International Workplaces Research Articles

Affective practice architectures of professional learning in international schools

ABSTRACT This article focuses on practice architectures of international schools that create affective atmosphere for the professional learning and becoming of international-hire and local-hire teachers. We use the concept of precarious labour to explore relational tensions and their effects on the professional learning of teachers and school leaders. Empirical data are drawn from two case study schools located in two major countries that offer international education. The data sets include interviews with school leaders and international and ‘local’ teachers. The analysis focuses on relational tensions experienced by teachers in these schools. The article argues that the affective atmosphere of teacher workplaces produces a force – a sense of precariousness – that envelopes teachers and oppresses them. At the same time, it also provides the very conditions for their professional learning in international workplaces. From this practice-ontological perspective, therefore, it is important to recognise the primacy of affect in the professional learning of teachers.

Impact of leader's e-competencies on employees' wellbeing in global virtual teams during COVID-19: the moderating role of emotional intelligence

PurposeThe current study aims is to investigate the impact of leader's e-competencies on the emotional wellbeing of employees in GVTs. Also, the moderating role of a leader's emotional intelligence in enhancing the wellbeing of the employees during the pandemic was explored.Design/methodology/approachA survey of 810 employees belonging to international IT companies was conducted. The conceptual model was hypothesized and validated using CFA and PL-SEM.FindingsThe three core e-competencies of leaders (e-communication skills, e-change management skills and e-technological skills) impacting the wellbeing of employees in the COVID pandemic were found. Also, emotional intelligence significantly moderated the association of leader's e-competencies and the wellbeing of employees.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to IT sector companies. Data were collected using the snowball sampling technique through a self-reported questionnaire. Future studies can explore the relationship between e-leadership and variables like job performance in other sectors.Practical implicationsA unique framework of “leaders” e-competencies and employees' wellbeing, moderated by emotional intelligence, has been proposed and validated. The present study is relevant for guiding the traditional leaders and managers transitioning to e-leaders due to the pandemic.Originality/valueThe current exploration is one of its kinds to understand the dynamics of study variables in international workplaces. Today, the majority of organizations are conducting their business through GVTs. Therefore, the emerging leaders have to display specific e-competencies to contribute to employees' wellbeing effectively.

Career satisfaction antecedents of professional accounting returnees in international workplaces: an employee experience perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of career satisfaction of professional accounting returnees who have studied and/or worked abroad and then returned to work in different types of international workplaces in their home country.Design/methodology/approachA survey of professional accounting returnees in Vietnam was undertaken and multiple regression analysis was applied to test the proposed relationships.FindingsThis study finds that career satisfaction is affected by career fit, career sacrifice, types of international workplaces (domestically headquartered firms versus globally headquartered firms) and cross-cultural work readjustment. Further, cross-cultural work readjustment partially mediates the effect of career fit and career sacrifice on career satisfaction.Practical implicationsThe research provides the basis for designing career-related employee experiences to support career satisfaction of professional accounting returnees.Originality/valueThis study integrates dimensions of career embeddedness with cross-cultural work readjustment and employee experiences, which are normally studied separately, in different types of international workplaces. It contributes to the limited research on contributors to well-being in the form of career satisfaction among professional returnees in an emerging economy.

Work-Related Values in International Workplaces in Vietnam: Cross-Cultural Differences between Employers and Employees

With the trends in globalization and internationalization, cross-culture work-related values are increasingly receiving attention of both managers and researchers. This study aimed to investigate the cultural differences in work-related values between Western managers and Vietnamese employees in Vietnam. In two areas in the South of Vietnam, 94 Western and Vietnamese companies participated with 763 Vietnamese employees, 43 Vietnamese employers and 33 Western employers who have completed a questionnaire. In addition, semi-structured interviews were administered with 11 Western employers and 33 Vietnamese employees to validate the findings from the questionnaire data. Significant differences in work-related values between Western employers and Vietnamese employees were found. Time perception and face-concern were found to be the two largest differences between Western and Vietnamese professionals. Implications are discussed for further training of Vietnamese prospective graduates.

‘What are you doing here, I thought you had a kid now?’ The stigmatisation of working mothers in academia

The last decade has seen an increase of scholarly work within the social sciences critiquing neoliberal processes of our academic institutions. Much of this work has focused on metrics, paradoxes and politics. Few studies centre on the effects of these processes for women only and where they do exist, they are primarily located within the fields of critical geography, sociology and feminist studies. In this paper, I argue that as scholars of language, we are lagging behind and it is high time to address the demands of our taxing institutions and international workplaces with regard to the implications and consequences they have for women and, more specifically, early-career female researchers who would like to combine motherhood with an academic career. I argue that we need to be seriously attuned to the effects and ramifications of motherhood and academia with the aim of correcting existing gendered biases, which requires an investment on the part of all stakeholders if change is to take place. As such, this work has personal, political and epistemological motivations and implications. By focusing primarily on women and my own personal experiences through autoethnography, this essay is concerned with knowledge production that deviates from masculine and heteronormative accounts within the academy. In these ways, this article contributes to recent work in the social sciences that has been influenced by the ‘emotional turn’ in order to ‘find ways to exist in a world that is diminishing’.

Navigating Postsocialism: Bulgarian Seafarers’ Working Lives before and after 1989

AbstractThe collapse of state socialism in 1989 reshaped the maritime industries in East European countries. Based on an ethnographic study of Bulgarian maritime and waterfront workers, this article examines how shipping mobilities changed after 1989. This case study provides a unique vantage point for understanding the experiences of two generations in a stormy world of work. Before 1989, many countries in the Soviet Bloc had successful merchant navies. Fleets and transport infrastructures were owned and managed by each state, but also coordinated transnationally via the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). Seafarers were a unique occupational group under state socialism. While they had more access to international mobility than other occupational groups, their economic and political freedom was still limited. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Bulgarian shipping industry joined the global market almost overnight. The profound social, economic, and political transformations unleashed by the change of regime coincided with the rapid internationalization, technological and security innovations, and marketization that were reshaping the maritime industry worldwide at the time. These overlapping transformations radically changed the working lives of Bulgarian seafarers, opening new opportunities for some, but also creating dramatic social inequalities in the formerly tight maritime community and shifting the balance between mobility and fixity of maritime labor. Bulgarian seafarers found themselves “at sea” in two ways simultaneously: not just employed in mobile and international workplaces, but also adapting to a society and job market in flux.

Intercultural communication in engineering studies: a key competence in global labour markets

ABSTRACT Intercultural communication is not only a necessary tool for most international workplaces, but also for higher education so as to better prepare students for their future jobs. To test how intercultural competences might be taught in engineering programmes in Spain, a country where many young people have to emigrate in order to find work, an experimental group of engineers was trained in the acquisition of intercultural competences, and compared to a control group in the same field. Students exposed to the intercultural content performed significantly better on later intercultural assessments. Pedagogical implications show that teaching intercultural skills in monoculture contexts is feasible.

DIVERSITY IN A SINO-FRENCH COMPANY IN BEIJING: HOW DO EMPLOYEES MANAGE THEIR MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES?

Sometimes the idea of multilingualism is connected to understanding problems that can potentially slow down the progress of professional activity in international workplaces. However, social actors often find solutions locally to cope with issues associated with multicultural contexts. Keeping in mind the management of cultural and linguistic diversity, I set out to study how social actors organize talk-in-interaction and coordinate participation in multilingual work meetings. To allow mutual understanding and carry out their work, social actors use various resources such as ad hoc interpreting practices during professional interactions. Drawing on my conversational analysis (CA) background, I will examine how members of a Sino-French company in Beijing use ad hoc interpreting practices and English as a lingua franca (ELF) as methods to resolve the linguistic asymmetries present in a multicultural context where ELF is not always taken for granted. Through analysis of several naturally occurring conversations, I will examine the methods, and verbal and multimodal resources used by ad hoc translators to keep work going and manage each member’s participation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sm-2018-0014

Diversity in a Sino-French Company in Beijing: How Do Employees Manage Their Multilingual Practices?

Summary Sometimes the idea of multilingualism is connected to understanding problems that can potentially slow down the progress of professional activity in international workplaces. However, social actors often find solutions locally to cope with issues associated with multicultural contexts. Keeping in mind the management of cultural and linguistic diversity, I set out to study how social actors organize talk-in-interaction and coordinate participation in multilingual work meetings. To allow mutual understanding and carry out their work, social actors use various resources such as ad hoc interpreting practices during professional interactions. Drawing on my conversational analysis (CA) background, I will examine how members of a Sino-French company in Beijing use ad hoc interpreting practices and English as a lingua franca (ELF) as methods to resolve the linguistic asymmetries present in a multicultural context where ELF is not always taken for granted. Through analysis of several naturally occurring conversations, I will examine the methods, and verbal and multimodal resources used by ad hoc translators to keep work going and manage each member’s participation.

Life and career skills of primary school students: A tentative model and an online scale


 
 
 Life and career skills are essential attributes for living in the 21st century because they are important to both learning and working in local and international workplaces. This study tried to create a measurement model of life and career skills and develop an online scale for investigating the psychometric property of the scale. The participants consisted of 646 primary students in Northern, Central, Southern and North eastern regions of Thailand. Then, the classical test theory, the multidimensional item response theory and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used for data analysis. The analysis of data appeared as item of difficulty index, discrimination power index and reliability of the scale. In addition, the multidimensional analysis and the CFA of data showed item fit and construct validity of the scale. This may lead to the development of clear and correct measure of students’ life and career skills structure. Policy implications are discussed.
 Keywords: Life and career skills, tentative model, online scale, construct validity.
 
 

Finnish Highly Skilled Migrants and the European Economic Crisis

AbstractEurope is home to a globally unique area where the barriers of transnational migration have been largely removed. This article focuses on Finnish highly skilled, intra-European migrants and their labour market situation immediately following the economic crisis of 2008. Based on two consecutive online surveys (carried out in spring 2008 and summer 2010) of tertiary educated Finns living in other EU countries, the article examines the effects of the global economic downturn on the careers of these highly skilled migrants. Only 16 per cent of the respondents report that their labour market situation had worsened. A higher percentage (24%) felt that their situation had improved and the majority (54%) had either experienced no change in their situation or stated that their reasons for changing jobs or moving had nothing to do with the crisis. The article concludes that these migrants were protected from the full force of the crisis by their high human capital, flexibility of alternating between studying and work, employment in international workplaces and their intra-European migrant status.

Leadership and Communication in HCMC, Vietnam

Vietnam remains an exciting investment destination. Long term success in this East Asian country, however, requires effective management of resources including employees. This paper examines the literature and interviews with local employees in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to identify cross-cultural communication and leadership issues at the international workplaces.

International synthesis and case study examination of promising caregiver-friendly workplaces

The nature of unpaid caregiving is changing significantly in response to the changing nature of families, increased average life expectancy, and the rise in elderly populations. In order to adapt to these challenges, there is an increased focus on the workplace as a source of support for caregiver-employees (CEs), or employees providing unpaid care to a family member or friend while also working in paid employment. As demonstrated by Ireson et al. (2016), a number of workplaces in Canada and abroad are currently showing leadership with respect to the provision of caregiver-friendly workplace policies (CFWPs). The purpose of this study was to explore what is currently being offered to caregiver-employees by Canadian and international workplaces, as well as how these strategies have been defined, developed, introduced, integrated and sustained within the workplace. For the purposes of this study, CEs are defined as individuals engaged in paid employment, while simultaneously serving as an unpaid elder-care provider. To achieve the aims of this paper, a qualitative comparative case study of 21 workplaces was conducted. Participants were recruited via strategies such as snowball sampling, cold-calling and social media blasts. These workplaces, which operate as exemplars in meeting the needs of caregiver-employees, are pivotal to understanding the process which takes place in the implementation and success of CFWPs across various sectors/industries. The results of this study will be used to inform the wide gap in our knowledge about CFWPs while providing the evidence needed to workplaces and other organizations to introduce CFWPs into their employment practices.

Fitting in or Standing out? a Conflict of Belonging and Identity in Intercultural Polite Talk at Work

This study analyzes how American interns in Japanese companies use Japanese addressee honorifics to assimilate to new cultural and professional settings. Data are drawn from recorded interactions of interns’ regular work activities and are supplemented with follow-up interviews. The analysis uses Interactional Sociolinguistics to link micro-level discursive practices revealed in records of interaction to macro-level ideologies revealed in interviews. Results suggest that interns use honorifics to conform to ideological beliefs regarding politeness and formality in Japanese companies. However, the analysis also reveals that such attempts to establish social belonging may become the very means by which an intern’s foreign or outsider position is brought to the foreground. This happens as (i) overgeneralized ideologies lead to unnatural use of honorifics, (ii) appropriate use of honorifics triggers an ‘other-ing’ response from interlocutors, and (iii) interns use honorifics ironically to resist marginalization. This research contributes to an understanding of how foreigners establishing belonging in international workplaces, contending that belonging emerges in gradients, assimilation does not require ‘native-like’ speech, and attempts at conformity may be counterproductive.

Exploring internal crisis communication in multicultural environments

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore managers’ perspectives on and practices of internal crisis communication in multicultural environments.Design/methodology/approach– After a review of relevant literature on crisis, culture and internal communication to define the framework and relevance of this study, results from qualitative interviews with Danish managers are presented.Findings– Interviewees acknowledge the relevance of the cultural backgrounds of employees in relation to internal communication, especially in crisis situations. Cultural aspects affect message framing and employee sensemaking, especially when it comes to employees located in other countries. Line managers and local communicators are key in the adaptation of verbal and non-verbal communicative features. Employees are also seen as active sensegivers and communicators.Research limitations/implications– Findings show how demographic and globalisation patterns, which are changing domestic and international workplaces, have important implications for internal communication and internal crisis communication. There is therefore a call for further research, especially from the perspective of employees.Originality/value– Although cultural aspects have been highlighted as a recurrent feature of most crises today, and one of the new research areas to be explored, studies within this area are very few and concern mainly external audiences and practices. The present research study contributes to this overlooked area by offering valuable insights into internal crisis communication in organisations with a multicultural environment.

Communication at the International Workplaces: The Foreign Managers’ Perspective

In the last decade Vietnam experienced rapid economic growth. The fast growing economy in turn attracted large numbers of international companies and their managers to set up shop on its shores. This paper reviews the relevant literature and draws from interviews with experienced international managers in Ho Chi Minh City or HCMC to identify the issues they faced when communicating with the local employees at work. This paper highlights the importance of knowing and understanding the different perspectives on communication.

Managing Complexity: A Technical Communication Translation Case Study in Multilateral International Collaboration

This article discusses the largest and most complex international learning-by-doing project to date—a project involving translation from Danish and Dutch into English and editing into American English alongside a project involving writing, usability testing, and translation from English into Dutch and into French. The complexity of the undertaking proved to be a central element in the students' learning, as the collaboration closely resembles the complexity of international documentation workplaces of language service providers.

Globalization, Human Resource Practices and Innovation: Recent Evidence from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey

This study examines the triangular relationship that connects the degree to which a workplace is internationally engaged, the extent to which it innovates, and the human resource practices it adopts. By pooling various years of data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey, a nationally representative data set, we found that certain practices, such as variable pay and autonomy training, are more likely to be used in international workplaces. We subsequently found that for an international workplace, the use of variable pay contributes very little to workplace innovation while autonomy training has a positive relationship with innovation.