Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the human resource management (HRM) literature that builds up to our current concern with dualities, paradoxes, ambiguities, and balance issues; and to introduce the six papers in this special issue on managing the dualities in...

Purpose – Research in strategic human resource management (HRM) has focused mainly on the effects of HRM practices or systems on organizational effectiveness. However, institutional theory argues that besides being financially successful, organizations also need legitimacy to survive. Owing to...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of pay in the relationship between employee ambition and taking charge behavior, and its subsequent effects on employee career satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach A two-wave quantitative investigation was conducted among...

Purpose – The ongoing debate about the effects of bonuses on managers’ performance and the role of reward systems in organizations has still not led to a unanimous conclusion among academics and practitioners. Those in favor of bonuses state that applying bonuses and putting emphasis on...

Purpose – Little is known about the motivation for older workers to work and to remain active in the labor market. Research on age and motivation is limited and, moreover, conceptually diverse. This paper aims to address age‐related factors that influence the work motivation of older...

The conditions and implications for the use of multi‐rater feedback or “360‐degree” methods are studied from both a psychological and an organizational perspective. Psychological research indicates that multi‐ratings cannot be put on the same footing as ratings obtained from more...

Purpose – Autonomy is a primary motive for a large majority of small business starters. As an explanation of why people want their own (autonomous) business it is tautological. This study sets out to focus on an explanation of the autonomy motive itself: why small business starters want...

The identification of innovation in service firms is problematic since there is no consensus of opinion on its conceptualization. Recent papers suggest both distinctive features of innovation in services and distinctive types of service innovation. This article reviews and evaluates these...

Purpose – The ongoing debate about the effects of bonuses on managers’ performance and the role of reward systems in organizations has still not led to a unanimous conclusion among academics and practitioners. Those in favor of bonuses state that applying bonuses and putting emphasis on...

Management development (MD) is defined as the system of personnel practices intended to ensure that an organization can rely on timely availability of qualified and motivated employees. The article reports on a survey of 92 Dutch companies concerning their MD policy and practice. Results...