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The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the “HRM process” as defined by Bowen and Ostroff (2004). The authors clarify the construct of “HRM philosophy” and suggest it is communicated to employees through “HRM messages”. Interrelationships between these concepts and other elements of the HRM-performance relationship are explored. The study identifies commonalities in the HRM philosophy and messages underscoring high-performing HRM systems, and highlights the function of a “messenger” in delivering messages to staff.

Case study of eight Australian hospitals with top performing HRM systems. Combines primary interview data with independent healthcare accreditor reports.

All cases share an HRM philosophy of achieving high-performance outcomes through the HRM system and employees are provided with messages about continuous improvement, best practice and innovation. The philosophy was instilled primarily by executive-level managers, whereby distinctiveness, consensus and consistency of communications were important characteristics.

The research is limited by: omission of low or average performers; a single industry and country design; and exclusion of employee perspectives.

The findings reinforce the importance of identifying the HRM philosophy and its key communicators within the organisation, and ensuring it is aligned with strategy, climate and the HRM system, particularly during periods of organisational change.

The authors expand Bowen and Ostroff’s seminal work and develop the concepts of HRM philosophy and messages, offering the model to clarify key relationships. The findings underscore problems associated with a best practice approach that disregards HRM process elements essential for optimising performance.

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.

Purpose: During turbulent social and economic times, perceptions of job insecurity can be expected to increase. In this chapter, we outline a theoretical model that links perceptions of job insecurity to lower affective commitment and high work-related stress, resulting in employees' engaging in poor decision-making behavior. We argue further that employees who possess individual skills of being aware of emotions and managing emotions are less susceptible to such behavior. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: We tested our model in two studies. The first study was conducted using an online sample of 217 respondents. The second study used a split administration design conducted in a single organization and used a sample of 579 employees. Findings: Our data revealed that job insecurity is linked to negative decision-making behaviors and that better emotional awareness and management skills may reduce negative decision-making behaviors. Originality/Value: Our findings support the notion of threat rigidity theory where we found that job insecurity affects how individuals make decisions. Our analysis suggests that the individual's level of emotional skills can act as a form of behavioral control that can ameliorate the effects of job insecurity on decision-making behavior. Research Limitations: Both studies had a female gender bias in our sampling frames. There is a possibility of common method variance affecting the results of Study 1, and both studies involved the use of a self-report measure of emotional skills.

Research in industrial and organizational psychology demonstrates that the regulation of negative emotions in response to both organizational stressors and interpersonal workplace interactions can result in functional and dysfunctional outcomes (Côté, 2005; Diefendorff, Richard, & Yang, 2008). Research on the regulation of negative emotions has additionally been conducted in social psychology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, health psychology, and clinical psychology. A close reading of this broader literature, however, reveals that the conceptualization and use of the term “emotion regulation” varies within each research field as well as across these fields. The main focus of our chapter is to make sense of the term “emotion regulation” in the workplace by considering its use across a broad range of psychology disciplines. We then develop an overarching theoretical framework using disambiguating terminology to highlight what we argue are the important constructs involved in the process of intrapersonal emotion generation, emotional experience regulation, and emotional expression regulation in the workplace (e.g., emotional intelligence, emotion regulation strategies, emotion expression displays). We anticipate this chapter will enable researchers and industrial and organizational psychologists to identify the conditions under which functional regulation outcomes are more likely to occur and then build interventions around these findings.

For over three decades, researchers have sought to identify factors influencing employees’ responses to wrongdoing in work settings, including organizational, contextual, and individual factors. In focusing predominantly on understanding whistle-blowing responses, however, researchers have tended to neglect inquiry into employees’ decisions to withhold concerns. The major purpose of this study was to explore the factors that influenced how staff members responded to a series of adverse events in a healthcare setting in Australia, with a particular focus on the role of perceptions and emotions.

Based on publicly accessible transcripts taken from a government inquiry that followed the event, we employed a modified grounded theory approach to explore the nature of the adverse events and how employees responded emotionally and behaviorally; we focused in particular on how organizational and contextual factors shaped key employee perceptions and emotions encouraging silence.

Our results revealed that staff members became aware of a range of adverse events over time and responded in a variety of ways, including disclosure to trusted others, confrontation, informal reporting, formal reporting, and external whistle-blowing. Based on this analysis, we developed a model of how organizational and contextual factors shape employee perceptions and emotions leading to employee silence in the face of wrongdoing.

Although limited to publicly available transcripts only, our findings provide support for the idea that perceptions and emotions play important roles in shaping employees’ responses to adverse events at work, and that decisions about whether to voice concerns about wrongdoing is an ongoing process, influenced by emotions, sensemaking, and critical events.

Teams in extreme and disruptive contexts face unique challenges that can undermine coordination and decision-making. In this study, we evaluated how affective differences between team members and team process norms affected the team's decision-making effectiveness.

Teams were placed in a survival simulation where they evaluated how best to maximize the team's survival prospects given scarce resources. We incorporated multisource and multirater (i.e., team, observer, and archival) data to ascertain the impacts of affect asymmetry and team process norms on decision-making effectiveness.

Results suggest that teams with low positive affect asymmetry and low process norms generate the most effective decisions. The least effective team decision performance occurred in teams characterized by high variance in team positive affectivity (high positive affect asymmetry) and low process norms. We found no similar effect for teams with high process norms and no effect for negative affect asymmetry, however, irrespective of team process norms.

These findings support the affect infusion model and extend cognitive resource theory, by highlighting how affect infusion processes and situational constraints influence team decision-making in extreme and disruptive contexts.

This study aims to examine the relationship between an implicit and an explicit measure of motivation and measures of job and life satisfaction to provide a better understanding of workplace motivation.

A survey is to be administered to 113 workers from a broad community sample. The survey contains measures of implicit motivation (multi motive grid‐short version, MMG‐S) and explicit motivation (needs assessment questionnaire, NAQ), job satisfaction and life satisfaction, and the core self‐evaluation scale.

Two types of confirmatory factor analyses allow us to examine the psychometric properties and convergent and discriminant validity between an implicit measure of motivation and an explicit measure of motivation. The data reveals that the implicit motivation variables assessed by the MMG‐S are operationally distinct from those assessed by the explicit NAQ. A more detailed analysis reveals poor discriminant validity originating from the MMG‐S variables. Regression analyses are conducted to assess the concurrent validity of both measures in influencing job and life satisfaction. Results reveal that although explicit motives are significantly linked to changes in satisfaction, implicit motives are not.

The study uses a cross‐sectional design and therefore the results may be affected by common method variance. The study uses a convenience sample of workers.

This study contributes to the understanding of explicit and implicit measures of motivation and encourages managers consider how they assess the motivation of employees at work.

Samantha K. Baard holds a University Distinguished Fellowship in Michigan State University's Ph.D. program in organizational psychology. Her research interests include individual and team adaptability, leadership, motivation, cross-cultural differences, and stress. She is also examining, from a statistical and methodological perspective, the dynamic processes of motivation, feedback, and performance. As a University Scholar at George Mason University, she investigated the interactive effects of leadership and motivation on individual performance. She spent three years working as a research fellow at the Consortium of Research Fellows Program where she worked with the U. S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences studying team effectiveness, cross-cultural competence, leadership, and motivation. She has served as a guest lecturer at several colleges, and has presented her research at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's Annual Conference.