Stefan T. Mol

Predicting Expatriate Job Performance for Selection Purposes A Quantitative Review

This article meta-analytically reviews empirical studies on the prediction of expatriate job performance. Using 30 primary studies (total N = 4,046), it was found that predictive validities of the Big Five were similar to Big Five validities reported for domestic employees. Extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were predictive of expatriate job performance; openness was not. Other predictors that were found to relate to expatriate job performance were cultural sensitivity and local language ability. Cultural flexibility, selection board ratings, tolerance for ambiguity, ego strength, peer nominations, task leadership, people leadership, social adaptability, and interpersonal interest emerged as predictors from exploratory investigations (K < 4). It is surprising that intelligence has seldom been investigated as a predictor of expatriate job performance.

E-Recruitment: A Study into Applicant Perceptions of an Online Application System

Little is known about applicant reactions to web-based recruitment and selection procedures. This study examines applicant perceptions of web-based procedures, based on a field study among 1360 applicants to a multinational financial services organization applying for jobs in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Belgium. With respect to the personal characteristics it was found that external (as opposed to internal), Belgian (as opposed to Dutch), and Internet savvy (as opposed to less savvy) candidates were more satisfied with the online application procedure and its features. However, it was found that features of the website, perceived efficiency and user-friendliness, were by far the most important determinants of applicant satisfaction. Implications for organizations and future research on E-recruitment are discussed.

Dynamics of psychological contracts with work engagement and turnover intention: The influence of organizational tenure

This study investigated the interrelations of the psychological contract with work engagement and turnover intention, which has hitherto been a largely overlooked topic in psychological contract research. Although previous research has mainly focused on how psychological contracts influence job attitudes and behaviours, it is proposed here that attitudes and behaviours also affect the psychological contract that the employee has with the organization. Moreover, it is proposed that because reciprocity norms are more important among shortly tenured employees, mutual relationships between psychological contracts and work engagement and turnover intention were stronger for employees with lower organizational tenure. Longitudinal data were collected among 240 employees and proposed models were evaluated with structural equation modelling. The results show that indeed psychological contract fulfilment was longitudinally related to higher work engagement and lower turnover intentions, but only for employees with low tenure. Moreover, stability in work engagement, turnover intention, and psychological contract over time was higher for those with high tenure, whereas the relations between turnover intention and the psychological contract were stronger for those with low organizational tenure. These findings demonstrate that psychological contracts are reciprocally interrelated with work outcomes, and that such relations are stronger for those with low tenure.

When selection ratios are high: predicting the expatriation willingness of prospective domestic entry-level job applicants

High expatriate selection ratios thwart the ability of multinational organizations to select expatriates. Reducing the selection ratio may be accomplished by selecting those applicants for entry level domestic positions who have expatriate aspirations. Regression analyses conducted on data from a sample of 299 Dutch students about to enter the job market indicated that 20 predictors subsumed under the Five Factor Model, core self-evaluations, expatriate specific predictors, and biodata account for 50% of the variance in expatriation willingness. The predictors were ordered relative to their increasing alignment with expatriation willingness in terms of the action, target, context, and time elements reflected in Ajzens (1988, 1991) principle of correspondence. Dominance and relative weights analysis provided strong support for the hypothesis that greater alignment on these elements translates into greater predictive power, with biodata emerging as the most powerful predictor set, followed by expatriate specific predictors, the Five Factor Model, and finally core self-evaluations.

Presumed cultural similarity paradox: expatriate adjustment and performance across the border or over the globe

Purpose - – To introduce the presumed cultural similarity paradox as a possible explanation for the findings that adjusting to a culturally similar country is just as difficult as adjusting to a culturally dissimilar country. We provide a conceptual framework, enabling further understanding and research into this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach - – Expatriates moving to a country that shares common characteristics may presume more cultural similarity and easier adjustment than is actually the case. During their stay abroad, expatriates may find that these expectations are not met. While the smaller cultural distance may facilitate adjustment, the undermet expectations inhibit adjustment and performance. Findings - – A first preliminary test compared Dutch expatriates in Belgium (culturally similar) and in China (culturally dissimilar). The expectations of cultural similarity and adjustment difficulty of the expatriates in Belgium were significantly more undermet than those of the expatriates in China and this had a negative influence on affective adjustment. The larger cultural distance of China was negatively related to intercultural adjustment. Better adjustment, both affective and intercultural, led to better job performance. Research limitations/implications - – Future research should try to replicate and extend our findings to other cultural contexts. Practical implications - – Expatriates and their employers must consider and prepare for the increased chance of undermet expectations and the negative consequences this can have on adjustment and job performance, when moving to a culturally similar country. Social implications - – Expatriates and their employers must consider and prepare for the increased chance of undermet expectations and the negative consequences this can have on adjustment and job performance, when moving to a culturally similar country. Originality/value - – This paper conceptualizes and provide a theoretical framework that should allow future research to empirically test the psychological process that occurs in this paradox, accommodate the contrasting effects of cultural distance and met expectations of cultural similarity and investigate which characteristics of countries lead expatriates to presume more cultural similarity than is the case.

Students’ Sense of Belonging at School in 41 Countries Cross-Cultural Variability

This study examined whether students’ sense of belonging at school (SOBAS) differed across attributes of countries, families, schools, teachers, or students. Multilevel analyses of survey and test data from 193,073 15-year-old students in 41 countries yielded four main findings. First, students in more egalitarian cultures often had higher SOBAS than those in more hierarchical cultures. Second, the teacher–student relationship had the strongest link with SOBAS and mediated the link between egalitarianism and SOBAS. Third, collectivism was not significantly linked to SOBAS. Finally, family characteristics (immigrant status, language spoken at home, socio-economic status [SES], books at home, family wealth, and family communication), schoolmates’ characteristics (SES and social communication), teacher characteristics (teacher–student relationship, teacher support and disciplinary climate), and student characteristics (reading achievement, self-efficacy, and self-concept) were also linked to students’ SOBAS and accounted for most of its variance. This ecological model shows how attributes at multiple levels are related to SOBAS.

Text Mining in Organizational Research

Despite the ubiquity of textual data, so far few researchers have applied text mining to answer organizational research questions. Text mining, which essentially entails a quantitative approach to the analysis of (usually) voluminous textual data, helps accelerate knowledge discovery by radically increasing the amount data that can be analyzed. This article aims to acquaint organizational researchers with the fundamental logic underpinning text mining, the analytical stages involved, and contemporary techniques that may be used to achieve different types of objectives. The specific analytical techniques reviewed are (a) dimensionality reduction, (b) distance and similarity computing, (c) clustering, (d) topic modeling, and (e) classification. We describe how text mining may extend contemporary organizational research by allowing the testing of existing or new research questions with data that are likely to be rich, contextualized, and ecologically valid. After an exploration of how evidence for the validity of text mining output may be generated, we conclude the article by illustrating the text mining process in a job analysis setting using a dataset composed of job vacancies.

Antecedents of job search self-efficacy of Syrian refugees in Greece and the Netherlands

The goal of the current study was to investigate the relationships among psychological resources, career barriers, and job search self-efficacy in a sample of post-2014 Syrian refugees. Participants included 330 refugees in Greece and the Netherlands. Data were obtained using paper-based surveys, with all measures translated into Arabic. Drawing from career construction theory (Savickas, 2005), we hypothesized that adaptive readiness, operationalized in terms of psychological capital, would be positively related to job search self-efficacy through career adaptability. In addition, social and administrative career barriers were hypothesized to moderate the first stage of the indirect effect between psychological capital and job search self-efficacy, such that this relationship is weaker when refugees experience higher career barriers. Results indicated that individuals with higher psychological capital more confidently engaged in job search behavior in the destination country, mostly due to their enhanced career adaptability. However, this relationship weakened when participants experienced higher social barriers and strengthened when they experienced higher administrative barriers. The findings provide further support for the career construction model of adaptation (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012) and pinpoint career adapt-ability resources as critical self-regulatory strengths that help individuals in this particularly vulnerable group adapt to occupational transitions. Moreover, the results highlight the potentially detrimental role of social barriers in this process. Based on the results, we offer implications for formulating training and career construction theory-based career counseling focused on enhancing career adaptability and psychological capital.

Text Classification for Organizational Researchers: A Tutorial

Organizations are increasingly interested in classifying texts or parts thereof into categories, as this enables more effective use of their information. Manual procedures for text classification work well for up to a few hundred documents. However, when the number of documents is larger, manual procedures become laborious, time-consuming, and potentially unreliable. Techniques from text mining facilitate the automatic assignment of text strings to categories, making classification expedient, fast, and reliable, which creates potential for its application in organizational research. The purpose of this article is to familiarize organizational researchers with text mining techniques from machine learning and statistics. We describe the text classification process in several roughly sequential steps, namely training data preparation, preprocessing, transformation, application of classification techniques, and validation, and provide concrete recommendations at each step. To help researchers develop their own text classifiers, the R code associated with each step is presented in a tutorial. The tutorial draws from our own work on job vacancy mining. We end the article by discussing how researchers can validate a text classification model and the associated output.

Integrating knowledge management in the context of evidence based learning: two concept models for facilitating the assessment and acquisition of job knowledge

Within the field of Human Resource Management (HRM), the role of individual knowledge has received limited research attention despite offering the promise of superior job performance and improved managerial decision-making. In part, this lack of research may be attributed to the difficulty and laboriousness inherent to the adequate and accurate modeling of job relevant knowledge, particularly since such knowledge by definition varies from job to job. Despite this caveat, there is much to be gained from a knowledge based approach to (managing) human resources. The current paper presents two ontology based concepts for modeling job relevant knowledge, namely Meta-Practitioner and Med-Assess. The former focuses on availing to a practitioner audience the evidence that has accumulated in the academic literature, whereas the latter focuses on the facilitation of personnel selection and training in the medical field through a detailed assessment of individual job knowledge and general mental ability. Ultimately both concepts are aimed at knowledge provision to job applicants and incumbents alike. Having discussed the concepts, the paper summarizes the gains that may be expected from their implementation by presenting an integrated framework. The framework focuses on integrating aspects of Knowledge Management (KM) in the context of Evidence Based Learning (EBL) for business organizations. The paper concludes by addressing the challenges that lie ahead, highlighting some of the limitations of this approach and offering suggestions for further research.