A notable paradox of HRM research is that while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) form the dominant private sector employer across the globe, they remain dramatically underrepresented in scholarship. This is significant as there are a number of SME specific characteristics that shape HRM in this context, raising questions around the relevance and applicability of dominant understanding of HRM. In this paper we outline six such SME characteristics captured by the acronym RECIPE and outline their implications for HRM. We then introduce seven special issue papers which serve to advance understanding of HRM in SMEs. Drawing together key insights, we conclude by proposing a number of routes for future research and deeper contextualisation of HRM in SMEs. These include broadening the theoretical palette, challenging conventional assumptions, moving beyond an exclusive HPWS focus, incorporating employee perspectives, coupled with the need to cast a wider methodological net.

The medical workforce in Australia is rapidly feminizing, with general practice (GP) seen as an attractive career choice for female doctors looking for greater work flexibility. However, there is evidence of increased female GP turnover, particularly among younger GPs. Drawing on interviews with a sample of 26 Australian female GPs, this study explores how the embodied nature of GP work and gendered organizational processes create inequality regimes founded on gendered normative expectations of GP work, leading to turnover intentions. Then, considering the literature on job crafting, we problematize the notion of employees proactively optimizing their work environment to show how some female GPs work within gender constraints to craft a sustainable medical career, with others failing. These findings contribute to our understanding of the embodied nature of work and as such may better inform both individual decisions and workforce planning policy to reduce GP turnover and sustain Australia's medical workforce.

Background Little is known about gender differences in general practitioner (GP) turnover. It is important to understand potential divergence given both the feminization of the Australian GP workforce and projected shortages of GPs. Objective There is increasing evidence that national health outcomes are related to the extent to which health care systems incorporate high quality primary care. Quality primary care is, in turn reliant on a stable general practice (GP) workforce. With the increasing feminization of medical schools, we sought to identify correlates of turnover in the GP workforce, separately for women and men, focusing particularly on part-time employment and child-rearing, and distinguishing effects related to either planned or unplanned turnover. Methods Annual responses from cohorts of at least 1900 women GPs and 2000 men GPs are used for up to eight waves of the Medicine in Australia-Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) longitudinal survey of doctors. Descriptive and bivariate correlations are provided. Random effects ordered logit is applied to dependent variables for turnover intentions measuring intent to "leave direct care" or "leave medicine". A behavioral measure of turnover is used in random effects logit regressions, with the exclusion or inclusion of the confounding intentions variables revealing correlates of unplanned or planned turnover. Results Part-time employment is associated with turnover intentions among both women (84% or 94% increase in the odds ratios or ORs) and particularly men (414% or 672%), and with actual turnover for women (150% or 49%) and for men (160% or 107%). Women GPs engage in more unplanned turnover than men: they are 85% more likely to engage in turnover after controlling for intentions. Unplanned turnover is concentrated among women below 40 years of age and with young children, even though both groups report below average turnover intentions. Conclusion Although further studies are needed to identify specific factors associated with GP turnover among women, the analysis highlights the need to focus on women GPs who are either young or have young children. Given the substantial personal and social investment required to produce GPs, it is wasteful to lose so many young women early in their careers.

Coser's greedy institution' (GI) theory provides a conceptual lens to examine how institutional structures are negotiated and maintained by precarious workers in the contemporary university. Giddens' theory of structuration assists the analysis of empirical multi-case data generated from the Australian context where young academic workers were interviewed multiple times. This sociological analysis uniquely highlights the reciprocal and recursive processes that contribute to an agentic view of precarious employees who strategically navigate their careers and positions within prescriptive institutional structures. Findings supported the construction of a typology, comprising three agentic types'. The giving' and resisting' types presented depict how structures of greed encourage over-committed enactments from the participants. The insulated' type shows an antithetical portrayal of employment at the university, challenging often legitimated greedy norms in a way that highlights the role of supervisors in constructing workplace practices for precarious workers. The three types' reflect how participants complied with the demands of their work contexts in order to align their identities with institutional values. This article draws Coser into the precarious work literature and offers a socialised view of how the GI can be reproduced in differentiated ways through the agentic work of employees at the university.

For this special issue we seek contributions that enhance our understanding of how workers are recruited, managed and rewarded in social enterprises. Over the last decade, social entrepreneurship h...

Public sector organizations (PSOs) continue to undergo pressures for change due to economic globalization and the changing role of the state, resulting in increased focus on performance management, particularly employee performance appraisal. New public management's emphasis on transparency, accountability, efficiency and performance highlights the multiple and often conflicting roles and performance outcomes of PSOs, the social and economic contexts in which PSOs operate, and the multiple ways they measure and manage performance. Responding to this special issue and calls for a richer understanding of performance management in PSOs we examine the impact of context on performance appraisal in Chinese PSOs. As China continues its transitions to a market-driven economy, Chinese PSOs have engaged in managerial reforms to improve governance, efficiency and productivity, including the strategic implementation of western-based HRM practices to manage employee performance. Our analysis demonstrates the challenges context poses for analysing HRM practices in Chinese PSOs.

In this essay, we develop a new argument about how the concept of embeddedness and a sensemaking approach can be used to theorise small firms' regulatory responses, especially to employment regulation. We want to move beyond the simplistic and narrow conceptualisations of resistant action in small firms in response to regulation. We contribute to theorising on small firms' regulatory responses by developing an embedded account of social action that takes us beyond the dichotomy of individualised (micro) and institutional accounts (macro) explanations of firm behaviour. Our argument emphasises the situatedness of small firm behaviour shaped by, and in turn shaping, the contexts in which they are embedded. We go beyond stereotypes to give a nuanced account of situated action. In conclusion, we briefly outline how our ideas can be operationalised to explain small firms' diverse responses to regulation.

There is a lack of agreement on the actual impact of performance evaluation used for different purposes on the evaluated people and their job performance in different contexts. Addressing the gap, this paper aims to examine the relationships between the monitoring and decision making purposes of performance evaluation for middle-level cadres, the perceived role conflict of the evaluated cadres, and cadres‘ task performance and organizational citizenship behavior in the context of Chinese public universities. We conduct a mixed-method research design combing surveys and interviews. This paper reports the findings of the quantitative research phase. We conduct a cross-sectional survey with 693 employees across 82 working units of a large public university in the Southwest of China. We find that ( 1) the monitoring and decision making purposes of performance evaluation are highly correlated; ( 2 ) middle cadres perceived role conflict does not mediate the relationships between the two purposes of performance evaluation and the two dimensions of job performance; and ( 3 ) Chinese unique cultural and institutional contextual factors have largely impacted the effectiveness of performance evaluation practice.

Smaller firms are often viewed as resistant to regulation due to cost burdens. However, evidence indicates that for some compliance is beneficial under certain conditions. Drawing on data on attitudes and responses of smaller firm owner-managers to changes in Australia’s harmonising work health and safety context we report on smaller firms’ responses to these changes. Despite uncertainty due to incomplete harmonisation, many owner-managers viewed safety compliance as important and necessary to do business. Those with negative views still linked positive safety performance to business outcomes. We categorise smaller firms’ responses and in this sample most are Positive Responders. We suggest ways forward for policy-makers to support smaller firms in complying with occupational health and safety regulation.

For countries such as Australia exporting education is recognised as an important contributor to the nation’s economy. The embodiment of this export industry in Australia is the presence of international students in tertiary institutions across the country. Despite their considerable contribution to social, political, cultural and economic life, there have been recent examples of violence, exploitation and discrimination against international students in Australia. To understand how international students are both welcomed and excluded from Australian life, we use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyse news reports published in an Australian national newspaper from 2009 to 2011. Following van Dijk (Ideology: a multidisciplinary approach, Sage, Thousand Oaks, 1998) we view newspapers as ideological institutions that mobilise discursive power to polarise public opinion to support their ideological agenda(s). In the case of international students we use CDA to show how media discourses construct international students in ways that commodify their participation in higher education and marginalise them as the excluded ‘other’ in Australian society. Our conceptual and analytical approach has broader implications for national higher education policy and international student experience by exposing the social inequalities that accompany globalised international education.

Small firms are popularly viewed as resistant to complying with regulation. Harmonisation of Australia’s state-based work health and safety regimes is a significant regulatory change. In this article, we consider the likely responses of small firms to work health and safety harmonisation and argue that a range of choices are open to small firm owner-managers. These choices are shaped by individuals’ world views and are influenced by elements in the firms’ context. A significant element is the public narrative of work health and safety harmonisation, which can be understood by using discourse and sense-making concepts. Our analysis of small firm owner-manager choices takes into account small firms’ embeddedness in their regulatory context and the influence on organisational decision-making of the narrative of work health and safety harmonisation. The dominant narrative is arguably silent on the benefits of the work health and safety regulatory change and therefore the response of small firms is likely to be avoidance or minimalism. Non-compliance could be the result due to poor awareness of opportunities arising from this regulatory change.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore suzhi requirements and expectations to double-shouldered academics as middle-level cadres (sic) in a Chinese higher education institute (HEI) as an initial step to examine the interplays between suzhi requirement and expectations and organizational operational mechanism in the Chinese context.Design/methodology/approach - The study adopted an exploratory single-case approach for the study. In this study, 22 participants composed of middle-level cadres, other stakeholders at the university, college/department and business unit levels were interviewed.Findings - Suzhi requirements for the cadres followed the Communist Party of China's (CPC) guideline, the required de, neng, qin, ji and lian (sic) was abstract and vague. With the parallel systems, the CPC and administrative lines, there were discrepancies between the CPC required suzhi and those expected by the stakeholders. A social phenomenon, "official rank-oriented standard" (ORS, guan ben wei, (sic)), was found significantly intertwining with the self suzhi expectation of the cadres, unveiling a more complex dynamics than most research reported for the Chinese public sector organizations (PSOs).Researchimplications - With the initial qualitative findings unveiling suzhi as an organizational construct, this study informs future empirical research in the indigenous suzhi phenomenon in organizational setting. The conceptualized results of our study offer new insight for future indigenous Chinese management research in all PSOs including state-owned enterprises (SOEs).Originality/value - As an initial step, this study endeavored to explore suzhi as an organizational construct in a Chinese HEI. The paper contributes to the literature by unveiling the complexity of PSOs in the interplays of dual management systems and ORS coupled with dual-role suzhi requirements for the cadres.

Harmonisation of state-based occupational health and safety (OHS) regimes is a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) initiative designed to ‘cut red tape’ for Australian firms. However Western Australia’s, South Australia’s and Victoria’s lack of harmonisation makes it problematic for firms that conduct business in multiple jurisdictions. In this paper we investigate what impacts harmonisation has on firms generally and specifically smaller, multijurisdictional firms. First, we look at the requirements of the model WHS Act and what it said about managerial responsibilities for OHS. We focus on the due diligence clause which places personal liability on company directors or persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCUBs) for breaches in their duty. As a new duty, this also increases complexity for small, multi-jurisdictional firms depending on the jurisdiction in which they operate and the legislation to which they need to attend. We then question how these small firms may deal with this problem and draw on findings of a study where the impact of the harmonisation on safety professionals and training design and delivery was explored. Although the focus was not specifically on small firms, the data suggests small firms do not use dedicated safety professionals and instead rely on industry associations to understand their OHS obligations. Indeed, some small firms attempt to avoid compliance entirely, until ordered by regulators to comply. This is a risky strategy as the costs of being found guilty of a breach or non-compliance are significant. Moreover, small, multi-jurisdictional firms need to be conversant with at least two sets of OHS legislation with differing requirements and levels of penalties. The paper contributes to the debate on small firm regulation and shows that despite attempts to ease the regulatory burden in smaller firms that operate across state borders, complexity remains.

Exporting education is an important contributor to many Western economies, including Australia. Scholars argue the production and consumption of higher education produces inequalities due to a complex array of global, economic, political and ideological forces that impact on global education activities. International students come to Australia from around the world; bringing with them export income, social diversity and, in recent times, perceived social problems as evidenced by examples of violence, exploitation and discrimination. In this paper, we use critical discourse analysis (CDA), specifically van Dijk’s (2009) socio-cognitive approach, as an analytic paradigm to examine a corpus of articles from a mainstream Australian national newspaper. Interested in the ideological effects of media discourses, we use CDA to expose and combat what we identify as unjust and inequitable discourses promulgated through the media that construct international students in particular and problematic ways that marginalise them as the excluded ‘other’ in Australian society. The analysis and theoretical approach used here has broader implications for exposing systems of social dominance and the unequal distribution of power that is hidden by discourses produced by the conservative mainstream media. Evidence from analysis of Australian media reports sheds light on social inequalities that accompany globalised international education.

Over the last twenty years or so the number of international students in Australia has grown rapidly. At the same time, official responsibility for providing support to international students has been devolved from governments to educational institutions. In this paper we argue that while education institutions have a significant role in supporting international students, there is a large gap in social support provided to them when off-campus. This is a gap which we believe could be filled by local government, to provide international students with greater integration and security when they are off campus. The ideas outlined in this paper are based on a critical examination of international students' experience in Australia and are intended to contribute to and advance recent debates about the safety, security and value of international students to Australian society. We argue that international students' status as temporary visitors creates the conditions for social exclusion, that is, an inability to engage fully in the economic, cultural, social and political aspects of Australian life. In light of this, we suggest that local government, especially as it relates to the provision of human services, has a role in helping international students access social support services. We argue that local government can be instrumental in ensuring the social inclusion of international students in our communities. This, we suggest, would improve international students' overall study experience and contribute to their greater integration and participation in the Australian community.

To show how research and teaching, core academic activities are discursively shaped through policy discussion we critically identify and examine the institutional effects of senior academics' discourses on research-led teaching. The analysis sheds light on the interrelationship between university policy and the powerful and productive effects of senior management 'talk' in framing the object of policy, the relations between research and teaching. Our approach moves analysis of the teaching and research relationship beyond system-wide debates and challenges, to a detailed study of the effects of institutional ideology and attendant discourses. Our analysis of senior academic managers' interview data reveals that implicit in the call to construct a stronger alignment between teaching and research, is the valorisation of research at the expense of teaching and learning which is problematised and devalued. Our contention is that policy implementation based on these simplified assumptions may well strengthen university research outcomes but in doing so may prove unsuccessful in improving teaching and learning outcomes. The contribution of our analysis is that it surfaces complexities that underpin apparently instrumental and normative institutional policy prescriptions and in so doing contributes to a deeper understanding of the political and practical effects of senior managers' views on policy implementation.

In recent times significant change has occurred to the Australian health and safety regulatory context. In this paper we consider the potential response of smaller firms in general, and ethnic owned and/or operated smaller firms in particular. We draw on literature examining smaller firms' responses to regulation and apply this to what little we know about smaller ethnic firms in Australia in the context of the regulatory change. We highlight the challenges to owner managers and what could be done to engage and support smaller ethnic firms to realise the opportunities resulting from this regulatory change.