Inclusive management in international organizations. How does it affect local and expatriate academics?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-12-2015-0323 |
| Date | 05 March 2018 |
| Published date | 05 March 2018 |
| Pages | 458-473 |
| Author | Charlotte Jonasson,Jakob Lauring,David S.A. Guttormsen |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Inclusive management in
international organizations
How does it affect local and expatriate
academics?
Charlotte Jonasson
Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University,
Aarhus, Denmark
Jakob Lauring
Department of Management, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, and
David S.A. Guttormsen
Department of Communication and Culture,
BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Purpose –A growing number of academics relocate abroad to work as expatriates in the university sector.
While this employee group seems to have a highly constructive influence on the performance of university
organizations, some problems in relation to effective inclusion of these individuals have been noted. In order
to further advance the theoretical understanding regarding integration efforts in international university
organizations, the purpose of this paper is to explore how two types of inclusive management, empowering
management (identity-blind) vs English management communication (identity-conscious), affect local and
expatriate academics.
Design/methodology/approach –Using responses generated from a survey of 792 local and 620
expatriate academics, this paper assesses the effects of inclusive management on job engagement and stress
among the two groups.
Findings –The results show that one type of inclusive management, empowering management (identity-blind),
has a favorable influence on job engagement and stressin both subsamples. The other type, English management
communication (identity-conscious), increases stress for local academics but has no effect on the expatriates.
These findings are useful for theory developmentin relation to employeeinclusion in international organizations.
Originality/value –The authors have little knowledge about how inclusive management functions in
international organizations. Testing the effect of identity-blind and identity-conscious inclusive management
practices among two different groups of local and expatriate academics provides new insight to this area.
In particular, the use of English management communication provides new knowledge on the integration of
majority and minority groups in international organizations.
Keywords Expatriates, Quantitative, Internationalization, Cross-cultural, International HRM,
Diversity management, University academics
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The global mobility of expatriate academics has increased substantially along with
university internationalization making this area increasingly important to the field of
human resource management (Altbach et al., 2010). The relatively high degree of autonomy
in their jobs and the notion that tasks can often be carried out in a similar fashion across
different countries are key reasons for the expanding cross-national relocation among
academics (Froese, 2012; Isakovic and Whitman, 2013). This intensification in academics’
international mobility has led to a growing interest in this group from practitioners and
researchers (Richardson and McKenna, 2002; Selmer and Lauring, 2012, 2013).
Over the years several studies have revealed the importance of expatriate academics for
universities in terms of research productivity (Levin and Stephen, 1999; Corley and
Personnel Review
Vol. 47 No. 2, 2018
pp. 458-473
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-12-2015-0323
Received 17 December 2015
Revised 23 June 2016
Accepted 5 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
458
PR
47,2
Sabharwal, 2007) and for global rankings used to produce various university league tables
(Gress and Ilon, 2009). At the same time, an increasing attention has developed in relation to
the difficulties experienced with the recruitment and retaining of expatriate academics
(Altbach, 1996, 2005; Richardson and McKenna, 2000). Some of these difficulties concern the
working conditions which expatriate academics are faced with as university employees.
For example, Skachkova (2007) found that expatriate academics regularly experience
devaluation of their contributions and exclusion from important networks that could lead to
opportunities for publishing and for acquiring research grants. Interviewees in this study
also described the existence of discrimination in the form of sexism, racism, and
ethnocentrism. Similarly, Munene (2014) identified problems related to isolation of the
foreign faculty along with minimal professional development opportunities and exclusion in
research and teaching activities.
Hence, a number of problems exist in relation to providing a good working environment
for expatriate academics (Austin, 2003). One idea to improve this conceptually has been
suggested. That is to use inclusive management practices for integrating foreign individuals
into the local work culture (Devita, 2000; Mor-Barak, 2000; Lauring and Klitmøller,
forthcoming). In addition to these few studies having investigated inclusive management in
international organizations, a small group of studies has suggested the relevance of
inclusive management for other types of minorities defined by profession, ethnicity, and
gender (e.g. Nembhard and Edmondson, 2006; Nishii and Mayer, 2009; Mitchell et al., 2015).
Spurred by this notion we set out to explore the role of inclusive management practices in
relation to local and foreign personnel and thereby to take the first small step toward
a more general theorizing about inclusive management in international organizations
(cf. Feldman et al., 2006).
So far only a handful of studies have dealt with inclusion in international organizations.
For example, Lauring (2013) found that expatriates in Saudi Arabia reinterpreted inclusive
policies from the parent company thus developing localized practices that best suited their
own aims. Michailova (2002) studied two western subsidiaries in Russia and concluded that
expatriates should not use empowerment and participation approaches as the cultural
context did not allow for it. Both these studies qualitatively explored how superior
expatriate managers exercised inclusion of the lower-level local employees. However,
in order to develop a more generic theory-building concerning how inclusive management
practices work in international organizations, researchers need to focus on both expatriate
and local employees. This is because it cannot be assumed that expatriates will always be a
dominant group facilitating the inclusion. In recent years organizations are to an increasing
extent recruiting self-initiated expatriates that are not per se entering the organization at the
management level (Tharenou, 2013). Self-initiated expatriates, which encompass most
expatriate academics, can work in all kinds of positions in a foreign country organization
(Selmer et al., 2015).
Hence, in general, what distinguishes expatriate academics from local employees is not
the level of power but rather the novel situation they face in the new country. An inclusive
practice that may help this particular group would be to assist these international
individuals to carry out their work despite lacking a full set of skills for functioning in the
local context.
In order to develop a better understanding of inclusion in international organizations, we
argue that thereis a need to focus on two different types of groups( localsand expatriates) and
two different types of inclusive management practices: a general one and one that is
specializedto the needs of the minority. Withregard to the two differentgroups, only a limited
amount of research has actually explored if there are any variations in how expatriate and
local employees are affected by management practices. Differences between the two groups
have been mentioned to be assumed rather than confirmed (Olsen and Martins, 2009).
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management
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