Despite an increasing number of studies that show a positive relationship between the supportiveness of the feedback source and feedback seeking, little is known about the role that supervisors play in promoting employee feedback-seeking behaviour when they serve as feedback sources. The present article developed a model to fill this void and tested it with data from a sample of 237 supervisor–subordinate dyads. We hypothesized and found that authentic leadership was positively related to feedback-seeking behaviour mediated by both perceived instrumental value and image cost of feedback seeking. The results also demonstrated that employees' individual cultural value of power distance moderated the relationships between authentic leadership and the perceived instrumental value and image cost of feedback seeking.

When seeking help or advice, one naturally wishes to get that aid from someone who does the task well, from an expert. Determining whether someone merits that label is not trivial, and the judgment can have important consequences. Experts in most domains, from athletes to plumbers, need to exhibit a high level of performance to maintain their status. But there is another group of professionals that is never examined. The expert status of such experts is conferred via criteria such as education or experience. While their credentials may be challenged, their work itself is not seen to bear upon their status. We refer to this group as privileged experts. These experts make assessments or predictions whose correctness is rarely evaluated. Even if prophecy fails, errors are forgiven. We account for this non-evidentiary perspective by positing a widely-held misconception that expertise generalizes. We outline a task-specific, performance-based, limited-term certification scheme that can supplant privilege.

By reflecting upon recent theoretical developments in open innovation studies, we shed new light on diverse potential sources of complementarities between corporate R&D activities as well as on contextual factors that could affect the complementarities. In particular, to break from the previous discussions confined to absorptive capacity, we considered the diverse knowledge management processes of knowledge exploration, retention, and exploitation. Then we empirically examined the existence of complementarities between corporate R&D strategies and uncovered the contextual factors. Our empirical results suggest the possible existence of a complementary relationship between in-house and joint R&D. We also discovered the firm-specific contextual variables, such as a firm's cumulative patent stocks and scientific information inflows from public research institutes and universities, that drive the decision to combine in-house and joint R&D. Our theoretical discussions on firms' diverse knowledge management processes allow more enriched understanding on these empirical findings.

Downsizing as a systematic reduction of employees is frequently utilized in order to increase productivity, efficiency, profitability, and competitiveness of organizations. As a strategy of choice for many firms around the world, downsizing produces far-reaching financial, organizational, and social consequences. Despite the large body of literature, there is inconclusive evidence as to whether downsizing is effective and whether it generates the widely anticipated benefits. Employee downsizing as a change management strategy has been actively adopted for more than three decades. This downsizing article presents a phase typology of job cutting including three distinct phases and three levels of argument. As a conceptual paper, it aims to examine, update, and extend Littler and Gandolfi's (2008) seminal work. The research paper culminates with a discussion of current downsizing practices, and posits that the downsizing phenomenon has remained a popular restructuring.

People with disability experience significant levels of economic disadvantage potentially resulting in their poverty, social exclusion and dependence on welfare. Low labour participation rates are a large contributor to such economic and social exclusion. This study was conducted in Australia where 45% of people with disability are living at or below the poverty line. Within this context, this article first defines and examines the constructs of Financial Turning Points and Financial Transitions experienced by people with disability, an area not previously examined in the literature. Then, a collective case study is presented portraying the experiences of Financial Turning Points and Financial Transitions for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Concluding remarks are directed towards the need to critically re-evaluate ways of thinking about work to enable people with disability to remain productive participants in employment, to better facilitate of their financial futures.

This paper analyses if ownership structure is an important determinant of capital structure decisions, on the basis of two sub-samples of family-owned and non-family owned SMEs, and using panel data models. The results suggest that family ownership is an important determinant for: i) the variations of short and long-term debt stimulated by financial deficit; ii) the speed of adjustment of short and long-term debt towards the respective target levels; and iii) the relationships between determinants and short-term debt and long-term debt. In general, the capital structure decisions of family-owned SMEs are closer to what is forecast by trade-off theory than those of non-family owned SMEs, whereas the capital structure decisions of non-family owned SMEs are closer to the forecasts of pecking order theory than those of family-owned SMEs.

Many studies conducted in Western societies indicated that work–family enrichment (WFE) and conflict influence employees' work performance positively and/or negatively. However, few studies have been conducted in collectivist, rapidly growing societies like Korea. The purpose of this study was to identify the extent to which those work–family interface variables influence the work performance of employees within the Korean organizational context. We performed forward and backward translation procedure to develop the Korean language versions of the WFE scale, work–family conflict (WFC) scale, and other scales assessing life satisfaction and job performance. Data were collected from a sample of 425 workers from various for-profit firms and universities in Korea. For data analysis, basic descriptive analyses, item reliability and construct validity tests, and a two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) approach were employed to identify influential relationships among WFE/WFC, life satisfaction, and job performance. Results indicated that WFE was a significant factor influencing Korean workers' life satisfaction (WLS) and job performance, whereas WFC was not. Implications of the study findings, including the strategies for improving employee well-being within the Korean cultural context, were presented.

Managerial discourses on diversity invoke goals of inclusion and emancipation of suppressed individuals and groups as well as objectives of creating benefits for organizations and society. Partially due to this two-fold emphasis, diversity discourses may, however, be as restricting as they are liberating to the subjects of which they speak. In this article we suggest that utterances pertaining to diversity discourse should be understood as constitutive rhetoric marked by three discursive regularities: address, categorization, and invitation. These regularities underlie and restrain the multiple discursive practices of the developing field of diversity management, and as researchers and practitioners alike continue to explore and enhance this field it is important to understand – and seek to broaden – its conditions of possibility. Emphasizing the theoretical argument about discursive regularities and their articulation, we provide an illustrative example of the how different discursive practices may reproduce common limitations by exploring contributions to Danish diversity discourse.

Using a content analysis on a sample of 77 internet companies that went public in the late 1990s, this paper tested the factors surrounding the legitimacy of new firms in a turbulent environment. Support was found for most of the hypotheses as to which factors were legitimating and which had the opposite effect. Legitimating factors included CEO Duality and Alliance inclusion while delegitimating factors included Capital Raising, Acquisitions, Restructuring, Delisting and Geographic Diversification. This paper adds to the theoretical issues surrounding legitimacy as a precursor to reputation. At the same time, this work fills a gap in the literature which currently lacks empirical testing of the notion of legitimacy.