Mutual Gains Research Articles

From Control to Mutual Gains: A Systematic Review and Repositioning of Flexible Working

Flexible working has been increasingly used by employees as a work practice for juggling career pressures alongside other aspects of life. The COVID-19 pandemic catapulted flexible work to normative work status, temporarily if not permanently. As employees and employers navigate complex social expectations and environments, the mutual gains stemming from flexible work are increasingly valuable to individual careers, organizations, and society. Despite its rising value and usage, minimal research explores flexible working holistically to understand its purpose and significance. Our systematic review addresses this gap by investigating the multiple meanings of flexible working presented by scholars in order to understand its nature as well as exploring how the practice of flexible working has evolved. A review of the scope, prevalence, and context of prior research reveals the need for greater clarity in conceptualizing flexible work and identifies the changing nature of key drivers that influence the requirement for flexibility. The review finds evidence of two paradigmatic shifts. First, previous studies generally explore flexible work in relation to a paradigm of power whereby organizations control employees. Second, the review reveals the emergence of a neo-ideal worker, an employee that achieves agreed outcomes but is not expected to do so within the confines of the office environment. By raising the level of investigation and exploring flexible working at the phenomenon level this review exposes a pivot away from the construct of power towards mutual gain. These shifts in thinking regarding flexible working have significant implications for employee careers and management practice.

Building an Automated win-win Negotiation Process Model

This paper builds an automated negotiation process model for integrative negotiations. The process model defines and automates the necessary phases and activities along with the integrative negotiation approach principles to create win-win outcomes that mutually satisfy negotiating parties. However, to realize this objective, the negotiation literature and theories are reviewed to determine the relevant theories for integrative negotiations that help to develop and form the basis of the process model. After investigation, it became evident that three main theories, which are Decision Theory, Rational Choice Theory and Mutual Gains Theory, contribute to building the integrative process model by setting its phases and components. The model is composed of five main phases with several sub-phases. Decision theory with mutual gains theory provides the robust process model through several phases, and rational choice theory with mutual gains theory ensures they are implemented in a fair, objective manner to come up with a satisfying win-win solution. Hence, automated negotiation processes when designed in a robust manner that is based on the theory that serves integrative approaches could lead to win-win negotiation outcomes. The foundation of the win-win negotiation process model contributes to designing win-win negotiation outcomes through structuring automated negotiation and setting its phases along with the integrative negotiation principles. It develops the negotiation field by integrating automation and the integrative approach principles in a process model.

Mutual Gains from Eurasian Railway Connectivity

This paper analyzes the relationship between Eurasian rail services (especially the China–EU services that have flourished since 2011) and the overland “Belt” part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The initial market-driven stimulus was from car and electronics firms linking their East Asian and European production networks, and the establishment of Eurasian value chains remains an important theme. As regular rail freight services between China and Europe became more frequent, between more termini and offering more ancillary services, trade costs were reduced along the BRI Belt with mutual benefits for Asian and European countries. The paper first documents the growth and current status of the overland rail freight services; the sound economic foundation for the rail services and the continued growth of traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic indicate the sustainability of this part of the BRI. It then discusses the relationship of the Eurasian rail services to the wider BRI, emphasizing the importance of multiple routes and of connections to ports. Finally, the paper reviews the literature on the economic gains from improved rail connectivity and on the relationship between hard and soft infrastructure. The principal conclusion is that market-driven commercial incentives, public policies and the BRI have contributed to the success of the Belt mainlines and links to Indian Ocean ports are expected to integrate the currently separate Belt and Road.

“Ambiguous, Confusing, and Not Delivering Enough Housing”

Problem, research strategy, and findings Responsibility for affordable housing delivery is increasingly being delivered through collaborations between private, nonprofit, and state actors and operationalized through voluntary negotiations. Negotiation theory provides a lens for understanding why outcomes are often limited by highlighting the impact of stakeholder interests, the potential for mutual gains, trust between negotiating partners, and access to information. We surveyed 148 housing stakeholders in the state of Victoria (Australia) shortly after the passage of legislation that supported the negotiation of voluntary affordable housing agreements. We found that stakeholders share a belief in the necessity of affordable housing. However, the current institutional context often precludes opportunities for mutual gain because there is little incentive to engage in negotiations, provision of sufficient incentives is problematic, and contributions are difficult to enforce. We found large discrepancies in levels of training in development feasibility across sectors and low trust between negotiation participants. We argue that these factors are likely to reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of voluntary affordable housing negotiations in Victoria and other jurisdictions with weak institutional arrangements for affordable housing negotiations. Takeaway for practice Across sectors, respondents prefer mandatory rather than voluntary affordable housing provisions. Voluntary affordable housing negotiations are unlikely to be effective without institutional scaffolding to ensure that negotiations result in mutual gains for stakeholders. Planners should pair the introduction of voluntary affordable housing negotiations with training resources for the stakeholders who will participate in negotiations as well as mechanisms for enforcing negotiated agreements.

Creating Mutual Gains to Leverage a Racially Diverse Workforce: The Effects of Firm-Level Racial Diversity on Financial and Workforce Outcomes Under the Use of Broad-Based Stock Options

Despite substantial scholarly attention to workforce demographic diversity, existing research is limited in understanding whether or in what contexts firm-level racial diversity relates to performance and workforce outcomes of the firm. Drawing on social interdependence theory along with insights from social exchange and psychological ownership theories, we propose that the use of broad-based stock options granted to at least half the workforce creates the conditions supporting a positive relationship between workforce racial diversity and firm outcomes. We examine this proposition by analyzing panel data from 155 companies that applied for the “100 Best Companies to Work For” competition with responses from 109,314 employees over the five-year period from 2006 to 2010 (354 company-year observations). Findings revealed that racial diversity was positively related to subsequent firm financial performance and individual affective commitment and was not significantly associated with subsequent voluntary turnover rates, when accompanied by a firm’s adoption of broad-based stock options. However, under the nonuse of broad-based stock options, racial diversity was significantly related to higher voluntary turnover rates and lower employee affective commitment, with no financial performance gains. By documenting the beneficial effects of financial incentives in diverse workplaces, this paper extends theory asserting the value of incentives for performance.

Bridging Chinese Foreign Policy Studies and Foreign Policy Analysis: Towards a Research Agenda for Mutual Gains

Building foreign policy theories with Chinese characteristics has long been an aspiration of Chinese scholars, but has not resulted in much globally recognized achievements to date. This review essay begins with an overview of the obstacles to reaching this goal: confusion over the concept of theory, over-emphasis on policy prescription, confusion between the subject and object of study, restrictions on access to research materials, and lack of methodological diversity. To overcome these obstacles, we argue Chinese scholars should bring Chinese foreign policy studies (CFPS) into the larger field of comparative foreign policy analysis (FPA), and take advantage of FPA’s rich arsenal of methodological tools and theoretical lenses to conduct insightful and rigorous analysis and theory building. Such an effort will not only facilitate the construction of foreign policy theory with Chinese characteristics but also contribute Chinese wisdom to FPA theory building, making it a truly global field of study.

Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too? The Practical Challenges Executives Face with the Mutual Gains Approach to Negotiations

Winning a negotiation is undeniably the most desirable outcome for most negotiators. Unfortunately, a focus on one-sided gains rarely leads to sustainable agreements. In today`s competitive business environment it is therefore essential to reach a negotiation outcome that not only bridges the interests of both parties, but also enforces the relationship between them. While the idea that negotiators should strive towards mutually acceptable solutions has already been examined in literature, few studies address the practical challenges that executives face when they apply the mutual gains approach to negotiations in modern business practice. 
 This article introduces a systematic 6-step process, which encompasses the key elements of the mutual gains approach to negotiation and the challenges that business executives typically face with the application of each element. The study provides a straightforward and user-friendly framework that can be used to prepare for a negotiation or at any time during a negotiation to avoid the most common mistakes and boost the chances of reaching executable agreements.

Ideology, Expertise, and Industrial Transformations with Mutual Gains: Developmental Professionals in Nicaragua’s Cheese Industry

How might industrial transformations with mutual gains unfold in late-developer contexts devoid of the state’s helping hand or the pedagogical guidance of multinational buyers in global value chains? This article addresses this question through the study of a deviant case focused on a set of seven cheese-processing cooperatives in Nicaragua. It traces the cooperatives’ adoption of a new, upgraded “Gebhardian” organizational model—incorporating improvements in primary production and export-oriented processing—to the actions of a team of “developmental professionals” employed by foreign aid agencies. Drawing on ideational accounts in political science and sociology, the article then suggests that two explanatory factors set these professionals apart from other comparable actors: their adherence to a social democratic ideology and their base of expert knowledge. It also highlights the prerevolutionary collective experience of targeted rancher communities, which is reminiscent of Hirschman’s conserved “social energy,” as an indispensable background condition for the transformation.

Mutual Gains Success and Failure: Two Case Studies of Annual Hours in Ireland

Abstract This paper examines the conditions under which annual hours (AH) are likely to succeed or fail and the role of workplace partnership in delivering mutual gains. We explore two case studies, in one company with a positive experience and in a second where AH were regarded as a failed initiative. The case studies are constructed from interviews with trade union and management representatives in the companies involved; from secondary sources and from a worker survey. The findings echo previous research that AH can deliver mutual gains in both the presence and absence of workplace partnership (Author and Author, 2016) and that delivery of real mutual gains is the key driver of the long term viability of AH. However, the balance of mutual gains is subject to change and is strongly influenced by structural factors determining the suitability of AH to the particular enterprise.

Mutual Gains? Health‐Related HRM, Collective Well‐Being and Organizational Performance

AbstractResearch on the effects of HR management on employees’ psychological well‐being has yielded inconclusive results. Moreover, prior works remain unclear on whether human resource practices specifically aimed at enhancing employee well‐being also benefit organizational performance. Building on signaling theory and conservation of resources theory, our study investigates the relationship between health‐related human resource management (HHRM), employees’ collective well‐being (in terms of collective emotional exhaustion and collective engagement) and organizational performance. Results from a multi‐source field study of top management team members, HR representatives, and 15,952 employees in 88 organizations reveal a positive indirect relationship between HHRM and employees’ collective well‐being, which is mediated by employees’ positive stress mindset. In addition, we find this positive indirect association to depend on the level of transformational leadership climate in organizations. Finally, our findings also show a positive indirect relationship between HHRM and company performance, mediated by employees’ positive stress mindset and collective engagement.

Signals of support: flexible work for mutual gain

Even where organizational policy provides for flexible work arrangements (FWAs), uptake of FWAs depends on employee perceptions of supervisor and organizational support for flexible work. Supervisor support has previously been identified as having significant influence on employee uptake of FWAs as supervisors can encourage or discourage FWA use. Supervisors work within an organizational context, so understanding how that organizational context shapes supervisor support is critical to improving FWA implementation. Incorporating both signaling theory and HR process theory, this case study of an Australian insurance organization examines the signals of support for FWAs that exist within an organization, and the influence of these signals, both explicit and implicit, on supervisor implementation of FWAs. The findings demonstrate how organizational statements, infrastructure investment, senior manager behavior, and organizational discourse shape supervisor support for FWAs. Theoretically, the study demonstrates that signals are an important feature of a strong HR system and can lead to a discourse of mutual gains which ultimately limits the use of particular FWAs, despite policy ostensibly supporting them. More broadly, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how the implementation of HR policy can differ from HR policy intent.

Liderazgo femenino y felicidad en el trabajo: el papel mediador del intercambio líder-colaborador

Objetivo: el objetivo de este artículo es examinar el papel del liderazgo femenino en la felicidad en el trabajo de sus colaboradores. Además, se analiza el papel mediador de la relación entre el líder y el colaborador, entendida como el intercambio líder-colaborador (LMX). Método: se ha utilizado la encuesta como método de investigación; se analizaron datos cuantitativos a nivel individual a través de modelos de ecuaciones estructurales. La muestra está compuesta por 292 empleados no directivos del sector hotelero español, para los que se analiza su percepción individual acerca de las variables objeto de estudio. Resultados: los resultados revelan que el liderazgo femenino ejerce un papel clave para fomentar la felicidad en el trabajo, lo cual se ve potenciado a través de la relación entre el líder y el colaborador. Conclusiones: desde el punto de vista teórico, esta investigación aporta un importante avance a la teoría de demandas y recursos, así como a la teoría de los acontecimientos afectivos; las competencias femeninas del líder actuarían como un recurso que genera actitudes positivas, el cual, con base en el modelo de ganancias mutuas tendría efectos en la mejora de la productividad laboral de los colaboradores. Desde un enfoque práctico, la mejora de las relaciones líder-colaborador y de la felicidad en el trabajo, generadas por el liderazgo femenino, permiten conocer que las competencias demostradas por las mujeres deberían de potenciarse también en los hombres con funciones directivas.

Special Issue: “Human Resources and Mutual Gains in Family Firms” Call for papers

Special Issue: “Human Resources and Mutual Gains in Family Firms” Call for papers

Strengthening Planning’s Effectiveness in a Hyper-Polarized World/Responding to the Conservative Common Sense of Opposition to Planning and Development in England/The Limits to Negotiation and the Promise of Refusal/Planning Contexts in a Hyper-Polarized World/A Right to Sanctuary: Supporting Immigrant Communities in an Era of Extreme Precarity/Planning and Climate Change: Opportunities and Challenges in a Politically Contested Environment/Speaking with the Middle 40%

Strengthening Planning’s Effectiveness in a Hyper-Polarized World/Responding to the Conservative Common Sense of Opposition to Planning and Development in England/The Limits to Negotiation and the Promise of Refusal/Planning Contexts in a Hyper-Polarized World/A Right to Sanctuary: Supporting Immigrant Communities in an Era of Extreme Precarity/Planning and Climate Change: Opportunities and Challenges in a Politically Contested Environment/Speaking with the Middle 40%

Negotiation as the Art of the Deal

We develop a theory of negotiation in which deals have multiple dimensions that can be bundled together. We use theory and experiments to show that in such settings efficient trade is possible even with substantial asymmetric information. The benefits of identifying areas of mutual gain guide agents away from posturing and manipulating their share of the pie, and instead to finding the deals that maximize their mutual gains from trade.

Hpws in the Public Sector: Are There Mutual Gains?

Few studies investigate the links between high-performance work systems (HPWS) on public sector organizational performance and worker job attitudes. We fill this gap with analyses of these links using linked employer-employee surveys of workplaces in Britain in 2004 and 2011. We find robust evidence of positive associations between the use of HPWS and organizational performance in the public sector but no associations with worker attitudes. The implication is that, in contrast to similar work on the private sector in the United States (Appelbaum et al., 2000) HPWS is not delivering mutual gains for employers and employees in the British public sector.

Mutual Gains? Is There a Role for Employee Engagement in the Modern Workplace?

I examine the history of employee engagement and how it has been characterised by thinkers in sociology, psychology, management and economics. I suggest that, while employers may choose to invest in employee engagement, there are alternative management strategies that may be profit-maximising. I identify four elements of employee engagement – job 'flow', autonomous working, involvement in decision-making at workplace or firm level, and financial participation – and present empirical evidence on their incidence and employee perceptions of engagement, drawing primarily from evidence in Britain. I consider the evidence regarding the existence of mutual gains and present new evidence on the issue. I find a non-linear relationship between human resource management (HRM) intensity and various employee job attitudes. I also find the intensity of HRM use and employee engagement are independently associated with improvements in workplace performance. I consider the implications of the findings for policy and employment practice in the future.

An Integrative HRM Process Theorization: Beyond Signalling Effects and Mutual Gains

abstractHow and for whom HRM creates value are key questions in management research. The present study develops and tests an integrative HRM process theorization positing the existence of mutually reinforcing ability–motivation–opportunity, signalling, and identity‐based control mechanisms of the influence of HRM on both employee performance and work intensification. In addition to providing empirical support for the ‘how’ of value creation through HRM, the study contributes to the growing critique of the dominant mutual‐gains perspective, the notion that HRM outcomes are straightforwardly positive for both employers and employees. The integrative theorization also opens up interesting avenues for future research on the individual and organizational performance effects of HRM.

Interest Based Mutual Gains Bargaining

Interest Based Mutual Gains Bargaining

The Interactive Business Case Approach for Multiple Land Use: More Efficiency, Less Costs!

This paper describes Interactive Business Case Approach (IBCA) in a participatory planning setting concerning multifunctional land use, as an instrument for climate adaptation strategies. Multifunctional land use is an solution to optimize the use of scare spatial resources, especially in densely populated areas such as the Netherlands. Multifunctional land use is also a strategy to deal with the effects of climate change and social economic trends. The goal of IBCA is to provide an approach to handle the complexity of multi functional land use. Due to different stakeholders, each with their own perspective, interest and different gains on the short and longer term. IBCA brings the short and longer-term interests together by creating business ideas, business cases and business plans together with stakeholders. The approach focuses on the opportunities by which the concept of multifunctional land use can give added value to the area. Stakeholders become shareholders, and mutual gains become small cooperation’s or companies. The IBCA is applied to different scale projects in The Netherlands. One project focused on the whole province of Noord-Brabant, especially the sandy rural regions. The other project focused on a large-scale construction project of Rijkswaterstaat, which comprises the extension of a ship lock, and broadens a busy waterway. It showed that IBCA poses challenges to both content (planning and design) and process (governance). New combinations of agriculture, ecology and leisure also require new coalitions of stakeholders, supported by new financial, legal or policy instruments. The advantages and disadvantages of the application of IBCA on different scales is compared in a SWOT analysis which is then compared with the Mutual Gains Approach.