Carol Kulik

• PhD
• Bradley Distinguished Professor at University of South Australia

Despite the expected advantages of appointing women to corporate leadership roles, empirical evidence provides mixed support for the positive relationship between women's representation in the top management team (TMT) and subsequent firm performance. Considering the evidence that female TMT members are often paid less than their male colleagues, t...

During the first few months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, employees worked from home in record numbers and enjoyed extraordinarily high levels of autonomy. Now, as employers reopen their doors, we can build on those gains to create better workplaces than the ones we left behind. HR has a window of opportunity in which to develop psychologically safe wo...

Gender inequality is a complex problem with multiple interrelated indicators (e.g. underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, gender pay gaps). Our academic community has been following a three‐step ‘script’ to motivate organisations to act on gender inequality: we document the inequality, we build a business case for equality, and we advoca...

Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager gives every manager, regardless of their functional role, access to cutting-edge research and evidence-based recommendations so they can approach their people management responsibilities with confidence. Day-to-day people management is increasingly the responsibility of front-line managers, not HR professiona...

The Human Resource (HR) research literature's dominant narrative has historically focused on the strategic activities of HR professionals. HR researchers view HR professionals as their primary end users and have prioritized the business case for strategic HR. But as line managers become more involved in delivering—and even designing—HR activities i...

Organizational leaders are essential in implementing, interpreting, and even proactively initiating changes for human resource (HR) functions to enhance workplace productivity and well‐being. However, recent studies have cautioned that providing positive and supportive leadership usually drains these organizational leaders. Although the literature...

Using dynamic theory and methods, we investigate the phenomenon of older workers who withdraw from paid work while still healthy. We focus on intention to retire as the penultimate stage in the retirement process. We extend socio‐emotional selectivity theory to explain the growth of intention to retire. Older workers have a rising perception of tim...

Women constitute the majority of the Australian public sector workforce, but their representation in senior roles is not proportional. Australian public services have gender targets to improve the representation of women in senior roles. Based on previous research, targets are expected to first increase female representation at the target's focal l...

The current study examined the relationship between faculty gender diversity (GD) and college and university level outcomes and the role that diversity climate (DC) plays in these relationships in a sample of N = 282 4-year, public and private, non-profit, degree granting institutions in the U.S. Based on social categorization and signaling theorie...

Purpose Voluntary collective turnover can be costly for workplaces. The authors investigate the effectiveness of high-performance work system (HPWS) intensity as a tool to manage voluntary collective turnover. Further, the authors investigate a cynical workplace climate (CWC) as a boundary condition on the HPWS intensity–voluntary collective turnov...

Migrants are a growing segment of the highly educated international workforce, and these skilled migrants (SMs) are critical to the growth of developed, mature economies. SMs frequently report negative workplace experiences antithetical to their integration, raising important questions about how organizations might help these host-country newcomers...

We investigate the effect of employment systems on the layoff‐performance relationship. We construct a typology of two types of HPWS (Calculative or “hard” HRM and Collaborative or “soft” HRM) and two non‐high performance systems (Traditional HRM and Low HRM). We use attribution theory as a framework from which to draw hypotheses. We examine survey...

Support that helps job seekers maintain confidence might decrease unemployment rates among people with disabilities. In this study, clients described their employment barriers (disability, education, and work history) and then reported their job search confidence 3 times at 6‐month intervals. Their employment support agency provided information abo...

This study investigates the influence of employees' perception of managerial breach of the normative relational contract (i.e. the psychological relational contract at the group level) on workplace performance. Many employees in Australia are employed on a permanent or continuing basis and have normative relational contracts whose terms are embedde...

This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of organization‐level inclusion climate. A national sample of human resource decision‐makers from 100 organizations described their firms' formal diversity management programs; 3,229 employees reported their perceptions of, and reactions to, their employers' diversity management. Multilevel a...

Sexual harassment training: Often necessary but rarely sufficient - Volume 12 Issue 1 - Elissa L. Perry, Carol T. Kulik, Francis D. Golom, Mateo Cruz

Governments are encouraging workers to remain in employment beyond traditional retirement age. A tangible expression of this in Australia is the move to raise the Aged Pension access age from 65 to 67 by 2023. This policy assumes that the majority of workers will be able to extend their working lives. However, even at the age of 65, one-third of ol...

As new roles emerge in organizations, it becomes critical to understand how organizational structure can impede or enable the managerial discretion available to role incumbents. We leverage the rich context provided by the emergent role of sustainability managers to examine the interplay between the top-down forces of structure and the bottom-up in...

Female representation at senior organizational levels lags well behind male representation. We investigate whether there is a positive nonlinear relationship between female board representation and female executive representation: the trickle‐down effect. We investigated 1,387 organizations listed on the Australian Securities Exchange between 2003...

Sexual harassment (SH) is an increasingly prominent issue for organisations across the Asia Pacific. However, despite the costs of SH, there has been little consideration of why approaches to SH training vary so widely across countries. We report findings from two national surveys that document the prevalence and characteristics of SH training in A...

Organisational strategies to achieve gender diversity have tended to focus on ‘bottom-up’ approaches such as mentoring or leadership training. We investigate an alternative ‘top-down’ approach: the trickle-down effect. We integrate theories from the psychology and management literatures to hypothesise a positive relationship between female represen...

Purpose Managers develop psychological contracts (PCs) with staff as part of their people management responsibilities. A second-stage mediated moderation model explains how a manager’s personality influences the content and fulfillment of PCs in different organizational contexts. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach...

In virtually all economies, executive positions are highly male dominated. This study examines the pay gap between male executives and female executives in large Australian firms from 2011 to 2014 to evaluate whether female executives are paid equitably compared with male executives. The mean pay comparison shows that female executives earn 80.7% o...

Approximately twenty per cent of the world's population has some form of disability, but workforce participation of people with disability has been intractably low. In an effort to improve the economic and social participation of people with disability, the Australian Government introduced legislation in 2013 designed to provide individualised supp...

Purpose This study investigated the moderating effect of intergroup contact on the relationship between the race composition of organizational representatives, perceived similarity, and minority applicant attraction. Design/Methodology/Approach 344 minority Malaysian-Chinese university students read a job advertisement that varied the racial compos...

Background As people are living longer, they are being encouraged to work longer. While it is assumed that extended employment will be good for health, the evidence has been mixed. This study considers whether employment and job quality exert an influence on four indicators of health status in older workers. Methods Data for this study came from 83...

Purpose – Delivering negative feedback to employees is highly problematic for managers. Negative feedback is important in generating improvements in employee performance, but likely to generate adverse employee reactions. However, if managers do not address poor performance, good performers may become demoralized or exit the organization. The purp...

People with disabilities rely heavily on specialist agencies to find suitable employment. This research examines how agency consultants use recruitment ads in their work with clients. The authors analyzed the ads collected by consultants and learned that the ads were dominated by organization and job attributes. The ads contained less information a...

As the workforce ages, and people retire later in life, organizations will need to develop strategies to engage their mature-age workers. We used a stereotype threat framework to investigate the impact of threat-inducing (young manager, young workgroup, manual occupation) and threat-inhibiting (high performance practices, mature-age practices) cont...

Work-life practices are frequently suggested as a strategy for improving women's representation in management. We predicted that work-life practices would increase the proportion of women in management, but their impact would be most evident when the workforce gender composition makes gender stereotypes less salient. Hierarchical multiple regressio...

Policies that encourage the aspirations of disabled people for mainstream employment might be an effective way to increase their workforce participation rate. This study aims to determine which people in sheltered employment aspire to a job beyond their current sheltered employment job. We asked 64 people with sheltered employment jobs about their...

This chapter explores how women’s well-being in organizational contexts is enhanced – but also diminished – by other women. On the one hand, the relational demography literature, particularly research based on social categorization and social identity theories, suggests that women will be attracted to other women and are likely to advocate on their...

Demography theory suggests that high gender diversity leads to high turnover. As turnover is costly, we tested the following: a main effect prediction derived from demography theory, and a moderating effect prediction derived from the relational framework. Data on 198 publicly listed organizations were collected through a human resources decision m...

Work–family programs signal an employer's perspective on gender diversity to employees, and can influence whether the effects of diversity on performance are positive or negative. This article tests the interactive effects of nonmanagement gender diversity and work–family programs on productivity, and management gender diversity and work–family pro...

Employer reluctance to hire disabled people narrows the economic and vocational opportunities of disabled people. This study investigates employer hiring decisions to identify which mainstream employers are most likely to hire disabled people. The study reports findings from interviews with eighty-seven employers in urban and regional South Austral...

Emotion work benefits service organizations, but high emotion-workloads lead to negative consequences for employees. We examined differences between employees highly competent in emotion work (Experts) and those who are less competent (Novices). We found that Novices conformed to organizational level display rules, used simple strategies and felt o...

Employee change cynicism is an unintended consequence of organizational change, which can undermine the effectiveness of change initiatives. Based on social information processing theory, we examine the impact of two human resource roles (administrative expert and strategic change agent) on the relationship between the quantity of organizational ch...

As the workforce ages, and people retire later in life, organizations will need to develop strategies to engage their mature-age workers. We used a stereotype threat framework to investigate the impact of diversity blind (high performance work practices) and diversity conscious (supportive mature-age work practices) organizational practices on matu...

A handful of US studies found that female executives earn significantly less than their male counterparts. The nature of these prior studies is descriptive (i.e., estimating the size of the gender pay gap), and firm differences in the size of the gender pay gap remain largely unexplored. Our analysis of executive compensation in large Australian fi...

Australian employers are increasingly reliant on migrants, but turnover among migrants is significantly higher than turnover among Australian-born workers. Job embeddedness theory emphasises the role of employee attachment in understanding retention. We interviewed migrants to learn the different kinds of attachments they created on- and off-the-jo...

The inconsistent findings of past board diversity research demand a test of competing linear and curvilinear diversity–performance predictions. This research focuses on board age and gender diversity, and presents a positive linear prediction based on resource dependence theory, a negative linear prediction based on social identity theory, and an i...

Organizational strategies to achieve gender diversity have focussed on bottom-up approaches such as mentoring or leadership training. However, women’s representation at senior organizational levels remains well below men’s. This study investigates the trickle-down effect where an increase in female representation at a senior organizational level is...

Research has identified a significant gender pay gap in labor market in many international contexts. However, research on this topic at the executive level is limited outside the US and the UK. This study examined the pay gap between male executives and female executives in Australia using the executive compensation information in major Australian...

Women are usually perceived as warm or competent, but rarely both. This research investigates how the sequence and content of warmth-relevant relational information and competence-relevant performance information affects female negotiators’ social (perceptions of their warmth and competence) and economic outcomes. Female employers (but not male emp...

Organizations might benefit from maintaining relationships with former employees, who could be rehired later or encouraged to refer job applicants and customers. We integrate the management literature on voluntary resignations and the communication literature on relationship dissolution to explore how conversations between an exiting employee and h...

As the proportion of older workers in the labour market increases, there is a greater need to identify ways to engage and retain mature age workers. In 2011, we interviewed 24 older workers who had recently left full-time employment in Australia. We found that the exit decisions of older workers are more complex than the dichotomous choice between...

Editor's note: This editorial is part of a series written by editors and co-authored with a senior executive, thought leader, or scholar from a different field to explore new content areas and grand challenges with the goal of expanding the scope, interestingness, and relevance of the work presented in the Academy of Management Journal. The princip...

In HRM, a line can be drawn that distinguishes research on formal organisational programmes (above-the-line research) from research on organisational practices as they are experienced by employees (below-the-line research). Diversity management research has heavily emphasised below-the-line research using methodologies that measure employee percept...

Social context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. We use a simulated negotiation to test how three dimensions of social context—dyadic gender composition, negotiation strategy, and trust—interact to influence one micro-ethical decision, the use of deception. Deception in all-male dyads was relatively unaffe...

Public policy based on a pro-work philosophy has encouraged the employment of people with disabilities. Using a national sample of 170 care recipient–caregiver cohabiting dyads, we investigated a model linking the care recipient's weekly work hours (0–45) to the psychological outcomes experienced by the care recipient and his or her caregiver. For...

Diversity training is an important and widely used component of organizational diversity management initiatives. This chapter reviews theory and research on diversity training design, delivery, evaluation, and effectiveness. The review suggests that in the past 10 to 15 years of research, advancements have been made on several fronts. The research...

This study explores the process by which human resource (HR) practices embed employees in organisations and reduce turnover intentions. In particular, we investigate the mediating effects of the organisational job embeddedness dimensions (links, fit and sacrifice) in the relationship between HR practices and employee turnover intentions. Hypotheses...

As baby-boomer practitioners exit the workforce, physician shortages present new recruitment challenges for practices seeking GPs. This article reports findings from two studies examining GP recruitment practice. GP recruitment ad content analysis (Study 1) demonstrated that both Internet and print ads emphasize job attributes but rarely present fa...

This multi-method study investigated a sample of adult streetworkers (n = 107) in Melbourne, Australia in 2008. We contacted outdoor prostitutes through four "drop-in" centers run by not-for-profit organizations. Drug use was the over-riding common characteristic of most of these streetworkers. Using emotional labor theory as a theoretical framewor...

Australian employers are increasingly reliant on migrant workers, but turnover among migrant workers is significantly higher than turnover among Australian-born workers. Job embeddedness theory emphasizes the role of employee attachment in understanding turnover. We interviewed migrant workers to learn how they created attachments on the job, to be...

This study uses the job demands-resources model and multiple role theory to gain an understanding of the toxin handling-well-being relationship. Toxin handlers are empathetic managers willing to try to address pain and suffering in organizations (Frost, 2007). We use data from semistructured, in-depth interviews with HR managers to investigate the...

The employee–organisation relationship is dynamic and arguably affected by contextual factors, such as a change in the economic environment. This study uses data collected from managers in Australia before and after the beginning of the global financial crisis (GFC) to examine the changes in psychological contract (PC) terms from the manager's pers...

We examined the gaps between research-based sexual harassment training practices human resource (HR) managers believe their organization should use and the practices their organizations actually use (knowing-doing gaps). We studied individual (attitudes about academics) and organizational predictors (senior management support, managerial rewards, a...

The boundary between organizational insiders (e.g., employees) and outsiders (e.g., customers) has become increasingly permeable due to Internet discussion boards that enable members of both groups to share experiences of organizational fairness and unfairness. We studied discussion board threads on Vault.com, focusing on threads initiated by posti...

Employment relationships are increasingly personalized, with more employment conditions open to negotiation. Unfortunately, personalization may disadvantage members of some demographic groups. Women, in particular, routinely negotiate less desirable employment terms than men do. The gender gap in employment outcomes is frequently attributed to diff...

The unfolding model emphasizes the role of shocks (jarring events that initiate exit cognitions) in the turnover process. In contrast to earlier survey-based research, we used exit interviews to classify organizational leavers along the model's paths. The data provide support for the model but highlight several aspects of shocks not addressed by pr...

Management researchers are being encouraged to collect multilevel, multisource, and longitudinal (MML) data. In this essay, I identify the barriers that researchers might encounter in gaining university ethics committee approval for MML designs and the challenges researchers face when conducting MML research in organizations. I offer suggestions to...

摘要近年来，管理学者常被鼓励收集多层次、多来源和纵向研究的数据。在这篇论文中，我指出了学者在收集此类数据时会面临的挑战：申请获得大学伦理委员会对研究批准的挑战，以及研究者在组织中进行此项研究时来自组织的挑战。我为如何解决这两个挑战提供了建议。最后，本文讨论了多层次、多来源、纵向研究对研究者和被研究组织之间关系的影响及对整个管理学界的影响。

Recruitment is an ongoing challenge in the health industry with general practitioner (GP) shortages in many areas beyond rural and Indigenous communities. This paper suggests a marketing solution that identifies different segments of the GP market for recruitment strategy development. In February 2008, 96 GPs in Australia responded to a mail questi...

Empirical findings on the link between gender diversity and performance have been inconsistent. This paper presents three competing predictions of the organizational gender diversity–performance relationship: a positive linear prediction derived from the resource-based view of the firm, a negative linear prediction derived from self-categorization...

Australian employers are facing a labour market shortfall and migrant labour is increasingly important in filling gaps in the workforce. Unfortunately migrant employees leave their jobs at a rate at least 20% higher than Australian born workers. This paper uses Job Embeddedness Theory to explain migrant turnover. Our model suggests that migrants ex...

The current study explored the use of best training practices on human resources managers' perceptions of sexual harassment training success and frequency of sexual harassment complaints. Results revealed no main effects of best training practices on sexual harassment training success. However, effects of best training practices on sexual harassmen...

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 e...