Seongsu Kim

Working In Retirement: The Antecedents Of Bridge Employment And Its Consequences For Quality Of Life In Retirement

In this study, we used a continuity theory of aging to examine bridge employment. Excellent health, organizational tenure, and having working spouses and dependent children were positively associat...

Globalization and a new human resource policy in Korea

Korean firms are in the process of transforming their human resource management (HRM) systems to compete effectively in the global market. Whereas the traditional HRM system emphasized group harmony and age norms, the “new HR policy” emphasizes a performance‐based system. Whether the new HR policy can achieve its objectives remains to be seen. This radical change from the traditional HRM system to a new one is likely to cause a variety of problems. Discusses, specifically, four potential problems in the case of Samsung.

Corporate Codes of Labour Practice and Employment Relations in Sports Shoe Contractor Factories in South Korea

We examine the way a leading US-based, global athletic shoe and sports apparel firm applies its labour code of practice to four prime contractors located in South Korea. The content of the code, th...

Relationships Among Self-Efficacy, Pay-for-Performance Perceptions, and Pay Satisfaction: A Korean Examination

This study is an effort to extend our understanding of the antecedents of pay satisfaction, particularly in multiple South Korean firms. We first examine the impact of self-efficacy on overall pay satisfaction and three of its subdimensions: satisfaction with pay level, satisfaction with benefits, and satisfaction with pay structure/administration. Next, we assess the moderating effects of pay-for-performance perceptions on the relationship between self-efficacy and pay satisfaction. Results from 256 employees in four South Korean companies support the proposed hypotheses that self-efficacy is negatively related to overall pay satisfaction and its three subdimensions. We also found support for the moderating role of pay-for-performance perceptions on the self-efficacy–pay satisfaction relations, for all pay satisfaction subdimensions except pay-level satisfaction. We discuss implications, future research directions, and limitations of this study.

The Impact of Research Productivity on Early Retirement of University Professors

Using samples of several hundred faculty at the University of California, this study examines whether declining research productivity is related to the acceptance of an early retirement program. Research productivity is measured by the number of papers published per year for 3 years and 15 years before the announcement of the early-retirement program. The ratio of the 3-year publication measure to the 15-year publication measure was used to measure the extent of decline in research output. Results suggest that professors who published less than peers during the 3 years before the retirement programs and those whose research output had declined more than that of peers were more likely to retire early.

Taking it to another level: do personality-based human capital resources matter to firm performance?

Drawing on the attraction-selection-attrition perspective, strategic human resource management (SHRM) scholarship, and recent human capital research, this study explores organization-level emergence of personality (i.e., personality-based human capital resources) and its direct, interactive, and (conditional) indirect effects on organization-level outcomes based on data from 6,709 managers across 71 firms. Results indicate that organization-level mean emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness are positively related to organization-level managerial job satisfaction and labor productivity but not to financial performance. Furthermore, organization-level mean and variance in emotional stability interact to predict all three organization-level outcomes, and organization-level mean and variance in extraversion interact to predict firm financial performance. Specifically, the positive effects of organization-level mean emotional stability and extraversion are stronger when organization-level variance in these traits is lower. Finally, organization-level mean emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness are all positively related to firm financial performance indirectly via labor productivity, and the indirect effects are more positive when organization-level variance in those personality traits is lower. Overall, the findings suggest that personality-based human capital resources demonstrate tangible effects on organization-level outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed along with study limitations and future research directions.

Team Manager’s Implementation, High Performance Work Systems Intensity, and Performance A Multilevel Investigation

Recently, capturing within-organization variability during the implementation of high performance work systems (HPWS) has received considerable attention; however, the source of such variability has rarely been considered. If the utilization of HPWS is positively related to performance outcomes, examining factors contributing to an effective implementation may yield significant theoretical and practical implications. For this purpose, this study extends the extant HPWS literature in two ways. First, we attempt to conceptualize team-level HPWS intensity and identify antecedents of variance across teams. Specifically, we regard the visible role of team managers in the process of HPWS implementation as a primary interpretive filter that makes team members perceive differences in HPWS intensity, which in turn affects team performance. Second, we posit that if human resources (HR) policies are viewed as an exchange agreement between the organization and its employees, then a team manager more actively enforcing espoused HR practices may positively influence the sense of human resource management (HRM)–induced psychological contract fulfillment of team members, which in turn influences individual in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Our hypotheses are tested with data from 183 matched responses from 51 teams, and the results generally support both the team-level and multilevel hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our study.

Tangible and Intangible Rewards and Employee Creativity: The Mediating Role of Situational Extrinsic Motivation.

This study examined the effects of tangible and intangible forms of creativity-contingent rewards on employee creativity. Situation-specific intrinsic and extrinsic motivations were proposed as mediators of the reward-creativity link. Based on data collected from 271 employees and their supervisors, results revealed the following: (a) intangible rewards for creativity are positively related to intrinsic and extrinsic task motivations; (b) tangible rewards for creativity are negatively related to extrinsic task motivation; and (c) employee creativity, as rated by the supervisor, is positively related to extrinsic motivation, but not to intrinsic motivation. Results indicate the significance of differentiating the two types of creativity-contingent rewards, and highlight the need to reconsider the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in promoting creativity in organizations.

Determinants of the strategic involvement of human resource departments: evidence from large South Korean firms

This study draws on contextual theories to determine when strategic involvement of human resource (HR) departments is required in organisations. From institutional and contingency theories, some internal and external circumstances of organisations are considered contextual factors on how to structure the role of their HR departments. Using a multisource dataset collected from 300 large South Korean firms, our regression analysis indicates that the strategic involvement of an HR department is related to normative pressures, the industrial relations climate, and environmental uncertainty. Our work provides theoretical implications for the context-bound understanding of the role of an HR department and practical guidelines for effective role fulfilment of an HR department according to organisational contexts.

The trade‐off of service quality and cost: a system dynamics approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find if there is an existing trade‐off between service quality and cost when strategies of low‐cost accommodation and uncompromised reduction are implemented.Design/methodology/approach – The model is designed on hand system dynamics, using Vensim™ software. It consists of a situation where no side effects are interrupting the result. The modeled service system is designed as two parts: a situation where five sorts of customer variables are introduced, continued by a situation where low‐cost accommodation and uncompromised reduction change the system.Findings – There is no typical trade‐off pattern between service quality and cost when implementing Freis two solutions. Rather, the findings resulted in an almost conform line of quality curve so that the promotion of Freis solutions can be interpreted as the result of cost reduction.Research limitations/implications – Owing to the use of simulation tools, it is still critical whether the result holds in the real w...