Emma Parry

Career resilience is critical to the world's aging workforce, aiding older workers in adapting to the ever‐evolving nature of work. While ageist stereotypes often depict older workers as less resilient when faced with workplace changes, existing research studies offer conflicting evidence on whether older age hinders or improves career resilience. In response to this conflicting evidence, the present study employs multi‐level data from 6772 employees in 28 countries to examine the age‐career resilience relationships and underlying mechanisms, hence advancing our understanding of career resilience across the life course. By integrating macro‐contextual factors such as the unemployment rate and the culture of education with individual‐level mechanisms such as positive career meaning and career optimism, we provide a comprehensive model explaining how career resilience varies across age groups. Grounded in life course theory, our findings resolve prior inconsistencies in resilience research, contribute to bridging the micro‐macro gap in HRM literature, and challenge existing age‐based stereotypes.

This paper explores the triggers and identity crucibles facing professional doctorate students pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA). Unlike prior research, which centres on full‐time PhD students, our study examines the identity work of DBA students, many of whom do not foresee a transition to academia. Through 35 semi‐structured interviews, we explore the identity work involved in ‘becoming a doctor’ and the identity crucibles that DBA students encounter. We identify the internal and external triggers that lead to identity work and identity crucibles, with their accompanying emotions, and examine how these crucibles are resolved. This research develops current thinking in critical management education, revealing how DBA students do not uniformly aspire to become practitioner‐scholars or academics. Instead, they start and end their doctoral studies from various and different identity positions, highlighting the complexity of these long, intellectually challenging programmes. By exploring the triggers, identity crucibles and resolutions, this study offers a nuanced understanding of the DBA student experience and provides valuable insights into how these individuals can be supported throughout their doctoral studies. This support enhances retention and completion rates for those tasked with managing these programmes and reduces the likelihood of losing exceptional scholars/practitioners.

Leveraging Weiner's attribution theory of intrapersonal motivation at the micro level and varieties of capitalism theory at the macro level, we conduct a multi‐country and cross‐level study examining whether individuals' career goals (i.e., perceived importance of learning and development), behaviors (i.e., proactive career behaviors), and outcomes (i.e., perceived employability) as well as the relationships between these variables, differ between different market economies. We challenge extant literature that focuses on the agentic role of individuals and understates the role of context (i.e., market economy influence) in an individual's career development. Using multilevel structural equation modeling, we draw on a survey of 15,201 individuals between 2014 and 2016 from 22 countries representing four different varieties of capitalism. The results showed that workers in hierarchical (HME) and Mediterranean (MME) market economies systematically differed from individuals in coordinated (CME) and liberal (LME) market economies in proactive career behaviors and perceived employability. Moreover, while the positive relationship between perceived importance of learning and development and proactive career behaviors was stronger in CMEs and LMEs compared to HMEs and MMEs, the positive association between proactive career behaviors and perceived employability was weaker. Our study bridges the micro‐macro gap in career studies, adding new insights into the ongoing conversation of contextual influence in individuals' career development.

The composition of the workforce, the pool of potential job applicants, and the diversity of the workplace are changing. In this chapter, we focus on the future of workplace diversity and inclusion of human workers, as well as how diversity and inclusion are likely to be affected by developments in technology (e.g., artificial intelligence and non-human presence at work). We argue that these technological developments are likely to have an impact on how organisations react to the increasing diversity of the workforce, and that they have the potential to either enhance or impede diversity and inclusion. We consider the implications of increasing diversity for organisations, such as changes to legal and economic structures, reimagining work-family balance and working time, the use of technology in reducing bias and, importantly, a focus on organisational cultures and individual attitudes that might promote a more diverse, inclusive and, indeed, sustainable workplace in the years ahead.

Paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are social policies designed to enhance parents' labour force participation. These policies influence not only men's and women's decisions regarding their labour market activity but also organisational decision makers' (ODMs) expectations about their employees' availability to work and thus, their willingness to invest in their employees' human capital. Using a sample of over 13,000 individuals from 19 countries, we investigate the interaction between gender and social policies on human capital development practices. In line with statistical discrimination theory, which suggests that ODMs hold different expectations about female and male productivity, we find that paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are negatively associated with the provision of human capital development for women but not for men.

Millennials (born between 1982 and 1999) and their work‐related values have received significant attention in recent years, but empirical evidence of Millennials’ characteristics is inconclusive. One possible reason behind these mixed results is the tendency to apply generational groupings universally and ignore the potential impact of the broader context, such as national culture. This study develops a contextual perspective on generational differences and proposes a new, hybrid approach to generations. First, we conducted an exploratory study using data mining of big data from Twitter, to test hypotheses regarding differences between age cohorts in four different countries (The United States, Russia, India, Argentina). Second, we conducted a follow‐up study to further investigate the between‐countries differences found in the first study, using survey data from the same four countries. The results highlight the importance of both global and local influences when considering generational differences, supporting a new hybrid theoretical approach to understanding generational differences. Millennials were shown to be different from Generation X (born 1965–1981) across countries in relation to the behavioural aspect of writing style on social media. In contrast, in relation to work values, generational groupings were not universal, as the distinction between the work values of Millennials and Generation X was only found in the individualistic culture of the United States, and not in other, more collectivistic, cultures. Practitioner points: Interest in generational differences has ballooned over recent years with both HR practitioners and consultants designing management practices based on the popular workforce segments of Generation X and Millennials. Despite this interest, empirical evidence for generational differences in work values is mixed and inconclusive. In this study, we found that although Millennials demonstrated uniformity in their social media appearance, employers should not use the western notion of generations outside of the United States when addressing their needs as reflected by their work values. Generational differences appear to be more pronounced in individualistic countries where individual’s choice and self‐expression and are more legitimate. As a result, managers should consider whether the work values of different generations are sufficiently distinct before adopting alternative recruitment, selection, and retention policies presumably aligned with these preferences.

We examine how institutional context affects the decisions that subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) make in pursuing particular human resource management (HRM) practices in response to institutional duality. Drawing on Varieties of Capitalism, along with the concept of intermediate conformity, we argue that the use of particular HRM practices by MNC subsidiaries will differ depending on both the combination of home and host institutional contexts, and on the nature of the particular practice under consideration. Using data from a survey of HRM practices in 1196 firms across 10 countries, we compare HRM practices in subsidiaries located and headquartered in different combinations of liberal and/or coordinated market economies. Our study suggests MNC subsidiaries conform only to the most persuasive norms, while exercising their agency to take advantage of the opportunities presented by institutional duality to adopt practices that distinguish them from indigenous competitors.

This provocation challenges the use of generational categories as a valid and useful basis for the development of human resource management (HRM) research and practice. We present two provocations. First, that a focus solely on year of birth as a driver of attitudes, values and behaviours is wholly inadequate. Second, we go beyond existing empirical challenges to argue that any approach to the study of generations that focuses solely on generational categories should be abandoned. We consider the theoretical basis for generations, together with specific examples from empirical studies to show how the current reliance on largely unsubstantiated categories leaves even longitudinal studies unable to make an effective contribution to this field. We draw on cross‐disciplinary insights to consider the implications for academic research and for HRM practice, showing how the current approach limits the usefulness of findings and suggesting a potential way forward.

Generations was published in Encyclopedia of Electronic HRM on page 231.

Purpose: This study aims to present a framework relating to the organizational value of international assignments (IAs). This extends the existing framework by Lepaket al.(2007) and applies to other fields researching questions of value.Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper that applies new thinking to the critical practical and theoretical issue of organizational value in global mobility (GM) and international business (IB) literature. The Lepaket al.(2007) framework is explained, used and extended to appraise the value of IAs to organizations.Findings: The primary contribution is the establishment of a value framework within which future IA research can position itself, refining extant measures and thereby enabling greater cohesion in future studies. The secondary contribution, impacting beyond the field of GM, is the development of this framework, including the identification and discussion of value itself, the significance of organizational sub-levels, the extension of the definitions of isolating mechanisms and competition to explicate value capture, the importance of temporal analysis and the inclusion of value assessment.Research limitations/implications: The paper is limited by its application to IAs at the organizational level only. However, the relationship with other levels is also explored. Research within different contexts or focusing on the other levels of value will increase the understanding of value.Practical implications: Definitions of the value of IAs are extended, and practitioner implications are discussed.Originality/value: A new framework for evaluating the organizational value of IAs and new definitions to enable this value to be assessed are produced.