Issue Information ‐ TOC

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21748
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016

MAY/JUNE 2016 VOLUME 55, NUMBER 3

ARTICLES

INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE INTURBULENT ENVIRONMENTS: THE ROLE

OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING CAPABILITY ANDEMPLOYEE FLEXIBILITY

JOAQUÍN CAMPS, VÍCTOR OLTRA, JOAQUÍN ALDÁS-MANZANO, GUILLERMO BUENAVENTURA-VERA,

AND FEDERICO TORRES-CARBALLO 363

Organizational learning capability (OLC) and employee flexibility help firms navigate the

challenges faced by organizations operating in turbulent environments. OLC includes dimensions

such as experimentation, risk taking, openness, dialogue, and participative decision making.

Employee flexibility is considered a crucial tool for strategic human resource management in

tackling environmental turbulence. Accordingly, we pose the following research question: how, and

to what extent, is individual performance enhanced by OLC and employee flexibility in turbulent

environments? The major impact that environmental turbulence has on change and flexibility

requirements suggests that employee flexibility plays an important role in the impact OLC has

on individual performance. However, we found no prior studies that explicitly analyzed this

mediating function of employee flexibility. In this study, we tested three hypotheses that link OLC

and individual performance, OLC and employee flexibility, and employee flexibility and individual

performance. We applied a structural equation methodology, using partial least squares path

modeling, to a sample of 174 academics at a Latin American university (a highly turbulent context).

Our results show employee flexibility fully mediates the relation between OLC and individual

performance given the presence of environmental turbulence.

AGE AND ASSESSMENTS OF DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION REQUEST

NORMATIVE APPROPRIATENESS

DAVID C. BALDRIDGE AND MICHELE L. SWIFT 385

In the United States, the labor force continues to age. As age increases, so does the likeliness

of needing disability accommodation. Prior research indicates that people with disabilities often

do not request needed accommodations when they assess that others at work would perceive a

request as normatively inappropriate. Little, however, is currently known about the impact of age

on these assessments. In this study, we integrate prior research on age, disability, social identity,

and climate to propose and then test a model of the relationship between requesters’ age and

their normative assessments using survey data from 242 people who became hearing impaired

prior to entering the workforce. As hypothesized, requester age was negatively associated with

normative appropriateness assessment favorability. Moreover, this negative influence was stronger

in for-profit organizational contexts and in workgroup contexts in which the requester lacked a

coworker with a disability. Having a coworker with a similar disability also partially mediated

the moderating effect of organization type on the association between age and normative

appropriateness assessment favorability. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

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Volume 55, Number 3 was mailed the week of May 16, 2016