Kimberly K. Merriman

University of Massachusetts Lowell | UML · Department of Management

Geographic flexibility among workers to choose where they live rather than remain tethered to a specific physical office has emerged as a valued workplace benefit. Even before the prevalence of remote and distributed work, in‐demand skilled workers were known to weigh desirable aspects of locales over pay. However, the COVID‐19 pandemic elevated ge...

Drawing from upper echelons theory, this study examines Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) level of cultural intelligence as a predictor of diversity management practices established during their tenure. We model cultural intelligence (CQ) as an individual difference that combines with functional expertise to bolster attention to diversity manag...

In this paper, we offer an intraorganisational sensemaking perspective on how organisational members interpret egalitarian forms of pay. Specific focus is given to managerial (non)communication of diverse rationales for egalitarian pay practices. We integrate a wide range of research and descriptive accounts to organise schema‐relevant concepts int...

This research extends the limited support for social comparison tendencies as an individual difference variable and a key moderator of pay fairness perceptions. Through three studies comprised of five data collections, the following adapts a measure of social comparison orientation to pay contexts and examines its association with heightened percep...

Perseverance is a human quality associated with exceptional leaders in a variety of domains. It is also linked to personal well-being. Within this chapter we examine the meaning of perseverance, its benefits, how to have it, and when to use it. Included are short cases on Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln, exemplars of perseverance. Also highlighte...

This chapter provides an overview of the basic logic and steps involved in applying the cost approach. The cost approach is based on the economic principle of substitution, which equates the value of human capital to the cost to create a substitute workforce of comparable utility. Costs considered in applying this valuation method to the assembled...

This chapter provides further discussion of several key assumptions underlying the cost approach and suggests ways to add rigor to the cost evaluation. Many of these points were brought up throughout the preceding chapters in a cursory fashion. We delve into further detail here in order to gain a more critical understanding of the primary approach...

This chapter describes the shifting perspective of human capital over time and how it is now increasingly considered an important business asset to be quantified. It discusses the current and potential uses of human capital measurement, introduces and defines basic terms that are essential to understanding human capital valuation, and generally set...

This chapter examines the income approach, an approach based on the economic principle of anticipation of future benefits. Under the income approach, valuation of human capital requires analysis of the expected net income stream directly attributable to the workforce. This chapter reviews several techniques for deriving the present value of the ant...

This chapter examines the market approach to value, also known as the sales comparison approach. The market approach determines the value of an asset based on the selling price of comparable assets, in keeping with the economic principle of substitution. This chapter discusses the conceptual logic of the market approach and reviews three potentiall...

This chapter examines a basic but essential premise underlying the value of the assembled workforce. That is, for the workforce to have an ongoing value, its value producing properties must be sustained. The ongoing value of the assembled workforce is dependent on how the human resources are developed, trained, and employed going forward to maintai...

This chapter examines organizational social capital, an intangible asset embedded in the quality of the relationships among organizational members. Organizational social capital emphasizes the interconnections between the people that comprise the assembled workforce. It is thought to generate “relational wealth” for an organization by facilitating...

This chapter provides an overview of other quantitative tools for understanding an organization’s human capital. The previous chapters examined the overall value of the assembled workforce in place, which is the primary focus of this book. However, economic logic and quantitative measurement are also relevant to examining incremental changes in val...

This book addresses the gap between the espoused importance of organizational human capital and how it is actually reported and assessed. It also discusses the current and potential uses of human capital measurement and a way for HR to position itself among other business functions such as finance, accounting, and operations. Readers will finish wi...

This article investigates the interactive effects of extrinsic value orientation and competence supportive feedback on the work outcomes of in-role and extra-role performance, and employees’ subjective well-being at work. Two studies are presented with samples consisting of a cross-section of employees and, for Study 1, their managers. In keeping w...

Effective employee recruitment strategies are critical to organizational success. When faced with recruitment challenges, a common response by firms is to increase pay level, an incentive that is somewhat easily competed away as other firms follow suit. The following instead examines the incentive effects of pay mix in motivated job choice decision...

Purpose – Organizational sustainability has become a priority on many corporate agendas. How to integrate sustainability efforts throughout the organization, however, remains a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to examine two factors that potentially enhance incentive effects on employee engagement in environmental objectives: explicit organi...

Virtually all companies today pursue innovation in order to remain competitive. The question facing corporate decision makers is not whether to innovate, but rather which projects to pursue. Conventional wisdom suggests high-risk projects provide the highest returns. We explore this notion with attention to the patent output from a cross-sectional...

Few topics have garnered the recent level of public attention given to the fairness of relative pay. Organizational scholars, on the other hand, have broadened their model of how pay fairness perceptions are formed, and in the process, the basic notion that pay is socially compared seems to have fallen from scholarly prominence. The present paper i...

Extant literature predominately examines workplace motivation as a temporary state induced by contextual factors. Performance management practices take on a deterministic halo from this perspective, while variance in performance across individuals is viewed as incidental error. The present paper examines trait-level extrinsic motivational orientati...

Drawing on psychological and economic perspectives, this paper models aspects of pay systems that dispose employees towards longer discretionary work hours than predicted by economically rational exchange alone. Three pay-system triggers and their respective paths to the undertaking of discretionary work hours are expounded: 1) pay equated to units...

Psychological and economic perspectives are blended to model aspects of pay systems that dispose employees to work more hours beyond what would be predicted by economically rational exchange alone. Three pay-system triggers and their respective paths to more work are expounded: 1) pay equated to units of time, 2) pay contingent on subjective perfor...

This conceptual paper revisits the concept of equality as a base of distributive justice and contends that it is underspecified, both theoretically and in terms of its ethical and pragmatic application to human resource management (HRM) within organizations. Prior organizational literature focuses primarily upon distributive equality of remunerativ...

Research to date has identifi ed CEO pay structure as an important factor in the environmental and social performance of the organization but has not considered how pay may infl uence these sustainability efforts at the middle-management level. We address this void with an experimental manipulation of direct and indirect pay incentives for an envir...

The present study longitudinally assesses fairness allocation rule importance and equity allocation preference under conditions of evolving team trust. We predicted an interchangeable relationship between trust and allocation rules using an uncertainty management theory framework (Lind & Van den Bos, 2002; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). From an interin...

This study examines the differential effects of outcome feedback for achievement goal orientations’ relationship with effort and achievement. In support of our predictions, learning goal orientation had a positive relationship with task achievement in the absence of outcome feedback and a negative relationship in its presence, while performance goa...

Research to date has identified CEO pay structure as an important factor in the environmental and social performance of the organization, but has not considered how pay may influence these sustainability efforts at the middle-management level. We address this void with an experimental manipulation of direct and indirect pay incentives for an enviro...

No pay system should be put into practice unless it is congruent with the values of the people it will affect. Cross-cultural research suggests performance pay is a poor fit for some cultures, although its actual use is rising throughout these very same cultures. This seeming contradiction is investigated through an exploratory, qualitative analysi...

This study examines the differential effects of outcome feedback for achievement goal orientations’ relationship with effort and achievement. In support of our predictions, learning goal orientation had a positive relationship with task achievement in the absence of outcome feedback and a negative relationship in its presence, while performance goa...

The present study longitudinally assesses fairness allocation rule importance and equity allocation preference under conditions of evolving team trust. We predict an interchangeable relationship between trust and allocation rules using an uncertainty management theory framework (Lind & Van den Bos, 2002; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). From an interindi...

Short-term, virtual, and cross-cultural teams have become the new norm, but building trust among team members is particularly challenging. That has implications for how managers should motivate and reward them.

Leaders in the age of virtual work require an understanding of how this affects their employees’ relations with management. From a survey of employees working in a variety of virtual and conventional settings, an empirical profile of employee-manager relationships was completed using a multidimensional measure of virtual status. The profile identif...

Implications of the value function associated with prospect theory have recently been extended to the context of variable pay systems in organizations. This research has focused on risk preference and choice behaviour, and not investigated potential motivational effects associated with decision framing. We investigated motivational effects of loss...

Corporate social performance (CSP) is increasingly viewed as an important business outcome by researchers, investors, and society as a whole. Furthermore, empirical research indicates that CSP is positively related to corporate financial performance. These considerations lead to the question of whether CEO pay is properly structured to provide ince...

Virtual authority relationships are increasing in organizations; yet these relationships are ill defined and their effect on relationships between supervisors and their employees is uncertain. From a study of employees working in a variety of virtual settings, we obtained initial support for a multi-dimensional measure of virtual intraorganizationa...

Pay for performance is an organizational control mechanism intended to align the interests of employer and employee. We investigated whether employee risk preference interferes with the effects of this ‘control by pay’ on attitudinal and behavioural outcomes. We found that the degree of consistency between risk preference and control by pay affecte...

Individuals in two separate studies participated in a self-appraisal activity in which they were randomly assigned to three conditions promising different levels of potential influence on the evaluation of a written assignment. Self-report data regarding perceptions of voice impact, voice appreciation, and procedural and distributive justice were a...

Using a sample of 250 medical technologists (MTs) over a four-year time period, this study presents initial evidence for differentiating two different facets of benefit satisfaction—basic and career enrichment. Basic benefit satisfaction exhibited stronger relationships to subsequent general benefit satisfaction, organizational withdrawal intent, a...

Using a sample of 250 medical technologists (MTs) over a four year time period, this study presents evidence for the discriminant validity of two different types of benefit satisfaction - basic and career enrichment. Both types of benefit satisfaction significantly declined over a three year time period. Basic benefit satisfaction exhibited stronge...