Issue Information ‐ TOC

• Date: 01 July 2016
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21752

JULY/AUGUST 2016 VOLUME 55, NUMBER 4

ARTICLES

HOW STRATEGIC FOCUS RELATES TO THE DELIVERY OF LEADERSHIP

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

NICHOLAS CLARKE AND MALCOLM HIGGS 541

Despite progress in the development of leadership development models over recent years,

these models fail to account for the differentiation in leadership training and development (LTD)

practices found between organizations. We conducted an exploratory, multiple case study of

formal leadership training and development in 10 organizations, in different business sectors

in the United Kingdom. We show that the strategic focus of LTD was shaped by the business

goals pursued by these 10 organizations. We also found the strategic focus of LTD to be a broad

contingency factor differentiated by level of impact, which then influenced the pattern of LTD

delivery. The findings offer support for a contingency perspective in explaining how leadership

training and development is confi gured in differing organizational contexts.

TO THINE SHAREHOLDERS BE TRUE? LINKING LARGE CORPORATE

OWNERSHIP TO FIRMS’ USE OF COMMITMENT HUMAN RESOURCE

PRACTICES

FRANK MULLINS, PAMELA BRANDES, AND RAVI DHARWADKAR 567

Human resource practitioners and academics have increasingly realized the importance of

corporate governance for firm human resource activities. This study investigates how one

important form of corporate governance, namely, ownership within large, publicly traded firms,

is associated with a firm’s use of commitment human resource practices (CHRPs), specifi cally,

the use of incentive compensation, profi t sharing, and participative decision making. Our

findings indicate that the types of large investor, namely, family and institutional, are differentially

associated with the likelihood of the firm using these CHRPs. Specifi cally, family owners with

their long-term investment horizon, as well as their stakeholder orientation, increase the likelihood

of the firm using these practices. In contrast, large institutional owners with their shorter-term

investment horizon, as well as their investor orientation, decrease the likelihood of the firm using

these practices. Furthermore, among institutional investors, transient institutional investors

are negatively associated with these practices, while dedicated institutional investors are not

associated with these practices. Taken together, our results regarding the positive association of

family ownership and this subset of CHRPs and the negative association of transient institutional

investors and this set of practices, have important implications for human resource professionals

who not only need to understand how ownership affects HR practices but also how to articulate

the value of these investments in order to attract investors.

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

(continued)

Volume 55, Number 4 was mailed the week of July 18, 2016