Recruitment and Retention Across Cultures

The flow of human capital into and out of organizations is a crucial aspect of organizational functioning. Recruitment is the primary mechanism for attracting human capital to the organization, whereas retention involves keeping desired employees in the fold once they are employed. Although extensive research explores and informs recruitment and retention, the bulk of the theory and research in major organizational psychology and organizational behavior journals adopts a US-centric perspective. This narrow perspective may be misleading, particularly in an increasingly globalized work context. We systematically analyze studies on the flow of people into and out of organizations in a variety of cultural contexts and especially in organizations managing talent across national borders. In so doing, we seek to create a coherent platform for future research by identifying key themes in the literature and using these themes to summarize what we know and indicate where we need to go in studying recruitment and retention across cultures.

Job satisfaction, blat and intentions to leave among blue-collar employees in contemporary Russia

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine antecedents of intentions to leave among blue-collar employees in domestic Russian organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

– The study is based on a sample of 1,210 blue-collar employees in 80 domestic organizations across 14 industries and eight regions in Russia.

Findings

– The analysis shows that wage satisfaction is the strongest negative predictor of Russian employees’ intentions to leave compared to core job-related and interpersonal relations satisfaction. For non-blat employees, the relationships with intentions to leave are negative and significant for all three types of satisfactions, whereas for employees with blat only the relationship between core job-related satisfaction and intentions to leave is significant.

Originality/value

– The present study, first, reveals that wage satisfaction is the most important but not the only way to retain blue-collar employees in Russia and, second, points toward the complex nature of blat’s influence on employees’ organizational behavior in contemporary Russian organizations. By so doing, the analysis provides a still rare empirical illustration of how relationships and variables explaining turnover intentions and its antecedents are contingent on economic, cultural and institutional contexts.

A Comparative Analysis of Cultural Value Orientations of Indians and Migrant Indians in the USA

Understanding the cultural value systems of nations is a key factor in anticipating the behaviour of business managers and employees in a specific business environment. Many research studies have acknowledged the impact of culture on communication across nations and its impact on business operations, however no study has attempted to measure and quantify the cultural orientations of people originating from one nation, but working in two different national settings. This study adopted Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck's framework to examine cultural dimensions of a total of 580 Indian respondents comprising two groups: 429 Indian natives living and working in India and 151 Indian migrants living and working in the USA. It initially compares the cultural orientations of the total population of each of the two groups and then examines cultural differences in the same based on demographic characteristics consisting of occupation, gender, age, and level of education. The study found significant cultural value differences between the two groups on both levels of analysis. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in detail.

Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior

This article reviews research on cross-cultural organizational behavior (OB). After a brief review of the history of cross-cultural OB, we review research on work motivation, or the factors that energize, direct, and sustain effort across cultures. We next consider the relationship between the individual and the organization, and review research on culture and organizational commitment, psychological contracts, justice, citizenship behavior, and person-environment fit. Thereafter, we consider how individuals manage their interdependence in organizations, and review research on culture and negotiation and disputing, teams, and leadership, followed by research on managing across borders and expatriation. The review shows that developmentally, cross-cultural research in OB is coming of age. Yet we also highlight critical challenges for future research, including moving beyond values to explain cultural differences, attending to levels of analysis issues, incorporating social and organizational context factors into cross-cultural research, taking indigenous perspectives seriously, and moving beyond intracultural comparisons to understand the dynamics of cross-cultural interfaces.