Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the field’s understanding of how to raise individual innovation. Specifically, the authors aim to contribute to an understanding of the interplay of job characteristics and intrinsic motivation for individual innovation.Design/methodology/approach: The study uses time-lagged survey data of a public service organization in Belgium. The analyses are based on more than 80 jobs and more than 1,000 employees. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted to test cross-level hypotheses.Findings: Innovation requirements influence individual innovation efforts by psychologically empowering employees, but the extent to which psychological empowerment translates into individual innovation depends on job complexity.Originality/value: A more nuanced understanding is developed of when innovation requirements empower individual innovation, by acknowledging the role of job complexity in this relationship. The current findings contribute to a multilevel integrative understanding of the interplay of the job context and intrinsic motivation.

Internationally, human resource practice is committed to competency-based HRM. HR practitioners and management consultants expect the outcomes of competency-based HRM to include improved employee and organizational performance. However, research indicates that a commitment to the use of competency-based HRM does not automatically guarantee these outcomes. Therefore, HR practitioners have called for academic work to enhance our understanding of the process of effective competency-based HRM. This paper addresses this call by systematically reviewing the existing body of evidence. The conducted systematic review indicated that the effectiveness of competency-based HR depends on the degree of several types of alignment. More specifically, we first identified four crucial types of alignment in this process: (1) vertical alignment, (2) internal alignment, (3) alignment of line managers, and (4) alignment of employees. Subsequently, based on these drivers of effectiveness and drawing from the HRM literature, we developed a process model of competency-based HRM. This process model interlinks the identified types of alignment and acknowledges the conditions in which this process occurs. Internationally, human resource practice is committed to competency-based HRM. HR practitioners and management consultants expect the outcomes of competency-based HRM to include improved employee and organizational performance. However, research indicates that a commitment to the use of competency-based HRM does not automatically guarantee these outcomes. Therefore, HR practitioners have called for academic work to enhance our understanding of the process of effective competency-based HRM. This paper addresses this call by systematically reviewing the existing body of evidence. The conducted systematic review indicated that the effectiveness of competency-based HR depends on the degree of several types of alignment. More specifically, we first identified four crucial types of alignment in this process: (1) vertical alignment, (2) internal alignment, (3) alignment of line managers, and (4) alignment of employees. Subsequently, based on these drivers of effectiveness and drawing from the HRM literature, we developed a process model of competency-based HRM. This process model interlinks the identified types of alignment and acknowledges the conditions in which this process occurs. The management revue is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary European journal publishing both qualitative and quantitative work as well as purely theoretical papers that advance the study of management, organisation and industrial relations. The management revue publishes articles that contribute to theory from a number of disciplines, including business and public administration, organizational behavior, economics, sociology and psychology. Reviews of books relevant to management and organisation studies are a regular feature. Special issues provide a unique and rich insight into the issue's research field. The journal offers insights into selected research topics by providing potentially controversial perspectives, new theoretical insights, valuable empirical analyses and brief reviews of key publications. The aim is to establish the management revue as a top quality symposium journal for the international academic community. The journal is available online via the Nomos eLibrary, ABI/INFORM Global and JSTOR and listed via RePEc, EconPapers, Ideas/RePEc and Elsevier/Scopus.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the relationship between external pressures and the adoption of employee performance management systems within academic units of Flemish higher education institutions. The literature on contextually based HRM and institutionalism is used to underpin the theoretical propositions.Design/methodology/approach: A comparative case study is described to provide evidence for the theoretical arguments.Findings: It has been suggested that academic units face a set of external pressures, which leads to different employee performance management systems. This study finds that academic units imitate their legitimacy‐based reference group and legitimacy‐driven imitation and the adoption of external employee performance management requirements distort the alignment of employee performance management systems.Research limitations/implications: Future research could formally test the relationship between external drivers and the adoption of strategic and integrated employee performance management systems in academic units by using a survey questionnaire.Originality/value: This theoretical argumentation uses contextually‐based human resource theory and it is explored empirically through an analysis of the specific context of Flemish academic units to explain how institutional and market pressures affect the adoption and configuration of employee performance management systems.

Drawing from the negative impacts of the perception of organizational politics (POP) on the literature on organizational outcomes, the model proposed in this study examines a nonlinear relationship of POP on job satisfaction. In a similar way, ingratiation as a moderator variable is tested. Based on a survey of 240 state-owned enterprise employees in Indonesia, this study finds that POP exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with job satisfaction. Low and high levels of POP have a negative impact on job satisfaction. Nevertheless, our most intriguing finding is that ingratiation behavior not only strengthens POP’s effects on job satisfaction, but can also alter the direction of the relationship in which its shape is represented by a U-shape. This shape indicates that the employees who engage in high levels of ingratiation as a coping mechanism and adaptive strategy tend to do so when they perceive high degrees of POP. These results are then discussed from a cross-cultural perspective as an attempt to explain the legitimacy of ingratiation in Indonesia.

This study investigates the extending negative effects of impression management (IM) on organizational outcomes in the nursing context. Specifically, this study aims to understand the impact of IM on workplace exclusion through workplace deviance. The data came from 277 head nurses (nurses in leadership positions) in elderly care homes in Belgium. Structured paper-and-pencil questionnaires were administered on site in the respondents’ workplaces. In the findings of the current research, IM is positively related to workplace exclusion and the relationship is mediated by workplace deviance. Although, initially, IM is performed by the actors as a natural behavior to maintain their image, at some point, the actors can become fatigued with maintaining their image. Under ego depletion theory, the exhausted IM actors will be highly experienced in deviance or bad performance. Furthermore, consistent with social information processing theory and a correlation study between employees’ poor performance and workplace exclusion, the IM actors who fail to deliver good performance or behavior following their like-based rewards may be subject to social exclusion in their workplace.