Ji-Young Ahn

This study analyzes the effect of reducing working time to a 40-hour week standard on employment, using the data of 1,961 publicly traded firms in Korea. The objective of the study is to empirically estimate the economy-wide effect of this working hours reduction on employment in Korea. This paper also attempts to uncover the effect of financial constraints, defined as the degree of accessibility to finance, on employment stability or sustainability. Some economic theories suggest that financial constraints have mixed or conflicting effects on employment. Building on labor and finance literature such as Garmaise (2007), easing financial constraints helps firms to optimally substitute capital for labor, thereby decreasing employment. Likewise, financially constrained firms are limited by the availability of internal funds, and a decrease in the external financing cost will increase firm-level human resource investment, such as employment. Using a longitudinal data on publicly listed companies in Korea, the author examines variations in the timing of implementing the working hours reduction in terms of establishment size to see if the effect of working hours reduction on employment differs with the degree of financial constraints of firms. This paper finds that the economy-wide effect on employment of work-hours reduction is positive, approximately 3.5% increase in employment. The results, however, show that there is no effect of the working hours reduction on employment in less financially constrained firms or larger corporations, whereas a substantial positive effect on employment is in smaller firms or financially constrained firms, supporting the Garmaise’s prediction.

This study revisits the relationship between job stress and turnover intention for employees using a sample of employees in public companies of Korea. The authors investigate both the effect of job stress on turnover and the process by which job stress affects employee turnover. In particular, they prove that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between stress and turnover intention of the employees. Furthermore, the authors explore the job stress-turnover relationship by extending a review of the organizational justice perspective and posit whether an employee perceived organizational justice could mitigate the presumed adverse effects of job stress on turnover intention. They suggest empirical evidence that there is a significant positive relationship between job stress and turnover intention, and that job satisfaction partially mediates this relationship. However, the authors found no strong evidence of moderating roles of perceived organizational justice. Based on the job demands-resources (JDR) model, the relationship between job stress and turnover intention is evidenced. Besides, the study implies that the incidence of perceived organizational justice fails to mitigate the effect of these value-decreasing job stressors on employee turnover.

Many organizations are willing to increase human capital investment through various employee training programs. This study empirically examines a proposed model that explains the relationship between the different types of employee training, including general and firm-specific training and employee turnover in Korean firms. This study used a survey sample of 10,069 employees in 467 publicly traded firms in South Korea. 78% of participating companies provided training programs to the employees. This study conducted quantitative cross-sectional regression analyses to test the hypotheses. The study suggests empirical evidence that general training and firm-specific training reduce employee turnover intention. Moreover, the magnitude of firm-specific training on turnover intention is much higher than general training. Furthermore, employee organizational identification has a partial mediating effect on training and turnover intention. However, the study found no substantial evidence of the moderating effect of employees’ justice perception of receiving training opportunities. Based on the human capital theory and social exchange perspective, the results indicate that both types of training programs help employee retention, and cultivating employee organizational identification can be critical in the training-turnover process.

Sustainable human resource management has gained significant attention and importance over the past years. The present paper aims to review the sustainable HRM literature by identifying the existing research clusters relating to the field and analyzing the common themes per cluster to organize the intellectual base on the topic and identify possible research gaps. There has been a consistent increase in research publications since 2017. The cluster analysis conducted in the present study presented the current state of research per type of sustainable HRM, with over 60% of studies relating to green HRM. General sustainable HRM follows this with 27% and socially responsible HRM – with 11%. In addition, the review sample extracted from the Scopus database showed how sustainable HRM involved CSR, sustainable development, environmental management, and supply chain management.
Moreover, it showed how it could be linked with other disciplines, different contextual variables, and possibilities for cross-disciplinary studies. Furthermore, the results show that much research has concentrated on the green HRM cluster, followed by general sustainable and socially responsible HRM clusters. This paper provided an opportunity to see in a comprehensive way what research is being done per cluster and find the possible research gaps in the current body of literature.