Long-term assignment reward (dis)satisfaction outcomes: hearing women’s voices

No room at the top? A system dynamics view of the recursive consequences of women's underrepresentation in international assignments

Purpose

The expatriation literature has developed an insightful body of research on the reasons why women are not assigned abroad as frequently as men. However, the authors know very little about the systemic and recursive consequences of women's underrepresentation in international assignments (IAs), which are examined in this conceptual paper.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing upon expatriation research and a system dynamics perspective, the authors propose a conceptual model to explain both women's underrepresentation in IAs and its recursive consequences.

Findings

The authors highlight how women's underrepresentation in IAs results from a complex system of recursive effects that jeopardizes women's professional development and undermines both their own career progression to top management and firms' competitive advantage and international growth. The authors argue that organizations make decisions that contravene their own interest in a competitive global context. First is that they are limiting their talent pool by not considering female candidates. Second is that they are missing the opportunity to use IAs to advance women's careers.

Research limitations/implications

The model provides a solid grounding for future research on selecting the most effective organizational actions and designing supportive measures to disrupt the persistent dynamics contributing to women's underrepresentation in IAs. Future research could also expand our study by incorporating individual differences and the proactive role that women may take.

Practical implications

The model points to specific managerial interventions (e.g. increased access to job training and specific training ahead of the assignment, dual-career support, women's mentoring and affirmative action) which have the potential to reduce women's underrepresentation in IAs and in top management.

Originality/value

The system dynamics approach enables a broader understanding of why women are underrepresented in IAs, how this underrepresentation further exacerbates gender segregation in international business, and how these recursive outcomes can be averted to the advantage of firms' sustainable growth.

Mediating effect of work performance and organizational commitment in the relationship between reward system and employees’ work satisfaction

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediation effect of work performance and organizational commitment in the relationship between reward system and employees’ work satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach

The study population constituted all employees/permanent employees (civil servants and non-civil servants) at Bank of BNI, Bank of BRI, Bank of Mandiri, and Bank of South Sulawesi. The analytical method used to test the hypothesis of the research was structural equation modeling.

Findings

Based on the analysis results, it can be concluded that the extrinsic reward system and the intrinsic reward system have a direct, significant effect on work performance and organizational commitment, and work performance and also organizational commitment have a direct, significant effect on work satisfaction. On the other hand, the extrinsic reward system and the intrinsic reward system have no direct effect on work performance, but work performance and organizational commitment as mediation variables bridge the relationship between the extrinsic reward system and the intrinsic reward system to work satisfaction.

Originality/value

Mediation effect (using the Sobel test) of work performance, and organizational commitment in the relationship between Reward Systems on work satisfaction, location of the study (no previous research for this relationship): Bank of South Sulawesi, Indonesia.