F. Poutsma

The impact of cultural intelligence on communication effectiveness, job satisfaction and anxiety for Chinese host country managers working for foreign multinationals

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is an important construct attracting growing attention in academic literature and describing cross-cultural competencies. To date, researchers have only partially tested the relationship between CQ and its dependent variables, such as performance. In this study, the relationship between CQ and communication effectiveness and job satisfaction is measured in a sample of 225 Chinese managers working for foreign multinational enterprises in China. The results show that CQ plays an important role in reducing anxiety and influencing both communication effectiveness and job satisfaction positively. Another outcome is the unexpected influence of anxiety on job satisfaction but not on communication effectiveness. These findings contribute to the development of theory with regard to the CQ construct.

The extended business case for childcare and leave arrangements in Western and Eastern Europe

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose an “extended conceptualization of the business case” including both organizational characteristics and institutional conditions to analyse employer involvement in extra statutory childcare and leave arrangements. Special attention is given to Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.Design/methodology/approach – The (multi‐level) multinomial regression analyses included company‐level data on human‐resource practices of 2,865 firms nested in 19 countries, representing all European welfare state regimes.Findings – The extended business case appeared fruitful in order to explain variations in employer involvement. Particularly, state support was found to be negatively related to employer involvement. In the liberal regime, employer involvement was high, but variations across organizations were significant. In CEE‐countries, employer involvement was lowest, and did not vary by organizational business‐case factors.Research limitations/implications – The pap...

Employee share ownership and profit sharing in different institutional contexts

This special issue aims to bring together contributions that take a dynamic approach to the development of financial participation, employee share ownership and profit sharing. The approach is premised on the notion that companies have ‘space’ to take a set of key decisions about financial participation. From different angles and experiences in different corners of the world, all contributions show that institutional pressures may be coupled with responses of different actors shaping the form and use of financial participation. The special issue also highlights the importance of future multilevel and mixed methods research to take into account the different institutional forces as well as actors decisions on different levels in shaping the form and use of financial participation.

Bargaining regimes, variable pay and financial participation: some survey evidence on pay determination

This exploratory paper provides preliminary evidence on the distribution of various forms of variable pay-by-pay determination structure. Data is drawn from the CRANET survey of company human resource practices, and is used for 13 countries. These countries are divided into two regimes, those where pay determination is predominantly centralized and those where it is generally decentralized. The use of variable pay is compared between the two. The results are consistent with both institutional and resource-based perspectives.