Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of 26 business owners, managers and supervisors on “decent work” (DW) in the ready-made garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approach: The qualitative study draws on a framework of ethical human resource management and situated moral agency to establish the ways in which RMG workers are afforded DW. This study uses semi-structured interviews to assess the prospect of DW through applying the ILO’s four-pillar framework of DW.Findings: Findings indicate there is a concern among owners and managers of the need to reconcile internal and external pressures to maintain and improve DW. It is evident that ethical practices and moral agency are not self-initiated but in response to mounting political and legal pressures and those of external stakeholders. Employers favour the concept of workers’ participation committees as one means to communicate and negotiate with workers rather than recognise trade unions.Research limitations/implications: The research is limited to six organisations in the RMG sector in Bangladesh, but there are implications for all RMG sector organisations to promote reform and DW for all workers.Practical implications: DW necessitates major national and international stakeholders to negotiate and cooperate to ensure the long-term competitiveness and survival of the Bangladeshi RMG sector.Originality/value: The study calls for reform in a developing country where many workers are denied DW.

Purpose: Limited empirical research has been conducted on the mediational influence of employees' intent to quit (IQ) and strategic human resource management (SHRM) to examine meaningfulness in work (MW) and job satisfaction (JS). Applying the psychological contract theory (PCT), this paper aims to explore the relationships among SHRM, IQ, MW, and JS; and the mediational influence of IQ on the relationship between SHRM and MW.Design/methodology/approach: This paper examines a proposed hypothesised model with a two-stage technique of structural equation modelling, including four propositions. A web-based survey including a pilot test was directed to collect data targeting a sample of 200 full time Bangladeshi employees.Findings: The results indicate that SHRM has significant effects on employees' IQ and MW, and IQ has a partial mediational impact on the direct relationship between SHRM and MW. Moreover, employees' IQ on MW was negative, and MW on JS was significantly positive among Bangladeshi employees.Practical implications: This paper suggests that organisations aiming higher MW and JS should encourage SHRM and align their HRM functions accordingly. Furthermore, the implications of the study results can help organisations and HR managers to recognise the adverse effects of IQ on MW and the effective implementation of SHRM for higher MW and JS.Originality/value: Despite the significant relationship between HRM and employee motivation, limited empirical research has been conducted on the mediational influence of IQ from PCT. Therefore, this paper examines the unique mediational role of IQ on the relationship between SHRM and MW, which has not been utterly observed from a developing nation's employee perspective.

The role, effect and importance of affective commitment is predicted to be contingent to context in many extant literatures. However, no study has yet explored the disposition of contextual influence on affective commitment-job performance link. This study is designed to observe the difficulty of psychologically disassociating the affective commitment construct from other types of commitments (normative or continuance) among the respondents of a complex and rarely explored context of Bangladeshi banking industry. This case study is the first one to examine the institutional context for its possible influence on the link between affective commitment and job performance in two banks in Bangladesh for the purpose of literal replication. This study uses information from interviews and focus group discussions among 53 participants and survey results of 436 respondents from the selected banks. The qualitative findings preceded and informed the survey and helped to explain the quantitative findings in this multi-method study. The qualitative data has been analysed using recursive abstraction technique and thematic analysis. Structural equation modelling (in AMOS21) has been used to analyse the quantitative survey data. The results show that the external and internal contexts of the banks have considerable impact on the nature, perception and effect of affective commitment among the respondents on their job performance. Moreover, it is observed that affective commitment does not positively predict employee performance in the case study banks. Qualitative findings from interview and focus group discussions have explained why committed employees may not be the high performers and high performing employees may not be committed. The policy implication for the HR practitioners is that, adopting unfair HR systems may lead to undesirable retention of a genuinely committed but mediocre workforce incapable to get other job offers or low affective commitment and retention rate of high performing employees. Essentially, the banks should avoid unsystematic and non-transparent recruitment and selection practices, performance management system and compensation policy. In addition, the management should strategically align the career development opportunities to the organisational goals in order to ensure meaningful affective commitment that may lead to higher job performance.

This two-stage sequential mixed-methods study explores the contextual configuration of perceived high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and its association with psychological empowerment (PE), trust in immediate managers (ET), affective commitment (AC) and employee performance (EP) in two Bangladeshi private commercial banks (PCBLs). In the first stage, qualitative data were collected through interviews with 15 industry experts. Based on the qualitative findings, a HPWS framework has been hypothesised and tested using the survey data from 436 employees in the two selected PCBLs in Bangladesh. The findings demonstrated that ET and PE both mediated the perceived HPWS–EP link and that perceived HPWS positively influences AC. However, AC does not mediate the HPWS–EP link. In line with the social exchange theory, perceived HPWS can positively predict attitudinal outcomes and employee performance, provided it is configured to the specific institutional context. Implications are drawn for HPWS theory, sustainable HR development and performance, and future international human resource management research.

The study which is mainly based on primary data attempts to focus on the facts relating to the communication skill of the different levels of business executives of local private business concerns in Bangladesh and their level of awareness regarding the importance of communication skill in their professional career. The study reveals that majority of the executives have positive opinions regarding the importance of communication course designed for executives. Most of the respondents have completed communication course, but majority of them are dissatisfied with it. The study also discloses that many of the executives have received training on communication skill; however majority of them are dissatisfied with course content and quality. Although majority of the executives think that there should be compulsory training program on communication skills in business organizations, still compulsory training programs on communication skill do not exist in any of the respondents’ business organizations. Academicians should design and conduct communication courses keeping their application perspectives in view. Moreover employers should arrange compulsory training program on communication skill for their own executives.