the pay of human resource executives (HREs) relative to other members of top management teams (TMTs) is related to firm performance. After controlling for the endogeneity of HRE status as one of the highest paid executives on the TMT, we find in a comprehensive sample of the largest US firms that HRE relative pay is positively related to firm financial performance, specifically Tobin's Q. We also find that the relationship of HRE relative pay with Tobin's Q is stronger in relatively smaller and younger firms in our sample. The findings suggest that a strategic emphasis on human capital and HRM leads to higher firm value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present article, we propose the concept of the HR function's relational activities and examine its influence on the firm's human capital resources (HCRs) and performance. Integrating insights from various streams of research in strategic human resource management (HRM) and strategic human capital, we develop a relational perspective of the HR function and propose the relational activities as the HR function's advisory and informative activities toward its internal stakeholders (i.e., line managers, employees, and senior managers) to help the stakeholders meet their goals and needs. In our framework, we theorize how the HR function's relational activities lead to superior firm performance by enhancing the firm's HCRs and identify the firm's strategic HR systems and human capital losses as factors that complement and necessitate the HR function's relational activities, respectively. Using a five‐wave, nationally representative panel dataset covering 1415 firm observations, we find robust support for our hypotheses: the HR function's relational activities were positively related to HCRs, which was more pronounced when coupled with high levels of strategic HR systems and human capital losses. The HCRs, in turn, transmitted the effects of the relational activities on the firm's subsequent operational and financial performance. Overall, these findings develop strategic HRM theory by contributing a more comprehensive conceptualization of the HR function's role in the strategic HRM process and by revealing its effects on firm performance along with key moderators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between extrinsic rewards and creativity has been subject to ongoing debate within the human resource management and creativity literatures. More research on the mechanisms and boundary conditions has been called for. In this study, using 187 employee‐supervisor dyads in an electronics manufacturing company, we investigated how and when creativity‐contingent extrinsic rewards (CER) may foster creativity among manufacturing employees. Drawing on self‐determination theory, we hypothesized, and found that employee intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between CER and employee creativity. This relationship was the strongest when employees rated their leader‐member exchange (LMX) as high. The findings reveal the important role of CER in guiding manufacturing employees' intrinsic motivation and stimulating creativity. The identification of LMX as a moderator uncovers crucial boundary conditions of this relationship. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hospitals are often tasked with improving patient care while simultaneously increasing operational efficiency. Although efficiency may be gained by maintaining higher patient volume per nurse (higher workload), high-quality patient care requires low levels of nurse turnover, which might be adversely affected by an increase in workload. Purpose: Drawing upon job demands–resources theory, we hypothesized that hospital-level workload will predict nurse turnover and that nurse turnover will predict patient mortality, and that registered nurse hiring rates and human resource management practices will moderate (buffer) the positive relationship between nurse workload and nurse turnover, whereas quality care structures will moderate (buffer) the positive relationship between nurse turnover and patient mortality. Methods: We tested this model utilizing multiple sources of time-lagged data collected from a sample of 156 hospitals in the United States. Results: Our findings suggest that (a) nurse workload is associated with higher nurse turnover, (b) nurse turnover is positively associated with patient mortality, (c) nurse staffing buffers the workload–turnover relationship as a first-stage moderator, and (d) quality care structures act as a second-stage moderator that mitigates the effects of turnover on mortality. Conclusions/Practice Implications: The reduction of nurse turnover and patient mortality requires investments in adequate levels of nurse staffing and implementation of quality care structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the strategic HR literature, current empirical results on the relationship between HR practices and employee wellbeing are mixed and contradictory. Based on the job resources and demands model and the fine‐tuned challenge‐hindrance demands framework, we propose that an important reason lies in the lack of attention paid to the different characteristics of HR practices. HR practices can serve as either job resources or challenge demands to employees, thereby having differential effects on the psychological, physical, and social dimensions of wellbeing. We integrate a measure of challenge demand (including time pressure and workload) as a mediator to further reveal how these different categories of HR practices influence employee wellbeing. Using structural equation modeling in a dataset of 4823 individual workers from a National Workplace Survey of Employees conducted in Ireland, we find that job resource HR practices are positively associated with all three dimensions of wellbeing both directly and indirectly, while challenge demand HR practices are positively associated with psychological wellbeing but negatively associated with physical wellbeing and social wellbeing primarily through the mediating effect of time pressure and workload. These findings point to important variable relationships, reinforcing the need to untangle the HRM employee wellbeing relationship beyond aggregated and uniform HRM‐wellbeing assertions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to human capital resource literature by providing a robust and theoretically grounded examination of the relationship between unit‐level tenure and performance. We (a) posit and test the notion of a positive nonlinear relationship between aggregate tenure and labor productivity and (b) expand the current conceptualizations of unit‐level tenure to examine the joint and interactive effects of aggregate tenure and tenure dispersion on labor productivity. Utilizing time‐lagged data collected from a field‐sample of 514 college bookstores, we report findings suggesting that unit‐level aggregate tenure has a positive but nonlinear relationship with labor productivity such that increasing tenure beyond an optimum point produces diminishing returns. These results are replicated in a second study conducted with a cross‐sectional sample of 727 service organizations in the United States. Further, our findings indicate that tenure dispersion is negatively related to labor productivity but positively moderates the relationship between aggregated tenure and labor productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the strategic human resource management (SHRM) stream of research has made impressive progress in recent years, the majority of it has become centered on the "universalistic" relationship of a particular kind of human resource system, most commonly labeled as a "high-performance work system," with firm-level dependent variables. We argue that a broader perspective on strategy applied to human resource management (HRM) leverages strategic factor market theory within the resource-based view of the firm to suggest novel kinds of research questions for SHRM. In particular, we highlight four specific underresearched areas of inquiry for SHRM: (1)HRMcapabilities, (2) intangible strategic assets, (3) the "market" for HR practices, and (4) complementarities. Our discussion of these topics shares a common emphasis on the causes and consequences of firm-level heterogeneity with respect to HRM. The strategic perspectives discussed in this paper suggest new ways to consider where, in the relationship between HRM and firm performance, such heterogeneity and, relatedly, competitive advantage through people, may be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a few published, multiindustry, firm-level, empirical studies have linked systems of high-investment or high-performance human resource management practices to enhanced small-firm performance, this stream of strategic human resource management research is underdeveloped and equivocal. Accordingly, in this study, we use a sample of for-profit, private-sector, small Canadian firms with fewer than 100 employees from a variety of industry sectors to examine boundary conditions of the relationship between firm-level high-investment human resource systems and objective small-firm labor productivity. Congruent with contingency theory, this study's results indicate that the extent and nature of the influence of high-investment human resource systems on objective small-firm labor productivity is contingent on internal (differentiation strategy and firm capital intensity) and external boundary conditions (industry dynamism and industry growth). Implications and limitations of this research study as well as avenues for future research are discussed. (Contains 4 tables, 4 figures and 10 footnotes.)

Scholars use the term pipelines to encapsulate many ways that firms target talent sources. Yet pipeline scholarship is fragmented to date, so we have few answers for several salient questions: Why do pipelines exist? What are their attributes? And what are their implications for firms? In this paper, we explore these questions. Based on an extensive literature review, we first distill the commonalities and core attributes of pipelines and then develop a theory-driven typology to ensure a consistency in understanding. Next, we suggest that a common theoretical justification runs through the uses of pipelines: Pipelines address labor market imperfections confronted by firms when they staff positions, counterbalancing the seemingly detrimental reduction in candidates that pipelines engender. We use this insight to theoretically delineate why different types of pipelines exist. Finally, we discuss how firms develop unique combinations, or portfolios, of pipelines to ameliorate the range of imperfections that they face to manage talent sourcing across the enterprise. In total, our paper describes how firms strategically manage pipeline portfolios, why firms turn to them to accumulate talent, and how they create between-firm heterogeneity of human capital resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how an HR department moderates the effects of high‐performance work systems (HPWSs) on perceived establishment performance. Using a representative sample of 125 small and medium‐sized establishments from the 2002 National Organizations Survey, our results indicate a positive interaction between HPWSs and the existence of an establishment HR department with respect to perceived establishment labor productivity. Implications for future strategic HRM research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: Strategic human capital scholars suggest that firms' human capital rents are greater when labor market frictions are more prevalent. Taking this argument further, we suggest that when frictions for one type of human capital decrease, firms are motivated to place greater emphasis on human capital that is interdependent in production where frictions are unchanged. Empirically, we exploit an exogenous institutional change in the National Football League to demonstrate that coaching (managerial) dismissal and replacement is more likely to occur (and is influenced by a wider variety of information) after frictions for player (production worker) human capital decrease. Our findings suggest adding a new dimension—tradeoffs between related labor market segments—to the scholarly conversation about how firms manage their human capital (and other resources) strategically. Managerial Summary: We often point to the existence of labor market frictions for different types of human capital as reasons why firms would emphasize one type of human capital over another. But changes in frictions in markets for related human capital, the present focus, can influence this decision as well. In particular, our study demonstrates that when the NFL implemented free agency and a salary cap in the market for player talent in 1993, limiting the ability of teams to stockpile talented players, NFL teams responded by increasing their emphasis on coaching talent in the production of wins. This increased emphasis manifested in more frequent coaching dismissals and a greater influence of different types of information on the desirability of replacing a team's head coach after 1993. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employees' perceptions on the restructuring or reengineering efforts of hospitals are analyzed. The analysis suggests that employee perceptions vary through management levels, and that the upper level management viewed restructuring more positively than line personnel.

Scholars have suggested that the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance can be moderated by the organizational context in which turnover occurs. However, there are few empirical studies that examine such moderating effects. Using a sample of 161 firms in South Korea, this study investigates how the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance is moderated by three context variables: (1) the degree of organizational usage of employee involvement practices, (2) the degree of organizational investment in employee training and development, and (3) the availability of potential workers. The results demonstrate that employee involvement practices significantly amplify the negative relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance, give marginal support for moderation from the availability of potential workers, and provide no support for moderation from the degree of organizational investment in employee training and development. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this study for enriching our understanding of the relationship between voluntary turnover and organizational performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]