Research

Dr. Michel Hermans is an Associate Professor at IAE Business School – Austral University in Argentina. A native of the Netherlands, he obtained his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Business Administration at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Michel completed his doctoral studies (Ph.D.) in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in the United States while on a Fulbright scholarship. At IAE Business School, Michel teaches Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, and Change Management in the MBA, Executive MBA, and in-company programs. He frequently teaches at schools throughout the Latin American region, including EGADE-TEC de Monterrey (México), Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil), ESAN Graduate School of Business (Peru), and IDE Business School (Ecuador). He was a visiting researcher at Florida International University in January 2020. His research interests are at the intersection of Strategic Human Resource Management and International Business. His work has been published in the Journal of International Business Studies, Human Resource Management Journal, Journal of Business Research, Multinational Business Review, Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management, and the Harvard Business Review (Latin American edition). Also, he has authored several book chapters on human resource management in Latin America. Michel was the Director of Studies of IAE Business School’s MBA program from 2014 to 2016 and continues to serve on the program’s Advisory Board, focusing specifically on the internationalization of the program. As of 2018, he has served as the Director of International Accreditations (EQUIS, AACSB, AMBA). Before his academic career, Michel worked in the Corporate Finance Division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the Netherlands, at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations in Argentina (ECLAC/CEPAL), and in the internal consulting division of the Telecom Italia Group in several Latin American countries.

Dr. Kumar draws on the construct of regulatory fit to explain how expatriates manage interactional and work-related discrepancies in diverse cultural contexts. When expatriates go overseas, they are often faced with a set of expectations that are at variance with their home country norms and these differences in expectations generate discrepancies. The emergence of discrepancies in an alien cultural context exacerbates the uncertainties facing the expatriate, though the response to uncertainty varies between expatriates. Utilizing insights from motivational science and by linking the self-regulatory processes to the cultural context, we develop a framework and propositions for expatriate adaptation in loose and tight cultures. They present managerial implications of our model and offer guidance for testing the framework.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar is an expert in international business, specializing in cross-cultural negotiations, alliance management, and in the study of emerging markets. He has a doctorate in International Business from New York University, an MBA from Rutgers University, and a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Delhi. His research has been published in journals such as Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of World Business, California Management Review, Human Resource Management Review, and Organizational Psychology Review. Dr. Kumar is currently an independent researcher and working on his memoir describing his cross-cultural journey.

Based on transactional stress theory, Dr. Kraimer and her co-authors argue that international travel demands may have both positive and negative consequences for global employees. They identify three moderators to explain when international travel demands will positively relate to appraisals that global work is hindering versus challenging. Hindrance appraisals are proposed to positively relate to employee burnout and work-family conflict, whereas, challenge appraisals are proposed to positively relate to thriving and work-family enrichment. They tested the hypothesized conditional indirect effects between international travel demands and these outcomes with a matched sample global employees and their spouses. They found that international travel demands positively related to spouse ratings of burnout and work-family conflict. International travel demands positively related to employee thriving through challenge appraisals when employees experienced fewer nonwork disruption demands. These findings contribute to our understanding of how employees may react to international travel and to the transactional theory of stress by identifying moderators that impact challenge and hindrance appraisals.

Dr. Maria L. Kraimer is a professor of human resource management in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. She received her doctorate in human resources management from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research addresses issues related to the challenges and consequences of working globally, predictors of career success, and the employee-employer relationship.

“Having benefitted in my academic career so much from my close interaction with firms, governmental bodies, trade unions, and practitioners, I increasingly feel the need to give something in return. What could be more precious for practitioners but to give them an overview of what our field of HRM has achieved in terms of ‘proven’ findings of what really works in practice? Some people would oppose this, indicating that it all depends on the specific nature of an organization, sector, and/or country. However, I believe we have several theories and HRM practices which – let’s say – work in 80% of cases. This book, which I started writing here at Penn State, presents a concise overview of these ‘proven’ theories and ‘tested’ HRM practices related to motivating and developing employees from a manager’s actionable perspective. I will start the talk with an illustration of ‘inclusive HRM’ based on the Dutch setting of historical employment relationships involving trade unions, works councils and governmental initiatives roots, and enlightened entrepreneurship. I will demonstrate its historic roots—the cultural heritage of the founding fathers—and how this is still influential after more than 100 years. I will present the design and rationale for the book and will be eager to hear your suggestions and thoughts on what really works in practice.”

Dr. Jaap Paauwe is Professor of Organization and HRM at Tilburg University, The Netherlands, and Director of the People Management Center, an academia/practitioner center for work, well-being, and performance. Jaap’s research focuses on the relationship between HRM, performance and well-being, HR functional excellence, HRM and the institutional context, HR analytics, and talent management. Dr. Paauwe also supervises Ph.D. students in HRM and performance in healthcare at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Jaap holds honorary chairs at Pablo de Olavide University in Sevilla (Spain) and at North-West University in Potchefstroom (South-Africa). He has published widely in international refereed journals and is also involved in a range of executive training programs at various business schools including TIAS and FHR Lim-A-Po Institute. His latest book, written together with Elaine Farndale, is “HRM, Strategy and Performance: A contextual approach”, published by Oxford University Press, 2017.

Cultural intelligence has attracted the interest of both scholars and practitioners due to globalization bringing about an influx of global teams in the workplace. These global teams are expected to work effectively and deliver a range of tasks despite cultural and linguistic differences. Hence in such contexts, CQ as an intercultural capability is viewed to be highly relevant. In this presentation, the nomological network of CQ was presented, including the antecedents, outcomes and the boundary conditions of CQ. Moreover, Dr. Presbitero discussed novel ways of measuring CQ using an accessibility-based implicit measure.

Dr. Alfred Presbitero is an Assistant Professor at Deakin Business School, Deakin University, Australia. His research focuses on international human resource management, cross-cultural management, and international careers. He is primarily interested in expanding the nomological network of cultural intelligence (CQ) as a critical capability for international human resources and the establishment of international careers. He is also interested in understanding the role of societal culture in the formation of HRM system strength and HRM practices such as merit pay. He is currently involved in the IMPACT Project (Investigating Merit Pay Across Countries and Territories) working closely with Professor Jason Shaw. Alfred completed his Ph.D. in Business at Macquarie University, Australia. He also completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship and continues to be a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Leadership and Cultural Intelligence in Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Managing and promoting diversity is of paramount importance to the future of sustainability and hence is gaining increasing attention on political and business agendas. Even though diversity management scholarship has grown tremendously over recent years, a strong consensus has emerged that extant theories tend to focus on a single level of analysis, on a limited range of usually Western research settings, and despite the agenda around intersectionality, on a relatively narrow range of types of diversity. Diversity research has thus focused on prioritizing visible forms of diversity, such as gender diversity or disability, with less emphasis placed on diversity in culture and values and across countries. In this seminar, Dr. Georgiadou presented new insights on how the national and macro-social environment impact the institutional approaches to diversity management globally. She introduced a critical reflection of the current discourse on different types of diversity around the world. Finally, she introduced some strategies that could facilitate both organizations and individuals to overcome a plethora of challenges.

Dr. Andri Georgiadou is an Adjunct Professor at the Cyprus University of Technology. She obtained her DBA focusing on diversity management from the London Metropolitan University in the UK (2014) and worked as an Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management and Program Director for the MSc in Global Business at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK for three years before returning to Cyprus. Andri’s research focuses on equality, diversity and inclusion at work from comparative, relational and interdisciplinary perspectives. She is a recipient of the 2014 Graduate Scholar Award for Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations, and currently holds a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research at Penn State.

With the growing awareness of how economic development is contributing to environmental degradation and climate change, concerns about long-term sustainability are raising new ethical issues for organizations and their members, as well as for society as a whole. Against this backdrop, green (environmentally-focused) human resource management (GHRM) has been increasingly promoted over the past decade as a proactive response that organizations can take to enhance environmental performance. Underlying the emergence of GHRM is an assumption that it can address a firm’s specific challenge of managing environmental concerns through a set of HRM practices that explicitly consider the firm’s environmental goals. However prior studies have focused primarily on either descriptive exploration of the existence of HRM practices that target environmental issues or the influence of a limited set of these HRM practices. Several theoretical and practical issues remain under-specified, including whether and how GHRM influences a firm’s performance (including environmental performance and financial performance). Research on GHRM introduces new ideas and issues that are only beginning to be studied by HRM scholars as they realize the strategic importance of environmental management for building sustainable organizations. Shuang outlined the development of the GHRM field with reference to her recent review paper on GHRM, and shared three of her projects that unfold the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of GHRM for firms’ performance and employees’ green behavior.

Dr Shuang Ren is a senior lecturer at Deakin Business School, Deakin University. She obtained her PhD in human resource management at the University of Melbourne (2010-2013) and worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Ethical Leadership at the University of Melbourne prior to joining Deakin. Shuang’s research areas include strategic human resource management, human resource development (particularly leader development) and business leadership in China. She is a recipient of Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management Early Career Researcher Award in 2015 and Faculty Researcher Award in 2017.

International HRM research recently uncovered that expatriate integration in informal social networks overseas is a decisive factor for expatriate effectiveness. To date, the question of how, if at all, an expatriate can establish close informal ties abroad with host country nationals has, however, been neglected in research. Furthermore, based on the assumption that extant social network theories may include too many ideals of typical Western informal ties and too few features that are relevant for other regions, there is a need to thoroughly understand the nature and characteristics of informal networks. Contrary to the popular ‘strengths of weak ties’ hypothesis, in East Asia it appears to be a widely-held ideal to have or develop strong ties since weak ties are not deemed useful. The informal network literature indicates that networks are also open to varying degrees to new entrants. Whereas this corresponds to what is known about Chinese guanxi ties, Korean yongo ties are rather closed and certain ties in Japan also show a rather low level of openness. Hence, bridging of networks by a broker may work well in China in principle, but it goes against the logic of yongo-based ties in Korea, where bridging of the same tie line is nearly impossible as communities of the same tie line may feel discomfort toward each other or even hostility. Given the backdrop of these research results new horizons emerge for research in the field of expatriate integration into local informal networks. 

Sven Horak is Assistant Professor at The Peter J. Tobin College of Business, Department of Management at St. John’s University in New York. In the field of international management his research interests include the analysis of informal social network structures, the influence of informal institutions on managerial decision making behavior and Asian Management. Sven has worked for several years in the East Asian automotive industry, managing operations for the Bosch Group in Tokyo, Seoul, and Stuttgart. Before joining Tobin, he was a post-doctoral fellow and research associate funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Institute of East Asian Studies (IN-EAST) and the Mercator School of Management at the Duisburg-Essen University in Germany.

The information and communication technology (ICT) services business is primarily driven by the quantity and quality of software talent, available locally and globally. Accordingly, global talent management (GTM) strategy is fundamental to the internationalization strategy of Indian ICT services multinationals, particularly in China. Through in-depth interviews of senior managers at the headquarters and Chinese subsidiaries of four well known Indian ICT services multinationals, this research study critically examines the conceptualization and implementation of their GTM strategy by focusing on the quality of software talent pool in China, the strength of case study firms’ employer branding in the Chinese ICT services sector, control and coordination issues in rolling out global HR policies to Chinese subsidiaries, and the challenges of workforce localization. In the process, it contributes to our understanding of the strategic orientations and operational challenges of emerging market multinationals in other emerging economies, in the context of global mobility and the management of talent.

Dr. Mohan Thite is an Associate Professor at Griffith University, Australia. His career as a HR professional spans over 30 years, both in industry and academia. His research and publications cover a broad range of management areas, including strategic HRM and knowledge management, e-HRM/HRIS, international HRM, multinationals from emerging economies, and global mobility of talent via offshoring and skilled migration.

Professor Olivas-Luján shared with us the need for systematic research in HRM is enormous in the geographic North, Central American and Caribbean countries that include Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Puerto Rico. Miguel reported on a systematic review of the literature that identified 111 articles (published since 1990) about HRM in these nations, to show the state of the discipline, detect gaps and recommend courses of action. The large gaps in coverage signal the need to extend research on all HRM sub-fields to Central American and Caribbean nations. (Authored by Sergio M. Madero-Gómez and Miguel R. Olivas-Luján - in alphabetical order).

Dr. Miguel R. Olivas-Luján is a Professor at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include: Human Resource Management, Evidence-based Management, Diversity, and Culture.

CIHRS held a hands-on workshop to help anyone looking to expand their knowledge of conducting surveys. Dr. Rikki Nouri, Post-Doctoral Scholar with CIHRS, conducted the workshop on Qualtrics and Mechanical Turk, discussing how to use these tools for both academic and practical purposes. Qualtrics is a powerful surveying tool, that can be useful for teaching, research, and administration. The basics of Qualtrics and useful tips were presented, including labels and values, randomization, using blocks and survey flow, how to upload images and videos, and more. The workshop also introduced Mechanical Turk, which is Amazon's crowdsourcing survey platform.

In a world that is constantly becoming more global, complex and dynamic, organizations, face great challenges and are required to offer new solutions. Creativity is crucial to organizations’ successful performance since a new product, process or a service enables competitive advantage. Nonetheless, engaging in creativity carries the risk of rejection or criticism and the potential to lose business from clients. The risk of being rejected or embarrassed may discourage employees from coming up with new ideas. One can assume that culture at a broader level of analysis such as national culture will affect creativity. Yet, only recently the relationship between culture and creativity has started to draw researchers’ attention, and overall the findings are rather inconsistent.

Dr. Nouri’s research has contributed to enrich the knowledge on culture and creativity by examining the following questions: is creativity universal or culture-specific? Are people from different cultural backgrounds different in their creative abilities or habits? Are people from different cultural backgrounds that work together creative together collaboratively? How does the influence of work context (such as the presence of supervisors or colleagues) on creativity vary in different cultures?

Professor Martin, Professor and Chair of Management at Dundee University in the UK, provided a detailed insight into the pressures on the healthcare sector in advanced economies to deliver increasingly higher levels of patient care to an increasingly aging population during periods of financial austerity. As a result of his research, he explained how evidence is emerging to support a thesis indicating the de-professionalization of hospital doctors, brought about by increased patient expectations and changing attitudes to clinicians, increased managerialism and bureaucracy, and greater regulation to ensure patient safety and care. The research was commissioned by the British Medical Association (BMA), prompted by feelings among leading professionals that the publicly-funded UK healthcare system is at near break-point. The study's data supports the BMA’s gloomy analysis, which has important lessons for clinical and non-clinical managers who seek to navigate a way through contending logics and resource-constrained hybrid organizations.

Professor Graeme Martin has published extensively in the fields of HRM, management and leadership, change management and, recently, healthcare management. His other research interests include organizational trust; the role of HR in corporate governance; and clinical leadership.

Fascinating discussions were had at the CIHRS Inaugural Speaker Series Seminar on February 26, 2015!

Following an introduction from Center Director, Elaine Farndale, we heard presentations from Maja Vidović (Post-doctoral Scholar) on HRM in multinational enterprise subsidiaries, Dinçer Atli (Visiting Scholar) on cross-cultural employer attractiveness, and Saahir Shafi and Elizabeth Rockey (Research Assistants) on the first findings from the 2014 CRANET comparative HRM policies and practices study.