Search results

While foreign trade and joint ventures between Germany and the People′s Republic of China and Brazil have grown considerably, many of the attempts at economic co‐operation have collapsed. One major explanation can be attributed to cultural differences between German expatriate managers and their local subordinates. Therefore predeparture training and development becomes more significant. This study investigates the extent and significance of predeparture training and development for expatriates in China and Brazil in German companies. When, how often and which strategies are used to prepare the expatriate for his/her assignment in an effective and efficient way? It raises some important questions on the appropriate strategy in international human resource management.

States the purpose of this study was to develop a framework, through which to analyse the nature of an expatriate’s psychological contract, in order to specifically address expatriate psychological needs and expectations. The proposed Breakdown model was formulated from the overseas work experience of the author; a literature search and qualitative research with present and former expatriates. The findings revealed that perceived violations of the psychological contract were in the areas anticipated in the Breakdown model, and ignoring these needs and expectations resulted in unnecessary stress and lower employee productivity. Concludes that there was a vast gap between expatriation theory and practice; formal recognition and implementation of the model would bridge this gap and demonstrate that organizations do in fact regard people as their most important assets. Suggests the model might contribute towards competitive organizational advantage, as the successful completion of overseas assignments would be better assured.

Marketing for women in management This is the title of an article by M. Domsch and A. Hadler in Vol. 7 No. 4 of the European Management Journal.

Based on an empirical study, proposes requirements for and measures of the formation of internal incentive systems as instruments for internal innovation management. Uses the knowledge of experience of individuals taking an active part in innovation for the formulation of such proposals. The necessity for the implementation of integrated incentive systems, which allow for material fundamental demands beyond those peculiar to individual career expectations, becomes obvious.

This study employed a questionnaire survey to understand the safety attitudes, focusing on safety motivation and risk tolerance as well as safety management practices, including safety training and safety incentives, among construction site employees, including both managerial personnel and frontline workers. The objective was to explore the relationship between safety management practices and safety attitudes within both the managerial and frontline worker groups.

This study was conducted among 1,026 construction workers and 256 managerial personnel at 53 construction sites across 12 provinces in China. A t-test was used to compare the differences in safety-related scores between managerial personnel and frontline workers, and a structural equation model was used to explore the relationship between safety attitudes and safety management.

This study found that the scores of managerial personnel for safety motivation, safety training and safety incentives were significantly higher than construction workers, while their scores for risk tolerance were significantly lower than construction workers. Managerial personnel’s safety motivation has a significant positive impact on both safety training and safety incentives, while their risk tolerance has a significant negative impact on safety incentives. Safety training has a significant positive effect on construction workers’ safety motivation, whereas safety incentives have a significant negative impact on construction workers’ risk tolerance.

This study is one of the few that have investigated construction safety by conducting surveys targeting both site managerial personnel and frontline workers, employing an empirical approach to validate the role of safety management in transmitting safety attitudes from site managerial personnel to frontline workers.

The main point of these analyses is to find out the skills and capabilities engineers should have in order to act successfully in the field of innovation.

The main approach is the identification of the profiles which are expected by the enterprises and companies from their engineers. The actual literature and scientific studies are screened in order to identify evidences for the characteristics of innovative engineers.

This study shows that professional, methodological, social, and personal competencies are important factors for innovation engineers in order to be successful in their professional life.

The final result of this analysis can be used as a guideline for universities and institutes of higher education to enrich their study courses in engineering with important elements of innovation engineering in order to fill the gap between the requested profiles of innovation engineers companies need and the profiles of university graduates.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an in‐depth description of the process of institutionalisation and development of human resource management (HRM) practices in subsidiaries of German multinational companies in Russia.

The study is based on nine case studies of Russian subsidiaries including 26 interviews (13 German expatriates and 13 local employees), participative observations and document analyses. The data analysis follows a qualitative methodology.

The study provides four patterns of institutionalisation processes of HRM practices. They stress the importance of personal, institutional and contextual factors for the institutionalisation of HRM practices. Moreover, the key role of expatriates with their specific value orientations and behaviour in this process is highlighted.

One suggestion for further research would be to replicate the study quantitatively (in order to get more cases) as well as qualitatively (to get broader inter‐cultural data). Furthermore, it would be valuable to take a more long‐term focus to examine the described institutionalisation paths in the long run.

The paper highlights the importance of personal characteristics of expatriates that are often underestimated in companies' selection procedures. Moreover, the connection between the parent company's strategy and the pattern of institutionalisation of HRM practices should make the company management reflect upon the preferred pattern before taking the basic decisions. Taking into account the strong economic relationship between Russia and Germany and the expected further development of joint activities, the paper provides also important insights for the use of German expatriates in Russia.

This paper improves our comprehension of the complex process of implementation and institutionalisation of HRM practices abroad. Moreover, it contributes to the HRM literature as it employs the concept of “transnational spaces” as an alternative and additional approach to explain this process. The resulting patterns may not be restricted to the Russian case only but should be adaptable to other emerging countries as well.

Research on female expatriates has been substantially growing over the last decades and particularly in more recent years. Complementing previous thematic analyses of the literature, the purpose of this paper is to apply textual statistics and correspondence analysis to reveal the existing semantic structure of the field of research on female expatriates.

Using correspondence analysis, the authors explored textual data from the abstracts of 151 identified journal articles published in English since 1975. The authors obtained a graphical representation showing the various developmental stages of research on female expatriates.

The authors found that research follows a home-host country orientation and advances from an organizational focus toward individual-level studies. The authors identified various directions for future research and especially a strong need for more multilevel approaches to study men’s and women’s expatriate experiences and trajectories in various contexts.

Only articles with abstracts entered the analysis, which in turn was dependent on the content and quality of these abstracts. This limitation has been addressed by thoroughly reading each article considered.

This review adopts an original method in research on (female) expatriates and more broadly management research. It enabled the authors to map out the development of key research themes over time. Based on this analysis, gaps in current research could be identified and clear directions for future research were formulated.