The influence of cross-cultural differences on job interview selection decisions

How the interview process affects foreign-born job candidates has received scant attention in recent research literature (Huffcutt 2011 Huffcutt, A.I. (2011), ‘An Empirical Review of the Employment Interview Construct Literature,’ International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 19, 62–81.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), even though the issue should be growing in importance given the massive influx of qualified migrants entering developed countries. This paper examines the job interview through the lens of national culture and argues that cross-cultural differences between interviewer and interviewee can affect interview judgement and evaluation. Drawing upon the literatures in cross-cultural research and social psychology, this paper presents a model of cross-cultural differences on interview outcomes. In so doing, this conceptual study advances theory that underpins the employment selection process of foreign-born job candidates, and also provides a platform on which future empirical research may be based.     

Why do off‐shored Indian call centre workers want to leave their jobs?

Employee turnover is a major problem in off‐shored Indian call centres. Agents who service Western customers often face hostility and racial abuse because of who they are and where they are located. A substantial part of job‐related training focuses on teaching employees to manage their identity and modify their accent. Based on a sample (n = 211) of Indian call centre workers servicing international customers, we explore these issues and investigate how they affect employee turnover intentions. The study utilises Taylor and Bain's (2005) distinction between factors particular to the Indian context and those more generic to the call centre labour process to better understand the drivers of turnover. We found that a number of distinctive factors including accent modification difficulty, stigma consciousness, racial abuse and perceived favouritism were associated with turnover intentions. The study also revealed that certain job‐related factors related to intentions to leave, including routinisation and poor promotional opportunities.     

Telling tales: online comic and gripe story‐sharing by service workers about difficult customers

The article extends previous research on the storying practices of service workers, workplace humour as resistance, and workers’ autonomous use of social media. Discussion strings from two hairstylist forum storylines, exemplifying comic and tragic story‐sharing about difficult customers, were analysed using Gabriel's notion of story‐work. Processes of coping, entertainment, identity‐construction and learning are clearly evident in the discussion strings and social media is confirmed as a ‘new’ terrain for the enactment of employee agency. Findings emphasize that service workers are engaged in contradictory and ambiguous relations of resistance and accommodation as they learn how to deal with difficult customers. The article's contribution is to show how service workers share their fears and anxieties about difficult customers through storying and humour in generative dialogical poietic processes in social media. Further research is suggested.     

Entry preemption through capacity expansion in the U.S. titanium industry

This study investigates the impact of expected excess capacity on the probability of firm entry into a single-product oligopoly, specifically, the U.S. titanium industry. Predicted values for excess capacity as well as its components, production, and capacity are generated. By disentangling the components of excess capacity and estimating them independently, it is possible to separate incumbents' discretionary actions regarding capacity expansion, which may preempt entry, from the effects of underlying cycles in demand, which subsequently affect production. These predicted values are utilized in logit models which indicate that expected levels of capacity expansion did appear to decrease the probability of firm entry, while expected levels of production and excess capacity had no effect on the probability of entry into the U.S. titanium industry.     

Banking crises in monetary economies

Abstract.  This paper analyzes the effect of inflation on banking crises in a model in which money and banks play essential roles. The model's equilibrium replicates some key features of actual banking crises, namely, the partial suspension of payments and the desire to hold cash even in the absence of pressing liquidity needs. When banks have access to a stable foreign currency, inflation has a threshold effect on banking crises: higher inflation reduces the likelihood of crises when inflation is below the threshold; the reverse happens when inflation exceeds the threshold. This result appears to be broadly consistent with available evidence.     

Equality and diversity in British workplaces: the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey

Drawing on key findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this article examines developments in the incidence, scope and substance of equal opportunities policy provision and practice in Britain. The discussion then considers the extent to which workplaces might be adopting diversity management practices, the potential for further research on equality and diversity using WERS 2004, and the issues that might be considered in future workplace employment relations surveys.     

The Hens are Clucking: Women Performing Gossip in Their Leisure Lives

Using a feminist poststructural lens, this conceptual article aims to trouble patriarchal understandings of gossip as a devalued dimension of women's talk. To accomplish this aim, I focus on decentering three dominant discourses tied to women's gossip that position gossip as idle talk, based on the personal lives of others, and trivial. In particular, I consider the ways power is part of women's performances of gossip and how women can use gossip to construct, maintain, and resist gendered subjectivities as part of their leisure. This article also aims to illustrate the need for leisure researchers, and in particular feminist leisure researchers, to pay closer attention to the topic of women's gossip and the complex and messy connections between gossip, women's talk, and women's leisure lives.     

Blacklisting and its legacy in the UK construction industry: employment relations in the aftermath of exposure of the Consulting Association

This paper explores responses to the exposure of blacklisting in the UK construction industry in the period following the closure of the Consulting Association (CA) in 2009. It asks whether employer collusion to blacklist in this way has been terminated and concludes that it is now largely of historical interest although other forms of anti‐union activity continue. It highlights particularly the historic and continuing importance of ‘double breasting’ and reports on divergent employer paths in the aftermath of the exposure and subsequent closure of the activities of the CA.