IHRM and expatriation in Japanese MNCs: HRM practices and their impact on adjustment and job performance

Studies of international human resource management (IHRM) have pointed out that Japanese multinational companies (MNCs) tend to use more parent-country nationals (PCNs) than do western MNCs. The ethnocentric staffing policies imply that the management of expatriation has a greater influence on the success of Japanese MNCs. We use survey data from 149 Japanese repatriates to examine the relationship between IHRM practices – selection, preparation and corporate support – and expatriate adjustment and job performance, as well as identify differences by the location of assignment. We find that selection criteria, language ability and familiarity with local cultures are positively related to work adjustment, and that leadership and relational abilities are slightly associated with job performance though there were no significant relationships between considerations for family situations and adjustment or job performance. The results also reveal that HRM practices while abroad, in particular the interactive exchange of information between expatriates and the headquarters, have a significant influence. Pre-departure preparation programs are not related to the dependent variables. The data also suggests that living and working in China is a particular problem for Japanese expatriates.

The changing influence of societal culture on job satisfaction across Europe

This paper contributes to the growing multidisciplinary body of literature on subjective well-being by investigating the longitudinal stability and impact of societal cultural values (SCVs) – as opposed to the more common organizational values – on job satisfaction. It is assumed that SCVs evolve slowly; hence, their impact on job satisfaction is likely to remain stable over time. False adherence to this assumption could cause misalignment between organizational policies/practices and expectations formed by societal culture, decreasing job satisfaction and adversely affecting productivity, competiveness and prosperity. Four waves of the European Values Study are used to examine whether SCVs have evolved and their impacts on job satisfaction over a relatively short time: 1981–2008. SCVs are parameterized through reference to traditional vs secular-rational, and survival vs self-expression value continuums. Results indicate that the strength of many SCVs has declined, the impacts of traditional societal values on job satisfaction have remained fairly constant, and the impacts of survival societal values on job satisfaction have declined substantially over this sample period. These reductions in SCVs amplify the importance of accounting for such changes when designing new or adjusting existing policies/practices to enhance job satisfaction and stimulate improvements in productivity, competitiveness and prosperity.

A 2-year follow-up study of work ability among college educators

The aim of this study was to evaluate work ability among college educators before and after an intervention at the workplace. An administrative restructuring in the workplace started to be implemented in 2005. The work ability index (WAI) was administered to 154 educators before the restructure in 2004 and to 60 educators following the restructure in 2006. A mest comparing the WAI score of the 60 educators who took part in both phases showed a trend of improving work ability (p = 0.06; mean WAI in 2004 was 41.7 and 43.3 in 2006). The results suggest that the intervention led to an improvement in psychosocial factors, which in turn positively influenced work ability. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Job rotation in assembly lines employing disabled workers

In this paper we consider the programming of job rotation in the assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem. The motivation for this study comes from the designing of assembly lines in sheltered work centers for the disabled, where workers have different task execution times. In this context, the well-known training aspects associated with job rotation are particularly desired. We propose a metric along with a mixed integer linear model and a heuristic decomposition method to solve this new job rotation problem. Computational results show the efficacy of the proposed heuristics. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Grid job scheduling using Route with Genetic Algorithm support

In 2006 the Route load balancing algorithm was proposed and compared to other techniques aiming at optimizing the process allocation in grid environments. This algorithm schedules tasks of parallel applications considering computer neighborhoods (where the distance is defined by the network latency). Route presents good results for large environments, although there are cases where neighbors do not have an enough computational capacity nor communication system capable of serving the application. In those situations the Route migrates tasks until they stabilize in a grid area with enough resources. This migration may take long time what reduces the overall performance. In order to improve such stabilization time, this paper proposes RouteGA (Route with Genetic Algorithm support) which considers historical information on parallel application behavior and also the computer capacities and load to optimize the scheduling. This information is extracted by using monitors and summarized in a knowledge base used to quantify the occupation of tasks. Afterwards, such information is used to parameterize a genetic algorithm responsible for optimizing the task allocation. Results confirm that RouteGA outperforms the load balancing carried out by the original Route, which had previously outperformed others scheduling algorithms from literature.

Performance results of running parallel applications on the InteGrade

The InteGrade middleware intends to exploit the idle time of computing resources in computer laboratories. In this work we investigate the performance of running parallel applications with communication among processors on the InteGrade grid. As costly communication on a grid can be prohibitive, we explore the so-called systolic or wavefront paradigm to design the parallel algorithms in which no global communication is used. To evaluate the InteGrade middleware we considered three parallel algorithms that solve the matrix chain product problem, the 0-1 Knapsack Problem, and the local sequence alignment problem, respectively. We show that these three applications running under the InteGrade middleware and MPI take slightly more time than the same applications running on a cluster with only LAM-MPI support. The results can be considered promising and the time difference between the two is not substantial. The overhead of the InteGrade middleware is acceptable, in view of the benefits obtained to facilitate the use of grid computing by the user. These benefits include job submission, checkpointing, security, job migration, etc. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Covalent attachment of 3,4,9,10-perylenediimides onto the walls of mesoporous molecular sieves MCM-41 and SBA-15

This work describes the covalent grafting of 3,4,9,10-perylenediimides (PDI), which are fluorescent dyes with very interesting optical properties, onto the walls of mesoporous molecular sieves MCM-41 and SBA-15. The mesoporous materials were first treated with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) in anhydrous toluene, generating amine-containing surfaces. The amine-containing materials were then reacted with 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCA), generating surface-grafted PDI. Infrared spectra of the materials showed that the reaction with amino groups took place at both anhydride ends of the PTCA molecule, resulting in surface attached diimides. No sign of unreacted anhydride groups were found. The new materials, designated as MCMN2PDI and SBAN(2)PDI, presented absorption and emission spectra corresponding to weakly coupled PDI chromophores, in contrast to the strongly coupled rings usually found in solid PDI samples. The materials showed a red fluorescence, which could be observed by the naked eye under UV irradiation or with a fluorescence microscope. The PDI-modified mesoporous materials showed electrical conductivity when pressed into a pellet. The results presented here show that the new materials are potentially useful in the design of nanowires. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The unseen job creators : Growth potential among non-growing firms

Among 104,231 limited liability fi…rms in Sweden with at least two employees during 1997-2010, almost 10 % did not hire new employees in any given 3-year period despite having high profi…ts. Nearly half of these …firms continued to have high or medium pro…fits in the next three-year period, but still no growth. Regression analysis indicates that these fi…rms were not randomly distributed; rather they were small and young, did not belong to an enterprise group, and operated in local markets with high profi…t-opportunities. We conclude that it might be more benefi…cial to focus policy towards these …firms instead of towards a few high-growth fi…rms that, having just grown exponentially, may not be best positioned to grow further.