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This study investigates the relationship between “new career” profiles (Briscoe and Hall, 2006) and two sets of career factors: agency (i.e. career commitment, self-efficacy, and work locus of control), and career attitudes (i.e. salience and satisfaction). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to understand whether career profiles are a valuable way to understand careers in the modern career era, and if so, which profiles exist, and what differences exist across the profiles.

The participants in this study were 1,987 managers and professionals, recruited from a large database of potential respondents. Cluster analysis determined which profiles were apparent among the participants through a two-step clustering procedure using the Bayesian information criterion algorithm. The authors then compared the clusters using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with cluster membership as the independent variable and the career agency and attitude variables and age as the dependent variables.

Cluster analysis of the protean and boundaryless career attitudes of 1,987 respondents identified three career profiles: Trapped/Lost, Protean Career Architects, and Solid Citizens. ANOVA confirmed that people indicative of the three profiles differed significantly on all study variables. The findings suggest that the three different career profiles predict important differences in career variables and outcomes that are relevant to individual progression and growth needs and may be a valuable way to study contemporary careers. In particular, the person-centred approach acknowledges that the protean and boundaryless career concepts are related though distinct concepts that can be combined to show that individuals vary in the degree to which their career orientations are consistent with contemporary career constructs.

The authors have demonstrated that career profiles are a meaningful way to categorize career actors on the basis of their career orientation, as well as their scores on a host of important career variables. Although the study benefits from a large sample and a valid measure of career profiles, it does have some limitations. First, the authors relied on self-reported data gathered on a single survey questionnaire. Furthermore, because the study is cross-sectional, the authors cannot examine the long-term impact of career profile on outcomes such as career satisfaction or if career profiles are enduring or malleable over time.

From a practical perspective, it may be incumbent on organizations, career counsellors and individuals to develop an awareness to which career profile individuals belong (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1996). Doing so may offer insight into the likely challenges that career actors will face as their career unfolds, and ideally help individuals develop career management strategies to create career growth, rather than a more passive and reactive approach. A number of implications for each of the three career profiles are offered within the paper.

Utilizing a two-step clustering procedure, the authors provide empirical evidence of three of the 16 career profiles proposed by Briscoe and Hall (2006): Trapped/Lost, Protean Career Architects and Solid Citizens. Next, the authors explored the utility of the profiles for career development and demonstrated significant differences in career-related psychological factor and attitudes across profiles. Finally, the authors take a person-centric approach to career orientation, allowing for individual differences in career enactment. Overall, the results of this study show that career profiles are a highly useful composite that reflect important patterns relative to new career variables.

To reconcile the mixed findings on commitment-oriented human resource management (HRM) on employee job performance, this study tests whether commitment-oriented HRM has a threshold effect on employee job performance and when this threshold effect matters. The authors further tested the role of employees' age in the relationships.

The authors conducted a survey and collected data from 601 employees in 32 firms in China, and used a multilevel approach to test the hypothesis.

The results showed that the association between commitment-oriented HRM and employee job performance was J-shaped, meaning that commitment-oriented HRM was positively related to job performance when the degree of commitment-oriented HRM exceeded a threshold. Moreover, the authors found that employee age moderated this J-shape relationship. Specifically, the curvilinear relationship between development commitment-oriented HRM and job performance was stronger in younger employees. Contrary to our prediction, the results showed that younger employees reacted more strongly to improve job performance than older employees when maintenance commitment-oriented HRM exceeded a moderate degree.

The findings on the J-shape effect and moderating role of employee age on the J-shape provided critical insights into understanding the mixed results of the effect of HRM. Additionally, this study provided new insight in the linkage between HRM practices and employee outcomes.

This paper aims to examine the design and implementation of age-related human resource (HR) practices across organizations located in the institutional contexts of the under-researched emerging market economy of Thailand.

A cross-case analysis of five organizations is conducted across industries. The empirical evidence in this paper draws on semistructured interviews and focus groups with older workers of each organization, semistructured interviews with top managers and/or HR managers of each organization, field visits to each organization located in Bangkok and other provinces in Thailand and a review of archival documents and Web-based resources.

This paper proposes that firms design and implement various age-related HR practices, including the extension of the retirement age, financial planning facilitation, the bundling of maintenance and the bundling of utilization, to ensure that older workers in their firms maintain their current level of functioning to cope with the problem of skill shortage in the Thai labor market, have sufficient savings after retirement to respond to the “productivist informal security” welfare state regime and return to previous levels of functioning after facing losses in their careers.

Due to the fact that this research is based on case studies of age-related HR practices in five firms across industries in Thailand, the findings may not be generalizable to all other firms across countries. Rather, the aim of this paper is to enrich the discussion regarding the design and implementation of age-related HR practices in organizations. Another limitation of this research is that it does not include firms located in several industries, such as the financial services industry and the education industry. Future research may explore age-related HR practices in organizations located in these industries. Moreover, quantitative studies using large samples of firms across industries might also be useful for fostering an in-depth understanding of the design and implementation of age-related HR practices in organizations.

This paper provides practical implications for top managers and/or HR managers of firms in Thailand and other emerging market economies. That said, these top managers and/or HR managers can implement age-related HR practices to respond to the problem of skill shortage in the labor market, ensure that older workers have sufficient savings after retirement and help older workers return to previous levels of functioning after facing deterioration in health conditions and/or losses in their careers.

This paper provides policy implications for the government and/or relevant public agencies of Thailand and other emerging market economies that still face a severe skill shortage problem. Older workers who possess tacit knowledge and valuable experience and are still healthy can be considered excellent alternates for firms to help alleviate the skill shortage problem in the labor market. However, firms should implement age-related HR practices to retain this group of employees overtime.

This paper contributes to the literature on comparative institutionalism and human resource management, specifically regarding age-related HR practices, in the following ways. First, this paper examines how firms design and implement age-related HR practices to respond to the country’s macro-level institutions. Additionally, in this paper, the author triangulates the findings from older workers with those from employers to ensure that actual HR practices perceived by older workers are in line with HR practices perceived by top managers and/or HR managers. Moreover, the literature on age-related HR practices has likely overlooked emerging market economies, including the under-researched country of Thailand, because most studies in this area have focused on developed economies. Therefore, the findings in this paper provide an in-depth analysis of the design and implementation of age-related HR practices across firms located in the emerging market economy of Thailand to respond to the national institutional context.

This paper aims to identify the work‐based competences associated with better career prospects in the Spanish labour market.

The relationship between employee‐based competencies and employment prospects is investigated through the lens of the competence‐based approach. The partial least squares (PLS) methodology is applied on a sample of over 5,000 Spanish employees.

The analysis establishes that skill, motivation, participation in decision‐making and the performance of non‐routine and complex tasks are associated with more favourable career prospects. Finally, it has also been found that human capital dimensions valued by firms vary with occupation, as clear differences have been observed between white‐ and blue‐collar occupations. In particular, social skills and motivation appear to be more relevant for blue‐collar workers than for white‐collar workers.

For the first time, this paper analyses employees' career prospects using work‐based competences as predictors. Additionally, the analysis is based within a very uncertain labour market, Spain, where high unemployment and an extensive use of temporary contracts seriously hinder workers' career prospects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct and indirect effects of demographic factors on employee compensation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in private higher educational institutes in Bangladesh. Specifically, how do compensation structure and job satisfaction mediate in the link between demographic factors and organizational commitment? To answer this question, a theoretical framework using the theory of employee retention provided by Martin and Kaufman, as its basis was established.

Data (n = 515) were collected from faculty members of the private universities in Bangladesh. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Findings indicate that though demographic factors have no direct impact on organizational commitment, they have indirect impacts on organizational commitment through the mediation of compensation structure and faculty job satisfaction. Besides, compensation structure also has a significant mediating role in the link between demographic structure and faculty job satisfaction.

One possible drawback is the number of private universities from which the data were collected. In the sample used here, only 20 private universities were selected to conduct the survey. Besides, the study could not include public universities that are also a significant part and parcel of higher education in the country. So, if more private and public universities were taken into consideration to collect the data, the results might be improved. Thus, the usual cautions about overgeneralizing findings from this sample, to populations for which it is not strictly representative, apply.

From a practical perspective, as a cumulative body of work on organizational commitment, we will be better able to advise policymakers and educators on the elements they need to address to increase the longer engagement of the faculty members in their institutes. In this study, the one area of findings that may help policymakers and educators the most concerns compensation package that affects job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We found that demographic factors and compensation packages are the most important factors for the faculty members to impact on organizational commitment in this study.

The social implication is that policymakers of the private universities can focus on fair justice in terms of demographic factors and compensation package for job satisfaction, motivation and organizational commitment of the faculty members in their universities.

The findings of the study are important for the policymakers of the higher education institutes.

The search for competitiveness by family-owned companies has led us to research topics that may help these companies succeed. The management of human capital is undoubtedly one of the keys to success, and the practices of employee development (training, promotion, succession, career planning, mentoring and coaching) help improve the performance of these companies.

This paper is based on studying a sample of 560 family companies and analyzing the relationship between performance of the family businesses and the use of employee development practices. The techniques used were confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The results show that employee development has a direct effect on the indicators of performance in family companies. The authors have developed a series of practical implications for companies that justify investments in and efforts with regard to employee career development.

Family businesses need to understand the development needs of their employees. In addition, the very processes and tasks performed. The authors have developed a number of practical implications for companies that justify the investments and efforts made in employee career development. This work validates the usefulness of the use of certain practices for the development of employees in family businesses, allowing the company to generate human capital to build a competitive position in the market.

The results of this study suggest that family businesses should understand the development needs of their employees and that various practices are available to help detect these needs. Family businesses should see individual development processes as an opportunity to improve the performance of employees, which could avoid conflicts in such businesses (Qiu and Freel, 2020). Companies should develop career and succession plans that enable these changes to be faced throughout the company, ensuring that when handover occurs, the candidates are sufficiently qualified in accordance with their career paths. The present research study shows that coaching is a powerful tool for improving performance. Moreover, mentoring appears to be an important part of employee development. For this reason, mentoring programs should be formally planned with designated objectives. In addition, family businesses should provide employees with real opportunities for promotion and the development of their skills and abilities, which is a way to retain nonfamily professionals (Ramankutty and Pujar, 2017).

Family businesses are a very important part of the productive activity of a country and their continuity is necessary to maintain employment and income. The management of people in family businesses is a key aspect for their success, therefore knowing the key aspects for the development of human capital will have a positive influence on maintaining employment and income.

This paper addresses the study of people development processes in family businesses and proves its usefulness to improve performance, considering the formal planning of succession processes and professional careers, providing qualifications to candidates and ensuring that they are show satisfaction with their professional evolution in the company. Likewise, it is positive for family businesses to use coaching relationships, formally scheduled and employing a coach from abroad. The other tool that will favor the development of employees is mentoring, formally programmed, establishing objectives and properly studying the mentor's profile. For this tool to be applied successfully, it is necessary to get the participants to commit to the mentoring process. Finally, the organization must provide its employees with real opportunities to promote, training them and developing their skills.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the process of successful introduction of total quality management (TQM) in Poland and the way in which it impacted on identity of Polish managers.

The study is based on a combination of ethnographic research and repertory grid interviews.

The process of TQM introduction and implementation is examined through the application of translation as a model incorporating cultural and socio‐economical dimensions in addition to individual and organizational levels that shaped the development of TQM in Poland. It then draws on the idea of fantasy as theorized in Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to incorporate the unconscious element of translation process which is missing from Latour's theorization and which forms an important aspect of adoption of new technology and the emergence of a new post‐transition generation of managers in Poland. The paper argues that a complex combination of contextual factors, amongst them the notion of fantasy shaped the process of translation of TQM to Poland, the identity formation of Polish managers and to the emergence of a new post‐transition generation of managers in Poland.

This paper contributes to the literature on the post‐command transition by illustrating this process through the fantasy of total quality management explored in a specific socio‐cultural and geographical context and by combining the idea of Latour's translation with Lacanian fantasy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediation role of psychological ownership for the organization (PO-O) in the relationships between human resource management (HRM) bundle and job satisfaction, affective commitment and job performance.

Based on multilevel data analysis, 705 employees from 162 small- and medium-sized enterprises in China, this study adopted an empirical design.

PO-O mediates the relationships between HRM bundle and job satisfaction, affective commitment and job performance.

These findings highlight the importance of HRM bundle to contribute to employees’ feelings of ownership for the organization and their well-being and job performance. Longitudinal design and multiple sources at multi-stage for data collection in future research would be required for the further understanding of the relationships between the variables of this study. A single organizational and cultural context is not sufficient; broader testing in different organizational and cultural contexts is required.

Managers should develop employees’ feeling of ownership by using HRM bundle. They can thus gain a competitive advantage by enhancing employees’ skills, knowledge and abilities, as well as improving their well-being and performance.

This study extends the current literature by providing theoretical and empirical explanations of the mediating role of psychological ownership in the HRM bundle-employee outcomes relationship using a cross-level research design.