David Guest

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Emeritus Professor of Organizational Psychology and Human Resource Management at King's College London

Psychological contract theory has largely neglected the role of previous experience. In this study, we examine how previous work experience influences outcomes of communication with organizational insiders during organizational socialization among healthcare staff. We develop a model based on signalling theory, within which information acquisition...

Scholars reviewing research exploring the association between human resource management (HRM) and outcomes have noted a frequent absence of any link between the espoused HRM theory and the HR practices used to measure it. They have called for better theory about HRM and a clear link between theory, associated HR practices and outcomes. This paper a...

ChatGPT and its variants that use generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have rapidly become a focal point in academic and media discussions about their potential benefits and drawbacks across various sectors of the economy, democracy, society, and environment. It remains unclear whether these technologies result in job displacement or crea...

Regret is a remarkably common occurrence and a fundamental part of life. Defined as ‘the emotion that we experience when realising or imagining that our current situation would have been better, if only we had decided differently’, regret comes along with unpleasant feelings and a wish to undo one's present circumstance. Characterised by self‐blame...

The sociotechnical approach, developed by psychologists at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the 1950s, proposes that the design of work should seek to optimize both the social and the technical systems within organizations, offering a counter to ideas of technological determinism. It further suggests that organizations should be viewed...

The chapter addresses the nature, evolution and impact of the concept of quality of working life and the role of work design as a key component. It covers the period from the initial work of pioneers at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to recent attempts to reinvigorate quality of working life research. The ebb and flow of pressures to ad...

This Handbook offers an interdisciplinary and international benchmark text for anyone wanting to understand job quality. Job quality matters and has long done so. Debate about the future of work today centres on the impact of the new digital technologies, compounding existing concerns about the restructuring of employment and, importantly, prolifer...

New and residual challenges related to digital technology, COVID-19, precarious employment and scientific management are a reminder of research published in the early years of Human Relations that laid the foundation for socio-technical systems theory and its later conceptual offspring, the quality of working life. Analysing the evolution, challeng...

If HR managers wish to influence the careers of professional staff, it is important to understand their career aspirations and what determines them. This paper reports a study of the experiences of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women professionals that shape their careers and working lives. Qualitative data from 39 interviews identifies a...

How do organizations build an internal capability or processes to implement a service excellence strategy and thereby create sustained competitive advantage? Drawing on an integrated extended self and psychology of ownership framework as well as Bowen and Ostroff’s (2004) HR system strength perspective, this study examines processes linking perceiv...

Human resource (HR) process research seeks to explain the relationship between HR practices and employee outcomes and organisational performance. This body of research examines the HR implementation process, particularly the role of line managers, and the employees' HR sense‐making process. Among these processes, one promising line of research expl...

Research on the ‘new career’ has explored some individual correlates of protean and boundaryless career orientations while largely neglecting their consequences for organizations. Our paper addresses this omission by exploring the link between ‘new career’ orientations and both positive and negative extra-role behaviours based on the argument that...

Signalling theory is presented as an approach to advance the study of human resource management (HRM) processes highlighting line managers as signallers of HR messages and employees as receivers. Signalling theory is also offered as a framework to integrate the two attributional approaches to HRM focusing on HRM strength and HR attributions. A stud...

The aim of this chapter is to outline and evaluate the role of human resource management (HRM) in contributing to healthcare provision and to the well-being of those working in healthcare. To achieve this, the chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section describes the nature and importance of HRM, highlighting some of the main the...

The paper explores the notion of the employability paradox which notes that while organizations investing in the career and competency development of their workforce can benefit from higher performance, they also risk losing more employable staff to competitors. Building on contributions from social exchange theory and signalling theory, we develop...

Despite the growing importance of sustainable management of human resources, human resource management and leadership research on mutuality in the employment relationship has proceeded in a parallel fashion. Drawing on self‐determination theory, this study proposes an integrative model of human growth by addressing two interrelated questions: (a) h...

In this study, we explore different pathways during organizational socialization through the lens of the psychological contract using in-depth longitudinal qualitative methods. Analysis of 112 critical incident interviews with 27 newcomers across their first year of work reveals five distinct psychological contract pathways through socialization, w...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of career regret. It examines processes that give rise to it including social comparison, social influences on career choice and career satisfaction and explores its association with occupational commitment and intention to quit the profession. Design/methodology/approach Hypotheses wer...

A recent literature has developed criticising the growing influence of a psychological perspective within research on human resource management (HRM). This paper addresses and rebuts the various criticisms and outlines the positive contribution of work and organisational psychology to HRM research. In looking to the future and the continuing develo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address a gap in the recent literature on employment of temporary workers by exploring the impact of temporary workers on the perceptions, attitudes and behaviour of permanent staff with particular reference to their implications for patient safety and service quality in hospital accident and emergency depar...

Temporary employment has become a feature of the contemporary labour market, although its extent varies considerably across European countries. It is widely assumed that the experience of temporary work is likely to lower worker well-being. However, a major European study in 2005 found that temporary workers reported higher well-being than permanen...

Research on protean and boundaryless career orientations has explored their consequences for individuals and organizations while largely ignoring their key antecedents. Our paper address this omission by exploring three potential antecedents of contemporary careers - core self-evaluations (CSEs), social capital and perceived employability. Findings...

This paper “Neoliberal Ideology in Work and Organizational Psychology” seems to be making three main claims. First, it is said that we live in a world dominated by neo-liberalism which is a bad thing because it is based on unrestricted economic freedom, with the constraints of government regulation and countervailing forces such as trade unions rem...

Although studies reveal that acquiring knowledge about a new workplace during organizational socialization leads to better integration, the pathway through which this occurs is not well understood. Previous research has explored the psychological contract as an outcome of socialization. This study explores its role within the socialization process....

The mutual gains model suggests that HRM should benefit both individuals and organisations. However, the dominant models within HRM theory and research continue to focus largely on ways to improve performance, with employee concerns very much a secondary consideration. Furthermore, pressures at work and in society more widely are creating an increa...

Leadership behaviour has been identified as an important antecedent of workplace bullying since managers may prevent, permit, or engage in the mistreatment of others. However, the issue of how managers respond when bullying occurs has received limited attention. With this in mind, the aim of this study was to explore how managers behave when bullyi...

The paper explores the human resources practices and organisational performance relationship through a longitudinal study. It evolves and explores a circular framework for the relationship in a longitudinal context so as to help address the question of the direction of causality in the link. In addition, it places the relationship in a recession co...

Purpose: This study outlines and tests a high commitment model of human resource (HR) practices and its association with outcomes through a path including employee perceptions and attitudes, thereby seeking a new way of opening the so-called 'black box' between human resource management (HRM) and performance. Methodology: Data were collected throug...

The traditional collective system of employment relations that dominated much of the twentieth century appears to be less viable in the twenty-first century. In its place we see the individualisation of the employment relationship. In the context of contemporary employment relations, the psychological contract provides a useful analytic framework....

The quality of working life became an important topic in the 1960s and 1970s, helping to stimulate an early approach to evidence-based policy advocacy drawing on interdisciplinary research by social scientists. Over the years it fell out of the limelight but much relevant, albeit fragmented, research has continued. We present a case for rekindling...

The traditional organizational career has been depicted as the classic example of how employers and employees can develop a mutually beneficial relationship; but changes in the competitive landscape and in individual work values have challenged its viability. Commentators have argued that a 'new career' deal, encapsulated by the notions of the prot...

The article argues that the long-running debate between organizationally bounded and boundaryless careers has been too narrow and neglects the variety and distinctive characteristics of career boundaries. Drawing on boundary theory, it investigates the main career-relevant domains and boundaries, and the motivations and structural conditions that i...

Professor Bruce Kaufman's look back at two seminal books published at the beginning of the strategic HRM field and examination of two recent books to trace the evolution of the field identifies some issues, but ones with which the field has dealt for a number of years. His choice of our book HRM and Performance provided the wrong target, and conseq...

Career counseling helps individuals arrive at decisions about their careers. Organization-based counseling includes career planning workshops, individual counseling, and outplacement. Some evidence shows that those who received counseling from trained counselors and followed the advice reported better outcomes than those in similar circumstances wh...

Organizational exit occurs for a number of reasons. Some may be largely out of the control of the organization such as voluntary labor turnover and retirement. Some may be more influenced by organizational decisions including involuntary turnover/dismissals and redundancy. Organizational exit should be viewed as the final stage in an HR process and...

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is extra-role behavior designed to support the social and psychological organizational environment. It takes a variety of forms including helping others and civic virtue activities. A range of antecedents have been identified including greater use of human resource (HR) practices. OCBs have also been associ...

Teams are groups that work together to produce a wide variety of goods and services. They have distinctive characteristics including undertaking complete tasks, possessing workers with a variety of skills, member interdependence, autonomy, and accountability. The evidence suggests that well-constituted teams have a positive impact on outcomes but t...

Flexible employment arrangements are a major component of a wider interest in flexible working. Flexible employment typically addresses contract, working hours, and geographical flexibility. These forms of flexible employment have grown in most countries in recent years, driven partly by organizations' search for cost-effectiveness and a concern to...

Career management is a core HR activity concerned with seeking to influence the careers of employees. Activities include management of internal labor markets, identifying and developing talent, and succession planning. The process faces challenges from organizational changes and changes in employees' values. Associated challenges include the growth...

The aim of training evaluation is to determine whether the training has met its aims. It may be formative or summative. Formative evaluation provides feedback during training to aid learning. Summative evaluation occurs after the training and can address reactions, learning, changes in attitudes and behavior, and impact on individual and organizati...

Attitudinal or affective commitment addresses identification with and attachment to an organization, a team, or some other feature. A widely cited distinction is often made between affective, continuance and normative commitment, typically to an organization. There are established measures. Research shows that affective commitment is the most salie...

Human capital consists of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics of employees that can result in positive outcomes. It can be acquired through recruitment and selection or developed through training. While there is evidence that greater human capital is associated with higher performance, it is best viewed as a necessary but no...

The paper argues that the debate between organizationally bounded and boundaryless careers has exhausted its ability to progress career theory. Drawing on contributions from boundary theory it highlights the usefulness of centring the debate on the nature and types of boundaries shaping careers and the link between preference for specific boundary...

HRM practices have fared well across national borders due to globalization. The field of international HRM has learnt us a great deal by exploring different effects on HRM implementation in different countries. Our symposium is rooted in two main streams of the literature, HRM effectiveness and HRM challenges of Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) i...

The traditional organizational career has for many years been depicted as the classic example of how employers and employees can develop a mutually beneficial relationship. Changes in the competitive landscape and in individual work values have challenged the stability and the viability of traditional careers. Commentators have argued that a new ca...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the debates and evidence about employee engagement to assess its prospects of becoming a mainstream part of management activity in the long term. It sets out an agenda for policy and practice designed to increase its chances of sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a re...

Research on the relationship between HRM and organisational performance has highlighted a gap between intended and implemented HR practices. However, this gap has rarely been explored systematically, and the consequences of the effectiveness of the implementation process for relevant outcomes remain poorly understood. This article addresses this is...

The way people make sense of their careers in the contemporary world can no longer be usefully captured by objective benchmarks of career success, such as salary growth and promotion. Commentators have highlighted the need to address subjective criteria reflecting idiosyncratic needs, values and goals underpinning people's career choices and behavi...

Ample evidence exists of an association between psychological contract ( PC ) breach and intention to quit. Although some studies report an association between breach and turnover behaviour, a meta‐analysis by Z hao et al. (2007, Personnel Psychology, 60, 647) failed to find any significant link. This seems counter‐intuitive, and therefore, to expl...

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the broad debate regarding universalistic and contingency perspectives of human resource management (HRM). Design/methodology/approach ‐ Building on recent evidence of HRM differentiation within organisations, the present article studies variation in experienced HR practices across job level a...

With changing retirement ages and an aging workforce, interest is growing on the potential contribution of relevant bundles of HR practices in eliciting well‐being and performance among aging workers. Drawing on theories on lifespan development and self‐regulation, we distinguished two bundles of HR practices: development HR practices that help ind...

There has been a growing interest in evidence-based management. A core component is a body of high-quality research evidence to inform practice. Initial research with human resource managers in the United States and the Netherlands reveals only modest knowl-edge about a number of 'widely documented' research findings. However, it is unclear whether...

This article addresses two longstanding challenges for human resource (HR) managers; how far they can and should represent the interests of both management and workers and how they can gain the power to do so. Adopting a Kantian perspective, it is argued that to pursue an ethical human resource management (HRM), HR managers need to go some way to r...

Job embeddedness is a relatively new concept that offers the potential to improve our ability to explain why people stay in their jobs. This article outlines the development and testing of new measures of on‐ and off‐the‐job embeddedness. Analyses of survey data show the measures demonstrate adequate psychometric properties across samples (three mi...

Instances of physical violence from members of the public and non-physical harassment from colleagues are highly prevalent in the health-care workforce and can be damaging to both staff and patients. While policy has tended to focus on the more visible problem of public violence, little is known about which of the two behaviours is the most damagin...

This article analyses the impact of harassment on job burnout and turnover intentions among a large sample of hospital nurses in Britain. It compares the effects of insider-initiated harassment from managers and colleagues with outsider-initiated harassment from patients and their relatives. The article also examines the effect of ethnicity and the...

There is laboratory evidence of gender differences in causal attribution for performance, the nature of which may have deleterious consequences for women's career progression in management. There are, however, reasons to question whether these laboratory results generalize to organizational settings. The present study investigated the effect of gen...

Rousseau (1989 and elsewhere) argued that a defining feature of psychological contract breach was that once a promise had been broken it could not easily be repaired and therefore that the effects of psychological contract breach outweighed those of psychological contract fulfillment. Using two independent longitudinal surveys, this paper investiga...

Appendix. Questions used as quantitative measures.

The professional development of under-represented faculty may be enhanced by mentorship, but we understand very little about the mechanisms by which mentoring brings about change. Our study posed the research question, what are the mechanisms by which mentoring may support professional development in under-represented groups? The study aims to: (i)...

This paper explores the general hypothesis that effectiveness of human resource (HR) practices will help to explain the well-documented association between human resource management and performance. This paper adopts a stakeholder perspective, hypothesising that the ratings of HR effectiveness of senior line managers will be more strongly associate...