Although much research has examined human resource management (HRM), managers’ roles in HRM seem to have been ancillary to this area of research. That is, HRM theory and research largely has advanced with a focus on policies, practices, systems, and their implementation and effectiveness, with less attention focused on the managers responsible for the design, adoption, enactment, and implementation of HRM strategy and practice. The purpose of this review is to examine extant research to determine the state of knowledge of the role of managers across organizational hierarchy in HRM. Thus, we review empirical literature for studies that include aspects of the impact lower-to-middle managers, human resource managers, top management teams, CEOs, and boards of directors have on HRM content, process, and outcomes. On the basis of the findings of this systematic, multilevel review, we discuss avenues for future research at each specific manager’s level, as well as general opportunities and challenges for research on managers’ roles in HRM across all hierarchical levels.

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Email represents a useful organizational tool that can facilitate rapid and flexible communication between organizations, managers, and employees regardless of their physical location (e.g., office, home, on vacation). However, despite the potential benefits of email, its usage is a double-edged sword that also has the potential to negatively affect its users. To advance knowledge and inform both researchers and practitioners of such negative outcomes, we integrate the job demands-resources model with spillover theory to investigate email as a potential job demand and explore how it may relate to employees’ job tension and work-family conflict. Using an interval-contingent experience sampling methodology with respondents from two separate organizations ( n = 134) providing 704 observations across 6 days of surveys, we hypothesize that, as a job demand, email can have negative consequences on the job that can spill over into the home. Furthermore, we also examine an individual trait (i.e., trait self-regulation) as a potential boundary condition that moderates the extent to which experienced tension from email demands spills over into home life. Finally, theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Despite the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States (U.S.) and an increasing number of out gay and lesbian business leaders, we have little knowledge of the role played by leaders' same-sex sexual orientation in the leadership process. To fill this important research void, we drew from a recent theoretical model on leaders' sexual orientation and conducted four experimental studies designed to test and retest whether leaders' same-sex sexual orientation affects followers' leadership perceptions and conformity to influence attempts, and how the intersectionality of leaders' same-sex sexual orientation with leaders' gender orientation and follower characteristics may modify the influences of leaders' same-sex sexual orientation on the follower outcomes. Based on over 2,100 working adults in the U.S., the results of the four studies, where leaders were depicted as charismatic, indicate that leaders' same-sex sexual orientation could have negative impacts on the follower outcomes. However, same-sex sexual orientation leaders did not suffer double stigma penalization by having additional marginalized identities (e.g., also being women). Female followers were more supportive of same-sex sexual orientation leaders than male followers. Our research advances knowledge of and responds to calls for more research attention to leader sexual orientation in the leadership process. Research and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.