Fiona Edgar

University of Otago · Department of Management

Purpose This study examines how the resource of egalitarianism, at both individual and organizational levels, affects employee proactivity. Specifically, we propose relational social capital is an effective mechanism through which an individual's egalitarian mindset and the organization's egalitarian HR practice facilitate employee proactivity. De...

Purpose One of the most cited literature in SHRM is Schuler and Jackson’s (1987) behavioural model. This model proposes that organisational performance is dependent on the extent to which HRM practices can be effectively connected to competitive strategy and desired employee behaviours. Importantly, this model recognises the salient role of employe...

Sustainable human resource management is gaining importance in organizations due to its role in developing a sustainable work environment and well-being. This paper discusses the relationship between employee perceptions of sustainable human resource management and job satisfaction in 54 countries. We propose that sustainable HRM is positively asso...

Buoyed by recent calls for research to explore micro-level cognitive explanations for ambidexterity, this study examines how individuals' self-efficacy and resilience affect individual ambidexterity across different institutional environments. Building on social cognitive theory, we posit that self-efficacy enhances ambidexterity via resilience and...

Organizations seeking to adopt a sustainable approach to people management need to pay particular attention to how their work environments impact employees’ wellbeing. Combining the disciplines of psychology and sustainable human resource management, this study explores the relationship between situational stimuli and wellbeing by examining how wor...

Evidence-based approaches to management receive support from both academics and practitioners, with momentum for this growing as research-practice gaps widen. Knowledge transmission is central to research-practice gaps with ‘knowledge lost before translation’ and ‘knowledge lost in translation’ identified as two areas of concern. To enhance communi...

Although human capital has been widely recognized as a valuable asset that helps firms to develop core competences to achieve competitive advantage, little is known about how HR (human resource) practices enhance employee capabilities in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Building upon the resource-based view of HRM (human resources managem...

Ensuring that immigrant professionals experience cross-cultural adjustment positively is beneficial for both employers and host countries, as well as the immigrants themselves, yet has proven problematic in practice. This study utilises a series of longitudinal interviews to examine the personal narratives of three strategically selected sets of re...

There is no shortage of normative models describing how human resource management (HRM) should integrate with corporate social responsibility (CSR), however actual evidence of this engagement is rare. So what prompts human resource (HR) professionals to engage with a CSR agenda? Using a sensemaking lens this study addresses this question by examini...

Purpose Drawing on the dynamic model of ability, motivation, opportunity (AMO) for human resource research, this study aims to examine how organizational system-level (i.e. the high-performance work system (HPWS)) and individual-level AMO affect employees' performance. Specifically, this paper proposes that employee task performance is resultant fr...

Purpose The purpose of this empirical study is to develop an understanding of how human resource (HR) managers employed by organizations with an explicit sustainability agenda view employees as stakeholders, and to explore how such views are operationalized in HR policies and practices. Design/methodology/approach An interpretive approach using da...

Purpose For some years, human resource management (HRM) scholars have sought to understand how the high performance work system (HPWS) impacts performance. Recently, attention has turned to developing knowledge about the more micro-level aspects of this relationship, with the ability–motivation–opportunity (AMO) framework providing a useful lens. E...

Purpose The behavioral framework presents a logic for understanding the relationships between characteristics of the organization and the HRM system. Drawing on this logic to connect the broader management oriented area of strategy with HRM, a micro-level lens is used to examine how competitive strategies and human resource (HR) practice subsystems...

Despite their perceived significance for national economies, adjustment of immigrant professionals to a host culture has not been examined in depth from their own, dynamic, perspective. In particular, how do immigrant professionals from different ethnic groups differently experience adjustment, over time, within a single host country? This study ov...

Debates surrounding the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggest organizations need to pursue the objectives of a variety of stakeholders and human resource management (HRM), with its pluralist ideological underpinnings, is well-positioned to help in this endeavour. The dilemma for human resource (HR) practitioners is how best can e...

Purpose The positive psychology movement suggests organisational behaviourists should accentuate the positive by increasing the attention paid to the enhancement of employee wellness. This fits comfortably with the ethos of human resource management which is rooted in notions of social exchange, reciprocity and mutual gain. The purpose of this pap...

Much has been written about the negative aspects of flexibility, particularly around new and often unfair flexible contracts and working arrangements for workers that have eroded employee rights and damaged the employment relationship. However, this chapter deals with two much more promising phenomena: “anywhere working” (working remotely from the...

Interactionist theories link individuals’ work performance to both situational and personality factors. However, while prior research finds support for the direct effects of both employees’ situational experiences and their personality on performance, empirical support for their interactional effects is lacking. This article first examines how supe...

Purpose The connection between employees’ well-being and performance, although widely studied in organizational psychology, has received much less attention from HRM scholars. The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature by examining the impacts of the multidimensional structure of well-being consisting of psychological, social and health...

This paper derives from an ongoing study into the future of work in New Zealand looking out to 2040 and focuses upon skill need, acquisition and development; and the implications for business, education and the economy. We used a Scenario Development Delphi (SDD), using a panel of experts, in an iterative process to help us understand what skills w...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to extend understanding regarding the basis and foci of employee commitment. It does so by exploring the direction towards employee centric rather than an assumed organisation basis of commitment. Design/ methodology/ approach – Survey data of over 300 employees from a variety of organisations in the Republi...

Interest in workers’ well-being is mounting – a key driver being the growing recognition that well-being is linked to performance. Utilizing a transformative service research (TSR) agenda, this study examines how people management practices impact the well-being of hospitality and retail workers. Comparing the experiences of permanent and precariou...

Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that obesity is a growing global health issue. This may give rise to a host of societal problems as some suggest obesity discrimination remains one of the last tolerable forms of bias. For the workplace, this situation, when combined with the considerable stigma and the lack of statutory protection afforded to ob...

Purpose – Using the mutual gains model as a framework, the purpose of this paper is to explore the important issue of mutuality in employment relationships. Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a sample of 215 New Zealand professionals to assess the relationships between commitment-oriented HRM practice, work intensification, work-life...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate, from the perspective of knowledge workers (KWs), the factors which underpin worker performance. Although a broad array of factors is examined, the role played by the front-line manager (FLM) appears pre-eminent. Design/methodology/approach – Using data collected in 2012 from a sample of 73 N...

The more recent focus on the link between HRM practice and organisational systems has been on the potential benefits of mutuality in employment relationships. The key to this notion of mutuality is the connection between worker well-being and performance. Although a common area of study for psychology, this relationship has received limited attenti...

Organisational culture is considered an important influence on performance, particularly for service firms that rely on values-driven social controls to enhance human interactions. Using a qualitative approach, we show how the modified Organisational Culture Profile developed by Sarros, Gray, Densten, and Cooper to assess Australian organisations p...

A key premise underlying research efforts about human resource management (HRM) is that it leads to improved performance through bolstering employee attitudes. The value of assessing employee reactions to HRM practices is now widely recognised. Using process models of strategic HRM, we adopt an employee-centred focus to explore the perceptions of a...

Despite hints of more pluralist undercurrents, workplace values and beliefs have rarely been surfaced to inform our understanding of HRM. This paper examines management and employee workplace values and beliefs in the national contexts of Ireland and New Zealand. The findings indicate (a) a divergence of managerial beliefs at the level of society a...

Entry into graduate programmes is highly competitive. Although careers advisors working within higher education do their best to prepare students for engagement with these programmes; anecdotal reports suggest many graduates remain unsure what it is these employers are seeking, and how it is assessed. Our study examines both selection criteria prof...

Union density and collective bargaining coverage is on a downwards trend in many developed countries, and this is evident in New Zealand. Some suggest this decline is resulting in traditional approaches to collective bargaining being replaced with a more collaborative style. This article empirically explores the nature of collective bargaining and...

This research extends our understanding of research productivity by examining features of managerial practice and culture within university departments. Adopting a robust comparative research design, capturing both interview and survey data sourced from multiple stakeholders from New Zealand universities, we seek to identify factors associated with...

This study is concerned with the performance of university academic departments and the different cultures and different management practices, labelled ‘human resource management’ (HRM), that correlate with this performance. Departments are considered high or low research performers according to their assessment by the external Performance Based Re...

Purpose This paper has two objectives. The first is to see whether “shared values” is an important intermediary, or part of the “black box” (along with organisational commitment and job satisfaction), between HRM practices and firm performance. The second is to assess whether the use of multiple levels of respondents produces different results comp...

An emerging source of competitive advantage for service industries is the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their employees. Indeed, achievement of a 'service quality' culture, considered imperative for competitive advantage in service organisations, supposedly results from the use of best practice human resource management (HRM), and from a strat...

This study is unique in that it examines both managers' and workers' values and beliefs about employment relationships. It found that managers consider the employment relationship in their own workplaces unitarist rather than pluralist, but have mixed ideologies when considering society as a whole. Workers are strongly pluralist when considering so...

Union affiliation is often viewed with cynicism by both managers and some academics in the field of human resource management. This research note reports New Zealand data from an exploratory study which examines the relationship between union affiliation and a range of workplace attitudes commonly considered as related to positive performance outco...

In New Zealand, the government has mandated for employers in the public sector to be “good employers” (§ 56, State Sector Act 1988). According to the directive, a “good employer” is one who engages in best practice HRM. Thus, a unique opportunity exists to see if best practice HRM can be achieved through regulation. This paper explores this by exam...

With countries increasingly thinking like organisations as they recruit and retain global talent, it is posited that High Commitment Management (HCM) Human Resource Management (HRM) systems could be applied to help stem the brain drain, particularly in highly mobile/low organisational commitment professions such as Accountancy. In an online survey,...

As a consequence of recession and also of major restructuring of the economy, New Zealand has experienced considerable redundancies over the last 20 years. During this time, successive legislators have been reluctant to pass specific redundancy legislation guaranteeing compensation to workers being made redundant. Legislation does, however, give an...

HRM appears to both believe that unitarism already exists in employment relationships and, at the same time, sees itself as the means to achieving unitarism through the introduction of systems of ‘high commitment management’ (HCM) in the workplace. The primary goal of HCM is empirical unitarism, achieved by the implementation of a system of practic...

Empirical research on human resource management (HRM) practice has mainly assessed and evaluated the activity from an employer’s perspective. Concern has been expressed about the lack of empirical analysis conducted from the employees’ perspective. This exploratory study begins to fill this gap in the literature by examining the current views that...

Purpose To test the relationship between HRM practice and employee work‐related attitudes and examine whether different approaches to measurement of HRM gives different results. Design/methodology/approach HRM practice was measured in three ways: additive measures of numbers of HRM practice, employer reports and employee reports of strength of pra...

The aim of this paper is to provide a representation of the employee viewpoint on emerging issues related to HRM practices associated with the ‘new employment relationship’. Data obtained from employees across two studies in two very different countries – South Africa and New Zealand has been used to represent the employee perspective. Interestingl...

The aim of this paper is to provide a representation of the employee viewpoint on emerging issues related to HRM practices associated with the ‘new employment relationship’. Data obtained from employees across two studies in two very different countries – South Africa and New Zealand has been used to represent the employee perspective. Interestingl...