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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the “HRM process” as defined by Bowen and Ostroff (2004). The authors clarify the construct of “HRM philosophy” and suggest it is communicated to employees through “HRM messages”. Interrelationships between these concepts and other elements of the HRM-performance relationship are explored. The study identifies commonalities in the HRM philosophy and messages underscoring high-performing HRM systems, and highlights the function of a “messenger” in delivering messages to staff.Design/methodology/approach Case study of eight Australian hospitals with top performing HRM systems. Combines primary interview data with independent healthcare accreditor reports.Findings All cases share an HRM philosophy of achieving high-performance outcomes through the HRM system and employees are provided with messages about continuous improvement, best practice and innovation. The philosophy was instilled primarily by executive-level managers, whereby distinctiveness, consensus and consistency of communications were important characteristics.Research limitations/implications The research is limited by: omission of low or average performers; a single industry and country design; and exclusion of employee perspectives.Practical implications The findings reinforce the importance of identifying the HRM philosophy and its key communicators within the organisation, and ensuring it is aligned with strategy, climate and the HRM system, particularly during periods of organisational change.Originality/value The authors expand Bowen and Ostroff’s seminal work and develop the concepts of HRM philosophy and messages, offering the model to clarify key relationships. The findings underscore problems associated with a best practice approach that disregards HRM process elements essential for optimising performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior experimental evidence finds decentralized pre-play communication to facilitate efficient coordination among interdependent agents. However, the kind of communication in these experiments is unrealistic for many economic and organizational contexts, as it consists of costless messages from every agent, which are sent every time a coordination game is played. We study how communication use and its effectiveness change when one considers that sending messages is often both costly and voluntary, and investigate the effectiveness of alternative communication policies employed by a firm. The policies differ in the degree to which message use is voluntary and in who bears the costs for communication. Imposing even small communication costs on employees dramatically reduces message use, but message use is more prevalent and efficient coordination occurs more frequently when the proportion of message costs borne by employees is small. We conclude that under certain conditions, large but incomplete subsidies for using communication can be an optimal solution for obtaining efficient coordination in firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Workforce diversity is becoming a crucial matter in the area of internal communication. Realizing that there are multiple brackets within the body of a workforce (i.e. internal audience), the purpose of this paper is to develop an intermediate approach to manage diversity by segmenting the internal audience.Design/methodology/approach Developing a segmentation approach for managing diversity, the authors recommended the use of a few mathematical methodologies, including the expectation-maximization algorithm, partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) methodology, and Chow test, on a surveyed data set collected from 1,236 nurses of the US healthcare system. A PLS-SEM model, including employees’ mission awareness, management’s mission fulfillment, employees’ mission fulfillment, and turnover intention, was examined with respect to two internal segments.Findings Using a simple set of demographic variables, the authors demonstrated a practical approach to segmenting an internal audience and showed that causal relationships in a nomological network of variables regarding mission integration are significantly different between internal segments. Based on the segmentation approach, the authors proved that managers, in an effort to gain maximum diversity, can mix and match both the centrifugal force of diversity and the centripetal force of diversity to value individuals and for mission integration in their practices, respectively.Research limitations/implications The authors highlighted a practical matter of internal communication by connecting the concepts of diversity and internal audience segmentation. However, the generalizability of the results must be assessed in other settings.Practical implications While managing diversity involves valuing employees as individuals, the segmentation concept can function as a practical and useful intermediate tool for managing diversity. Practitioners can utilize varied sets of segmented variables according to their contexts.Social implications The authors emphasized valuing employees as individuals and developed a managerial way to make personal differences an asset to the productivity of an organization and society.Originality/value Introducing a segmentation approach to internal communication and adopting a set of useful statistical techniques, the authors attempted to develop a unique managing model of diversity. The authors suggested a dynamic and substantial segmentation of an internal audience with a smaller set of appropriate variables in each context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity climate, defined as an organizational climate characterized by openness towards and appreciation of individual differences, has been shown to enhance outcomes in culturally diverse teams. To date, it remains unclear which processes are responsible for these findings. This paper presents two quantitative studies ( n = 91; 246) that identify trust and openness in workgroup communication as possible mediators. We replicate earlier findings that perceived diversity climate positively relates to job satisfaction, sense of inclusion, work group identification and knowledge sharing in teams. In study 1, trust is shown to mediate the effects of perceived diversity climate on team members' sense of inclusion. In study 2, trust mediates the relationship between perceived diversity climate and workgroup identification and openness mediates its relationship with knowledge sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although organization-wide strategic consensus is considered a prerequisite for effective strategy execution, research analyzing the degree, content, and antecedents of strategic consensus between hierarchically distant employee groups is limited. The present study addresses this issue by using the Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire to examine the relationship between internal communication and between-group strategic consensus. To test these assumptions, data were collected from the top management team and lower-level employees of a hospital. The results indicate that a multifaceted operationalization of strategic consensus should be used because between-group consensus varies according to the content domain under investigation. Second, the findings indicate that it is important to analyze the direction of between-group disconsensus because employees can overestimate or underestimate the importance of strategic priorities. Third, the results indicate that the perceived quality of organizational information, organizational integration, and vertical communication (in contrast to horizontal communication) are associated with higher levels of strategic consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt to address an ongoing talent retention crisis at a large service firm uncovered the root cause of staff members' discontent: Employees working in the field felt disconnected from the organization's sense of purpose and community. To address that concern, management enlisted IT consultants to improve communications throughout the enterprise. Both the consultants and company managers soon realized, however, that the mere introduction of a new system did not guarantee its widespread acceptance-particularly when employees were gaming the system for fear of being negatively affected by it. Careful mapping of the cause-and-effect relationships that led to employees' overt and covert resistance to the initiative was instrumental in gaining the support needed to help management achieve its goals. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how a supervisor’s delivery of negative feedback affects employees’ tendency to respond by either voicing their ideas or remaining silent. The results show that approbation, or the use of praise to soften face threat, was the most effective facework message for the supervisor to use when providing negative feedback. When employees felt more threatened, they reported that they would be less likely to use voice to help others and more likely to use silence defensively as a response, but as their perceptions of threat decreased, they generally reported that they were more likely to use voice to help others. The article discusses implications of these results, limitations of the study, and future directions of this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates whether cognitive style congruence of managers and employees on the analytic-intuitive dimension influence employee communication satisfaction. The cognitive style and employee communication satisfaction was measured in 136 manager/employee dyads. Polynomial regression and surface analysis were used to analyze communication satisfaction under four conditions. First, an analytic congruence condition where both manager and employee are analytical, second, an intuitive congruence condition where both are intuitive, third, an incongruence condition where an intuitive manager manages an analytic employee, and fourth, another incongruence condition where an analytic manager manages an intuitive employee. Results supported the similarity effect hypothesis indicating that congruence increases employee communication satisfaction in general. Furthermore, the surface analysis also allowed us to see that the communication satisfaction is higher in the intuitive congruence condition. The study did not support the hypothesis that in incongruent dyads intuitive managers are preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of participative management on job satisfaction was examined in an automotive sales company in Macedonia. The information was collected from 150 employees. Three components of participatory management was analyzed in the research (1) participatory management style (2) participatory strategic planning process and (3) effective supervisory communication. Results showed that there was a positive relationship between all three components of participatory management and job satisfaction. The relationship between participatory management and job satisfaction was analyzed using statistical methods to determine the correlations and OLS regression model. The study highlights methodological developments in determining the effect of participatory management on job satisfaction in the automotive sales industry. The findings suggest that there is a positive relationship between both and it is therefore important to sustain these factors in order to maintain employees' motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even as English is a necessity for businesses, trades, diplomacy, etc. around the world, one notices continuing growth of miscommunication through English. Various factors are responsible for this: individual traits, business demands, inadequate preparation, etc. Various factors govern work place communication which includes mastery of soft skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]