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This study aims to understand the production of consent to precarious working conditions in administration students' internship experiences.

A total of 13 students of an undergraduate program in Business Administration in a private university were interviewed. The students' perceptions about the dynamics of the internship and their engagement in this experience were explored through thematic analysis.

Internships became more than spaces to learn about the world of work. They are also the locus of professional socialization toward precarious work. The detachment of internships from their educational scope is mediated by neonormative control mechanisms that subjectively mobilize the interns, producing the institutionalization and appreciation of the precarious experience, resignified as something that leads to autonomy, learning and a job position.

The article can help students, universities and companies to assess the role of internships in training future professionals.

The research problematizes the internship as a form of professional socialization toward precarious work and its detachment from the original educational purpose. The article critically contributes to the debate about the current professional socialization process of young students.

The article highlights the subjective dimension that supports students' consent to dysfunctional internships, discussing both the experience of work precariousness and exploitation, and the terms of the students' engagement in such dynamics, bridging consent to neonormative controls.

The purpose of this paper is to test a mediated model of the relationship between self-concept orientation (individualist and collectivist) and organizational identification (OrgID, Cooper and Thatcher, 2010), with proposed mediators including the need for organizational identification (nOID, Glynn, 1998) as well as self-presentation concerns of social adjustment (SA) and value expression (VE, Highhouse et al., 2007).

Data were collected from 509 participants in seven countries. Direct and mediation effects were tested using structural equation modeling (AMOS 25.0).

Individualist self-concept orientation was positively related to VE and collectivist self-concept orientation was positively related to nOID, VE and SA. VE mediated the relationship between both self-concept orientations and OrgID. In addition, nOID mediated the relationship for collectivist self-concept orientation.

This study identifies underlying psychological needs as mediators of the relationship of self-concept orientation to OrgID. Understanding these linkages enables employers to develop practices that resonate with the self-concept orientations and associated psychological needs of their employees, thereby enhancing OrgID.

This study provides a significant contribution to the OrgID literature by proposing and testing for relationships between self-concept orientations and OrgID as mediated by underlying psychological needs. The results provide support for the mediated model as well as many of Cooper and Thatcher’s (2010) theoretical propositions, with notable exceptions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between individual- and country-level values and preferences for job/organizational attributes.

Survey data were collected from 475 full-time employees (average of nine years work experience, and three years in a managerial position) enrolled in part-time MBA programs in seven countries.

Preference for a harmonious workplace is positively related to horizontal collectivism, whereas preference for remuneration/advancement is positively related to vertical individualism. The authors also find a positive relationship between preference for meaningful work and horizontal individualism, and between preference for employer prestige and social adjustment (SA) needs.

Although the sample comprised experienced, full-time professionals, using graduate business students may limit generalizability. Overall, the results provide initial support for the utility of incorporating the multi-dimensional individualism and collectivism measure, as well as SA needs, when assessing the relationships between values and employee preferences.

For practitioners, the primary conclusion is that making assumptions about preferences based on nationality is risky. Findings may also prove useful for enhancing person-organization fit and the ability to attract and retain qualified workers.

This study extends research on workers’ preferences by incorporating a new set of values and sampling experienced workers in a range of cultural contexts.