Balancing organizational and professional commitments in professional service firms : the HR practices that matter

Due to their potential to positively influence sales quality and performance and reduce employee turnover in service organizations, HR practices targeting employee commitment have received considerable attention in the HRM literature in recent years. Parallel to this, there has been increasing focus on the nature of commitment, and in particular the existence of multiple commitment foci. In this paper, we examine how HR practices influence professionals' commitment to their organization, to their profession or to both organization and profession, in a qualitative study of three Danish financial investment firms. Our findings suggest that in professional service firms, HR practices encourage high levels of organizational commitment primarily and most often through their influence on professional commitment and that HR practices related to flexible work design are essential in creating balance between an employee's commitment to organization and commitment to their profession. Further, the findings suggest that these same HR practices may foster such high levels of professional commitment that labor turnover will increase when opportunities for pursuing professional goals afforded by work design are restricted.

A story about being engaged in research : buzzing bees, small business and Australian unfair dismissal laws

Protection for employees from unfair dismissal (UFD) has been around in Australia under various guises for 30 years or so (Chapman, 2006). Labour standards, and particularly ILO Convention 158 (Convention Concerning Termination of Employment at the Initiative of the Employer 1982), underpin the adoption of a particular form of federal statutory UFD regime which first appeared in the 1993 reforms to the Industrial Relations Act 1998 (Commonwealth). Its existence, however, has not been uncontroversial, and the meaning, operation, scope and remedies have attracted attention over time. In fact, the first reforms to the federal UFD regime were undertaken under the Keating Labor government three months after they were enacted (Chapman, ibid.). Further reforms were made by the incoming Howard Liberal-national coalition government through the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Commonwealth) (WRA), and arguably these reforms continued down the ‘contraction’ path (ibid.).