PurposeThis study explicitly explores the moderating role of management quality, at multiple organizational levels, in the relationship between telework and job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs fixed effects regression with clustered robust standard errors at the departmental level to account for the multilevel nature of the data.FindingsThe results of fixed effects analyses suggest that when the quality of one's direct supervisor and the quality of their supervisor's manager is high, the relationship between job satisfaction and telework frequency becomes stronger and positive.Originality/valueThis research illuminates the crucial moderating role of management quality at multiple organizational levels in the relationship between telework and employee job satisfaction during an unprecedented workforce shock.

Human capital is one of the most vital assets an organization possesses. Research has demonstrated that human capital is directly related to performance. Thus, there is a clear incentive for organizations to grow their human capital levels. Not surprisingly, then, organizations have created and employed a wide variety of managerial practices focused on further developing human capital within their employees. Yet even as the U.S. government faces forthcoming human capital shortages due to the ongoing retirements of a large segment of its workforce, empirical research investigating the impact of commonly used human capital development practices on performance in the public sector is scarce. Therefore, to gain a deeper understanding of this dynamic relationship, using U.S. federal personnel data, this study analyzes the impact of human capital development practices on agency performance. The results of longitudinal econometric analyses suggest that human capital development practices have positive effects on agency performance.

Building and retaining human capital stock is critical for organizational success and survival. These two practices, however, may inadvertently be at odds with one another. That is, as organizations seek to increase their human capital stock, through both internal and external strategies, they may also unintentionally increase their risk of voluntary turnover. Research has found support for this relationship in the private sector, yet empirical evidence for such a correlation among public sector organizations is nonexistent. This article, therefore, contributes to the understanding of whether the postulated relationship between human capital and voluntary turnover is generalizable to public sector entities, specifically focusing on U.S. state government. Using longitudinal workforce data from the State of Oklahoma, results of econometric analysis demonstrate that this organizational phenomenon transcends sector boundaries.

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