Martin R. Edwards

An integrative review of employer branding and OB theory

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature linked to the emerging field of employer branding, with a view to adding insight from the perspective of the management of human resources.Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken entails reviewing books and academic journals from the area of marketing, organisational behaviour (OB) and business management. The review shows that research and theory from a range of fields can help add to ones knowledge of employer branding; these include areas of research that investigate organisational attractiveness to potential new recruits, research and writing linked to the psychological contract literature as well as work that examines organisational identity, organisational identification and organisational personality characteristics.Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of the review is that, while different areas and fields of research are being drawn on to help identify useful knowledge that can improve ones unde...

Organizational Identification: A Conceptual and Operational Review

There is a growing body of literature presenting the argument that processes of organizational identification (OI) are extremely important in helping to ensure that staff work towards the interests of the organization. There are, however, a number of problems with the way that the notion of OI has been conceptualized and operationalized in the extant literature. This paper examines how OI has been defined and measured over a number of decades. A number of problems are identified with how OI has been conceptualized by researchers, including, for example, issues about whether there is an affective element to identification and how the construct relates to organizational commitment. The paper also includes a review of previous approaches to measuring the concept of OI and raises some key problems with existing research tools. The paper concludes by arguing for a particular conceptualization of OI which helps to clarify the complex relationship between identification and organizational commitment, while at the same time accommodating previous definitions of the construct.

Organizational identification: Development and testing of a conceptually grounded measure

There is continuing debate in the literature as to how organizational identification (OID) should be conceptualized and operationalized. We present a new six-item measure of OID that includes both cognitive and affective components and that integrates the main dimensions of OID found in the literature. The new measure comprises three main subcomponents: self-categorization and labelling, sharing of organizational goals and values, and a sense of organizational belonging and membership. The measure was tested on two separate samples of over 600 employees working in the UK National Health Service (NHS) using Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The results provided support for the proposed three-component conceptualization of OID. However, the three subcomponents were highly intercorrelated and showed low discriminant validity. We therefore propose a single overall measure of OID. This six-item aggregate scale has acceptable psychometric properties and provides a theoretically meaningful, but parsimonious, measure of OID for use in field research.

Nurse practitioner management of acute in-hours home visit or assessment requests: a pilot study

BACKGROUND GPs often perceive home-visit requests as a time-consuming aspect of general practice. The new general medical services contract provides for practices to be relieved of responsibility for home-visits, although there is no model for the transfer of care. One such model could be to employ nurse practitioners to manage such requests. Nurse practitioners can effectively substitute for GPs in managing same-day in-hours emergency care in the surgery, but their role in managing all such requests, including those requiring home visits, has not been assessed. AIM To explore the feasibility and clinical management outcomes of nurse practitioner management of same-day care requests, including those requiring home visits, to inform a proposed randomised controlled trial. DESIGN OF STUDY Non-randomised comparative trial. SETTING One large general practice (14 600 patients) in south London. METHOD Nurse practitioner assessment and management of all same-day care requests for 2 days per week was compared with normal GP management on another 2 days, over a 6-month period. Clinical management outcome data were collected from patient records and from data-collection forms completed by a nurse practitioner and GPs. Patient and staff satisfaction was assessed by questionnaire. RESULTS The nurse practitioner was more likely than GPs to assess patients in person, less likely to give advice alone, and more likely to issue a prescription. There was no significant difference between the nurse practitioner and GPs regarding any other clinical management outcomes or patient satisfaction; however, the response rate of the patient satisfaction questionnaire in this pilot study was poor. CONCLUSION Nurse practitioner management of acute in-hours care requests, including home visits, appears feasible in practice and merits further assessment.

Company and country effects in international mergers and acquisitions: Employee perceptions of a merger in three European countries

Despite the prevalence of international mergers and acquisitions (M&A) there is a dearth of studies that draw on employee accounts of how they are affected by the associated restructuring. This omission is important because of the likely role of national context in conditioning the way employees are affected by organizational change in the post-merger period and the way in which employee perceptions of a merger are likely to vary according to which party to the merger an employee worked for previously. This article addresses three questions. First, to what extent are employee perceptions of an international M&A conditioned by the national context in which they operate? Second, how do employee perceptions of an international M&A differ between those in the dominant and those in the dominated parties to the merger? Third, are these twin effects independent or interdependent?

Perceptions of employee voice and representation in the post-acquisition period: Comparative and longitudinal evidence from an international acquisition

Despite the disappointing performance of international mergers and acquisitions and the widespread recognition that their success depends at least partly on how employees are managed during and after an acquisition, very few studies draw on employee accounts of how they are affected by ongoing restructuring and how much influence employees themselves have over this process. The omission is especially important because of the likely role that national institutions play in conditioning the way employees are affected by organizational change in the post-acquisition period. This article investigates employees’ perceptions of whether they experience voice and representation opportunities following an acquisition through analysis of a unique longitudinal and cross-national dataset that demonstrates national differences in this respect. Moreover, there are also national differences in how these perceptions change over time. We highlight the utility of drawing on employee accounts in longitudinal and comparative perspective, suggesting that this represents a fruitful way of breathing fresh life into the debate about convergence and divergence in HRM and employment relations.

Multi-foci CSR perceptions, procedural justice and in-role employee performance: the mediating role of commitment and pride

This study explores differential employee responses to perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) treatment of social and non-social stakeholder foci of the community, customers, shareholders and environment along with first-party employee justice perceptions. At a finance-sector multinational, we test the mediating role of commitment and pride in accounting for the relationship between perceptions of stakeholder treatment and in-role performance. We propose and pilot a new multi-foci CSR measure and include this in a mediated model within a separate study. Socially responsible treatment of customers and the environment play a role in predicting performance; these foci are related to either pride or commitment. Community CSR, first-party justice perceptions and commitment predict performance either directly or indirectly. Our research shows an absence of any positive employee response associated with CSR towards shareholders. The study uncovers new insights into our understanding of complexities in employee responses to CSR activities.

Employer Branding and Diversity: Foes or Friends?

In this chapter we explore whether employer branding and diversity are diametrically opposed to each other or whether they could support the same aims. We argue that employer branding aims at creating a coherent employment brand but in the process of achieving this it can introduce pressures that lead to a homogenization of the workforce. Employer branding is a relatively new idea that has received a flurry of interest in recent years (Martin, 2008; Edwards, 2005); interest which ranges from HR practitioner literature (CIPD, 2008; Martin and Beaumont, 2003) to literature more oriented towards the marketing field (Ind, 2006; Sartain and Schumann, 2006). Although employer branding can take a number of forms (see below), in general, programmes designed to strengthen an organization’s employer brand will tend to present a uniform set of organizational values that represent both the characteristics of the organization’s corporate brand and a set of beliefs that employees ostensibly share; often employees are actively encouraged to share these values. Employer branding aims at creating a coherent and recognizable brand which, it is argued here, can potentially lead to the introduction of pressures that encourage a homogenization of the workforce. Diversity, in contrast, aims to bring out and make use of the differences between employees. This chapter discusses the tension that exists between employer branding and diversity. To begin with, the growing interest in employer branding is examined, along with a discussion of the differing positions on employer branding that...

Trajectories and antecedents of integration in mergers and acquisitions: A comparison of two longitudinal studies

Despite existing research examining snapshots of employee reactions to organizational mergers and acquisitions (M&A), there is a complete absence of work theorizing or exploring rates of change in employees’ organizational identification with the merged entity. We address this gap using two three-wave longitudinal panel samples from different M&A settings, tracking change in identification through a two-year period. Theorizing trajectories of change in identification across the organizations in both settings, we make predictions linked to expected antecedents of change in identification. Our research context (M&A-1) involves a merger of three Finish universities tracking 938 employees from each organization in three waves (nine months pre-merger to 24 months post-merger). Our second context (M&A-2) involves a multinational acquisition tracking 346 employees from both the acquired and acquiring organization in three waves (from two to 26 months post-acquisition). Using Latent Growth Modelling, we confirm predicted trajectories of change in identification. Across both samples, a linear increase (across Time 1, Time 2 and Time 3) in justice and linear decrease in threat perceptions were found to significantly predict a linear increase in identification across the post-M&A period. We discuss organizational identification development trajectories and how changes in these two antecedents account for changes in identification across M&A contexts.

Books: The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine: Transforming the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

Lindsey Fitzharris Allen Lane, 2017, HB, 304pp, £16.99, 978-0241262498 From the start, Lindsey Fitzharris’s account of the life and times of surgeon Joseph Lister gleefully evokes the smells, sights, and sounds of mid-nineteenth century medicine. Surgeons in bloodied aprons used instruments still filthy from previous operations to perform amputations in seconds, slicing through testicles and assistants’ fingers in their haste. Little wonder that operating theatres were known as ‘gateways of death’ as half of those undergoing surgery did not live to tell the tale. …