Marta M. Elvira

Not Just a Formality: Pay System Formalization and Sex-Related Earnings Effects

Drawing on neoclassical economic, internal labor market, and devaluation theories, we examine how the sex composition of jobs and the sex of individual workers affect earnings, depending upon the formalization of the pay type. Using personnel data for over 8,000 employees, we confirm the existence of a negative relationship between earnings and the proportion female in a job. We also find that for less-formalized pay types (cash incentive bonuses), sex-composition and individual-sex effects are larger than for more formalized pay (merit raises and base salary). Together, these findings support devaluation explanations, suggest that incentive bonuses may widen the earnings gap between women and men, and have implications for the design of pay structures in organizations.

Location Matters: A Cross-Level Analysis of the Effects of Organizational Sex Composition on Turnover

Building on demography theories, we study the effects of organizational sex composition at different job levels on the turnover of men and women at the same or lower levels. We found that women wer...

Who’s Displaced First? The Role of Race in Layoff Decisions

We test empirically the proposition that race significantly affects an employees layoff chances. Using data from a financial firm (N = 8918), we find that whites are less likely to be laid off than nonwhites and that, among nonwhites, Asians are less likely to be laid off than blacks or Hispanics. These findings are statistically significant after controlling for structural factors (business unit, occupation, and job level) and individual characteristics (tenure and performance rating). A similar pattern of racial differences exists in other employment practices more actively monitored by the firm, including promotions, pay raises, and performance ratings. Yet these differences are smaller than those in layoffs and are significant for blacks only, not for Hispanics. Our findings suggest that monitoring personnel decisions can reduce racial inequality. Furthermore, our findings highlight that racial differences in employment outcomes vary among minority groups.

The Effects of Race and Worker Productivity on Performance Evaluations

Using personnel data from a large firm, we examine the role of race, supervisor’s race, and worker productivity on performance ratings for a diverse employee population. Controlling for worker productivity and other demographic variables, black employees receive lower ratings than whites. These differences in performance evaluations are associated with the racial composition of the subordinate-supervisor pair. Racial differences between subordinate and supervisor lead to lower ratings for both black and white subordinates.

Psychological contracts and performance management in Mexico

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to use psychological contracts theory to explore performance management practices in Mexico paying particular attention to the impact of national culture, social and structural factors. Design/methodology/approach - The paper examines the content of psychological contracts from the viewpoint of both parties in the employment relationship – managers and employees – in the context of performance appraisals. It conducted focus groups and interviews at these two organizational levels in three different organizations. Findings - Findings are organized around three themes: performance appraisal systems, the promises (fulfilled and unfulfilled) and the sources of terms and conditions as the content of psychological contracts for managing and participating in performance evaluation systems. For each theme the paper presents and contrasts the viewpoints of managers and employees. Practical implications - Because of the sensitive cultural nature of performance appraisals, the findings help managers implement this process by explaining the underlying psychological contracts in Mexico. Specifically, employees experience the socio-emotional behaviors that accompany performance evaluation and engage in the process at different levels of commitment. Both managers and employees respond according to their needs and what they perceive to be the companys reward. Originality/value - Performance appraisal has received little attention from studies of psychological contracts, though it is a key practice in which work promises and rewards related to performance are made. In this study, the paper brings these two research streams together and apply it to a culturally unique setting.

Friends and Strategic Agents The Role of Friendship and Discretion in Negotiating Strategic Alliances

Case study and anecdotal evidence suggest that strategic alliances often develop from interpersonal relationships between their founders. Research has generally ignored how these relationships shape individual and organizational outcomes. The authors draw from social network and organizational control research using an experimental design that isolates how the alliance negotiators’ friendship level and job discretion affect the alliance structure and scope and the interpersonal outcomes of trust, satisfaction, and conflict. Results indicate that friendship affects individual-but not alliance-level outcomes. Discretion is associated with more ambitious scope in the alliance agreement. The authors discuss these findings’ relevance for effective alliance management.

Emergent directions for human resource management research in Latin America

Research in this special issue converges around important HRM challenges that will shape the direction of academic research in the future. We argue that the nature of these challenges, such as balancing global and local HRM approaches, focusing on people while aiming at performance and, in general, managing in a hybrid cultural and economic system, requires reframing strategic HR in terms of social contract theories. Such theories consider multiple stakeholders and focus research on the employment relationship as unit of analysis, which fits well with the pre-eminence of person-centred management over merely profit-centred goals. We propose theoretically anchored research to guide strategic HRM practices, taking into account Latin Americas culture-specific humanistic approach and its labour market institutions.

How does Collective Bargaining Affect the Gender Pay Gap

The authors study the effect of unionization on gender wage differentials for production workers in nine U.S. manufacturing industries. They find that the wage gap is significantly smaller in unionized establishments for six of the industries, even after controlling for occupation and establishment gender composition. But this union effect does not hold within three industries. The authors conclude that unionization generally reduces wage inequality between blue-collar men and women, but the effect might be contingent both on the overall proportion of women in an industry and on union characteristics. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for income inequality and union policies.

Special research issue on human resource management in Latin America

This special issue developed from the timely need to focus theoretical and empirical attention on understanding human resource management (HRM) in Latin America. Two main questions guide this issue’s contributions and frame its research. First of all, what are the cultural, economic and historical factors that affect management and leadership in local and multinational firms operating in Latin America? Second, what knowledge and country-specific considerations are required for HRM practices to fit various countries’ idiosyncratic business environments? To date, little research exists to answer these questions and help build stronger HRM capabilities in the region. This special issue of IJHRM paves the way for an HRM research and practice agenda in Latin America. Latin America (including Central and South America) is essentially different from its northern continental neighbours. In the popular business programmes offered by many local universities, views of management largely follow North American models that are simply translated into Spanish or Portuguese languages but rarely adapted to the Latin American business and cultural context. Exploring management and specifically the management of human resources (HR) from a Latin American perspective has been largely ignored. Paradoxically, this is a region where people, social relationships and, by extension, their management are paramount. Thus, this special issue aims to explain the cultural meaning that people give to their relationships at work in Latin America by analysing HRM from an insider’s perspective. Due to the fundamental cultural values guiding life in Latin America, human resource management is really a critical competency for any firm seeking to conduct business successfully. This special issue highlights the growth and importance of HR strategies and practices in Latin America, the dominant HRM systems, along with the challenges faced by HR executives in these countries. The research gathered in this issue expands the research in the book titled Managing Human Resources in Latin America: An Agenda for International Leaders (Elvira and Davila, 2005), written to fill the above explained research lacunae in international human resource management (IHRM). Our research motivation was to understand how cultural and historical developments affect the business environment and organizational structures and how these in turn define what HRM means in the Latin American context. What we call a humanistic approach to culture and management, by extension, informs the research presented here by managerial scholars and practitioners in Latin America. Thanks to the creativity in data gathering and reporting, new research is included in this volume that we hope will seed future work from a cultural and humanistic perspective in this emergent research area.