South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, Ahead of Print. In the Maldives, the tourism accommodations offer a unique working environment, which makes employees vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and likely to create its own profile of bullying. Therefore, this study places the spotlight on a setting about which little is known by the broader community of academics and professionals working in the field of human resource management. We used both quantitative and qualitative methods in this study to understand the phenomenon of workplace bullying, where participants faced an interview and then complete a questionnaire. Our study reveals that workplace bullying can be a strategy used by management to get work done in the short term. The managers’ primary goal is to achieve an organisational objective by leveraging the formal power and control structures they possess within the organisation. This approach gives off the impression of being unfair and inherently unjust towards those lower in the organisational hierarchy. As a result, individuals fail to report bullying incidents to the appropriate authorities and do not receive the necessary assistance; instead, they suffer in silence. Workers regard bullying as inherent to the system and ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ in this environment, as a result of the systems and the processes that they see operating.
South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, Ahead of Print. Understanding organisational citizenship behaviour at the team level has gained importance in recent years, as organisations place greater emphasis on teams and teamwork. Although contemporary literature acknowledges shared leadership as a significant antecedent of organisational citizenship behaviour, existing studies rarely consider the underlying mechanisms through which shared leadership produces organisational citizenship behaviour. This study investigates the influence of team psychological capital on the relationship between shared leadership and team citizenship behaviour using data collected from team members and supervisors belonging to 48 teams from diverse industries in India. An analysis using the team as the unit of analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling technique revealed that team psychological capital acts as a partial mediator in the relationship between shared leadership and team citizenship behaviour. Based on the insights from this study, the authors suggest that managers should nurture both shared leadership and team psychological capital to promote team citizenship behaviour.
South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, Ahead of Print. Ignorance in cultivating a harmonious work culture and not addressing the negative misconduct at the workplace is highly undesirable for the organisations and taxing for individual and team-level performances. Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, a moderated mediation framework is hypothesised where workplace incivility predicts emotional exhaustion in employees, and organisational social capital is identified as a critical resource mediating the mechanism. In addition, irresponsible leadership is tested as a boundary condition influencing this relationship. A cross-sectional study using an online questionnaire collected data from a heterogeneous sample of 410 Indian service sector employees providing evidence for the hypothesised relationships. Results confirm that participants experiencing higher levels of incivility reported greater levels of emotional burnout. This outcome is affected by irresponsible leadership such that the higher the levels of irresponsible leadership, the more the social capital is undermined and emotional exhaustion rises in employees.
South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, Ahead of Print. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of transformational leadership on employees’ change championing behaviour, and the mediating roles of employees’ trust in leadership and employees’ work engagement in the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ change championing behaviour. The research was conducted among 379 employees in the banking sector of Bangladesh. The findings revealed a significant and positive impact of transformational leadership on employees’ change championing behaviour. Furthermore, the study identified that employees’ trust in leadership and work engagement play important mediating roles, individually and sequentially, in the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ change championing behaviour during change management in the Bangladesh banking sector. This study contributes to our understanding of how transformational leadership promotes employees’ change championing behaviour and underscores the effectiveness of transformational leadership in fostering employees’ trust in leadership and work engagement. Additionally, this study emphasises the importance of employees’ trust in leadership and work engagement in the context of organisational change implementation.
South Asian Journal of Human Resources Management, Ahead of Print. Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are personalised work arrangements negotiated between employees and employers. In most contemporary organisations, i-deals have achieved desirable employee behaviour and positive work-related outcomes. Although recent literature has given increased attention to i-deals, a lack of clarity exists regarding what drives i-deal negotiations and the perceived outcomes of such individualised negotiations in emerging economies like India, which falls in the middle zone of negotiability. Therefore, the study investigates what motivates employees for i-deal negotiations and the outcomes of such i-deals from an employee perspective by following a qualitative methodology. Data for the study were collected through in-depth interviews among 30 IT sector employees in India who successfully negotiated i-deals. Axial coding was used for data coding, resulting in two main themes for the study: motives for i-deal negotiation and outcomes of those negotiations. The study findings show that career advancement and job autonomy are the critical drivers of i-deal negotiations. Besides, the benefits experienced by the employees from such negotiations include reduced work–family conflict, enhanced work engagement and job satisfaction. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.
International Journal of Rural Management, Ahead of Print. The state of Gujarat, home to a vibrant network of dairy cooperatives, plays a significant role in milk production, accounting for 7.69% of the country’s total milk output. It ranked fifth in milk production among all Indian states and union territories in 2017–18. The state piloted a unique and specialised dairy extension program for dairy farmers through Dairy Vigyan Kendra (DVK) to promote dairy farming in its Panchmahal district. The DVK aimed to train rural dairy farmers and improve their socio-economic conditions. This study examines how DVK interventions increase the income from dairy, the herd size and milk production of the beneficiary farmers in the Panchmahal district. The result shows that farmers’ participation in DVK training increased their income from dairying. Further, the results highlighted that DVK intervention significantly increased milk production in the Panchmahal district. Our results conclude that the government can replicate the DVK training model in other districts of Gujarat, helping millions of dairy farmers enhance their skills and obtain more output and income from dairy farming.
Utilising a sample of ASEAN firms, we examine the effects of family ownership on firms' speed of adjustment to targeted capital structure. We find that family firms adjust their capital structure more slowly than non-family firms. This is due to the higher costs of adjustment associated with high information asymmetry and agency conflicts between family owners and external investors. The effect of family ownership on capital structure adjustment speed is more pronounced when family firms have a higher level of family board involvement and higher ownership concentration. There is also an asymmetric effect of family ownership on capital structure adjustment speed at different levels of debt, by the distance from the targeted capital structure, and between overleveraged and underleveraged firms. Overall, evidence in our study suggests that family ownership is a key determinant on how quickly ASEAN firms may adjust their capital structure towards targeted levels.
Meaningful work has been identified as an important antecedent of an array of positive outcomes for both workers and their employers. However, many work roles involve harming others, an experience that has previously been linked to negative outcomes such as dissatisfaction and burnout. How does meaningfulness emerge when one's work includes such challenging circumstances? Drawing on interviews and observations in the veterinary industry, we elucidate new theory about the relationship between harm-doing and the experience of meaningful work. Workers' interpretations of the worthiness of the harm, as well as the types of actions they take to remediate it, influence whether their involvement in harm-doing episodes undermines or heightens their sense of meaningfulness. We further detail how dimensions of harm-doing episodes shape opportunities for remediation, as well as whether the episodes ‘stick’ in workers' memories and hence figure into their ongoing, holistic accounts of work meaningfulness. Based on these findings, we introduce a novel ‘work-bounded, worker-centric’ view of meaningfulness that incorporates both the nature of work and workers' interpretations of it. Our research has implications for the work meaningfulness and workplace harm literatures, as well as for the many individuals whose work involves doing harm.
We examine the influence of board ethnic diversity on firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities within modern day corporations. Using firm-year observations in Australia from the period 2004–2017, we document that board ethnic diversity leads to better CSR performance and CSR disclosure. Our results suggest that for every additional ethnic cluster represented on the board, on average, a firm's CSR performance rating from ASSET4 is higher by 2.6% and the odds ratio of producing a CSR report increases by 38.8%. The results are robust to controlling for endogeneity (using both instrumental variable approach and difference-in-differences analysis) and alternate proxies to measure CSR performance and ethnic diversity. We also document the moderating impact of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power on the relationship between board ethnic diversity and firms' CSR activities. Specifically, a less powerful CEO and a CEO of ethnic minority (i.e., non-Anglo) are more likely to facilitate this relationship. This study adds to our understanding of how board ethnic diversity, an often-overlooked factor in prior research, can have significant impacts on firm outcomes.