In this issue of Research Human Resource Management we consider some
of the challenges facing organizations today including changes in the
population, the increased competition for talent, and the rise in the
use of technology. The issue also includes a number of thought-provoking
articles that describe strategies for developing sound theories in our
field, discuss the consequences of growing diversity in organizations,
consider the factors affecting the success of virtual teams, present
methods for increasing emotion control for incumbents in emotionally
laden jobs, and discuss leadership and performance management in virtual
teams.
The first article in this issue compares prospect theory to goal setting
theory, and highlights the critical elements needed for theory
development in our field. A second article reviewed the literature
published from 1976 to 2017 in the Academy of Management Review, the
primary theoretical journal in management, and identified the factors
associated with the most effective theories published over the last
forty years. In view of the growing diversity in organizations, the next
article provided a ranking of individual attributes that might be viewed
as stigmatizing in organizations. The findings revealed that blemishes
of character (e.g., criminality, drug addiction) were viewed as most
stigmatizing followed by abominations of the body (e.g., paralysis, leg
amputation), and the least stigmatizing attributes were tribal stigmas
(e.g., ethnicity, religion). The fourth article focuses on a similar
topic, and presents an interesting model of the factors thought to
influence weight-based bias. Both of these articles have important
implications for overcoming unfair discrimination and increasing the
inclusion of all individuals in organizations.
The next article offers an input-throughput-output model of virtual
teams, and reviews the literature on each of the variables thought to
influence the success of these teams. Given that many customer service
jobs in the new economy involve high levels of emotional labor, the
sixth article reviews the strategies that can be used to train employees
on emotion regulation in these challenging jobs. The final article
suggests that leadership and performance management should be aligned
with the new team-centric structure of organizations in order to enhance
team and organizational performance. In particular, they maintained that
organizations need to adopt positive and relational leadership, and
redesign performance appraisals to support the new team processes. They
also recommended that organizations discontinue the use of forced
distribution performance ranking systems. We are confident that these
articles will inspire new ideas among researchers in our field, and
foster additional theory and research on these important topics.
