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The purpose of this paper is to generate insights into how multinational companies (MNCs) promote global mobility in their Employer Branding (EB) messages on Facebook.

The authors analyzed 13.340 EB messages found on the Facebook career pages of 30 major MNCs (10 of each in the US, UK and Germany) drawing on a methodological approach combining Grounded Theory and text-mining.

Building on the perspective of psychological contracts as sensitizing concept, the analysis of the overall sample reveals a range of core themes in EB messages across all MNCs studied. With regards to global mobility, MNCs emphasize relational, i.e. socio-emotional, contents, particularly, highlighting opportunities of experience and personal development. While global mobility is an overall marginal theme, German MNCs extensively promote global mobility, whereas US- and UK-based MNCs do not explicitly make it a subject of their messages. The findings are discussed in the light of institutional theory.

Despite mega-trend, little is known about social media EB, especially when it comes to the contents that MNCs communicate to (potential) employees. Applying an innovative methodological approach, the authors offer insights into these contents. Discussing the findings in the light of institutional theory, it is concluded that promoting global mobility in socio-emotional terms seems of high importance to reduce uncertainties associated with living and working abroad. This might help firms to hire internationally mobile employees, especially in countries where job mobility is generally low.

This chapter examines how increased digitalisation shapes employee voice behaviour through informal digital channels. A growing body of literature found positive effects of employee voice on organisational outcomes, and companies are offering various formal and informal channels for employees to speak up. However, despite the vast literature on employee voice, research on the role of the voice channel is limited. With digital voice channels gaining popularity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating how the interaction of employees with communication technologies affects their willingness to speak up digitally is ever more important. To do so, the authors chose a qualitative research design with semi-structured interviews. Adaptive structuration theory (AST) guided the qualitative content analysis. Findings indicate that the shift from analogue to digital informal voice channels influences employees’ willingness to speak up. Despite an effort to mimic analogue face-to-face conversations through advanced technologies, employees perceive a missing spark when communicating digitally, which discourages them from speaking up through informal digital channels. In this chapter, the authors analyse which factors constitute the missing spark.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship of highly skilled work and (collective) power. It develops an institutional logics perspective and argues that highly skilled workers’ propensity to join trade unions varies by institutional order.

Data from two occupational fields in Austria, university professors and management consultants, representing two different institutional orders were collected via questionnaires. Stepwise logistic regression analysis was employed to test the hypotheses.

The results show that over and above organisational level variables, individual's background and employee power variables institutional logics significantly add to explaining trade union membership of highly skilled workers. Prevalence of a professional logic in a field makes collective action more likely than market logic.

Highly skilled workers are overall described as identifying themselves more with the goals of their employer or client and with their professional peers than with other corporate employees or organised labour. They are thus expected to develop consent rather than conflict orientation vis-á-vis their employers and clients. This paper supports a differentiated view and shows that within highly skilled work there are groups engaging in collective action. By developing an institutional logics perspective it provides a useful approach to explain heterogeneity within the world of highly skilled work.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the status and functional responsibilities of female human resource (HR) directors vary cross‐nationally and how gender egalitarian cultural values affect role differences between female and male HR directors.

A cross‐country comparison of HR directors involving 22 countries based on the 2004 Cranet survey.

Consistent with the hypotheses, gender egalitarian values reduce sex‐role differences for strategic integration and for traditionally female‐stereotyped HR functions. However, there is no support for the notion that egalitarian values influence sex differences for male‐stereotyped HR functions. Since, the data indicate higher levels of involvement of female HR directors in male‐stereotyped HR functions in 12 out of 22 countries, unequal distribution of functional responsibility is interpreted as an indicator for sex differences in administrative workload.

Macro cultural factors matter for sex‐role differences in strategic integration and functional responsibilities of HR directors. The effects of gender egalitarian values have greater impact on reducing vertical differences than horizontal differences.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how differences in strategic integration between women and men in HR director positions vary in an international comparison and particularly how gender‐egalitarian cultural values influence the level of these differences.

Cross‐country comparison of HR managers involving 22 countries based on the 2004 Cranet survey.

Consistent with the hypothesis, findings show a negative relationship between gender‐egalitarian values and sex differences in strategic integration.

Enhanced understanding of impact of cultural egalitarianism on cross‐national differences in segregation of women in the HR profession.

Level of segregation of women in HR director positions varies with the prevalence of gender‐egalitarian cultural values.

This study examined gender differences in CEOs' expression of implicit achievement, power and affiliation motivation. Building on the role congruity account of sex differences and similarities in motivation and existing literature on implicit motives, the study tested whether female CEOs would express higher affiliation motivation than male CEOs and similar levels of achievement motivation. In addition, gender differences in power motivation were explored.

The study used propensity score matching to generate a comparable sample of male and female CEOs from publicly traded companies. Subsequently, the authors content-coded CEO letters from annual reports using Winter's (1994) manual for scoring motive imagery in running text.

Overall, CEOs expressed more achievement and power motivation than affiliation motivation. Comparisons between male and female CEOs showed that female CEOs expressed lower power and higher affiliation motivation than male CEOs.

By integrating implicit motive theory with social role theory and the role congruity account of motivation, this study provides a theoretical framework and novel demonstration that understanding social roles and gender roles can lend insights into motive expression by CEOs.

The study uses established theory and a validated scoring method in a novel way by analyzing implicit motives from CEO letters, a critical communication channel in the CEO–shareholder relationship. In doing so, this study adopts a sociocultural perspective. Informed by the role congruity account of motivation, the study demonstrates the importance of social roles and gender roles for motivational displays.