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The primary purpose of this descriptive study was to compare the levels of, and relationships among mental health problems, mental health shame, self-compassion, work engagement and work motivation between workers in Japan (collectivistic and success-driven culture) and the Netherlands (individualistic and quality-oriented culture).

A cross-sectional design, where convenience samples of 165 Japanese and 160 Dutch workers completed self-report measures about mental health problems, shame, self-compassion, engagement and motivation, was used. Welch t-tests, correlation and regression analyses were conducted to compare (1) the levels of these variables, (2) relationships among these variables and (3) predictors of mental health problems, between the two groups.

Dutch workers had higher levels of mental health problems, work engagement and intrinsic motivation, and lower levels of shame and amotivation than Japanese workers. Mental health problems were associated with shame in both samples. Mental health problems were negatively predicted by self-compassion in Japanese, and by work engagement in Dutch employees.

The novelty of this study relates to exploring differences in work mental health between those two culturally contrasting countries. Our findings highlight potential cultural differences such as survey responding (Japanese acquiescent responding vs Dutch self-enhancement) and cultural emphases (Japanese shame vs Dutch quality of life). Job crafting, mindfulness and enhancing ikigai (meaningfulness in life) may be helpful to protect mental health in these workers, relating to self-compassion and work engagement. Findings from this study would be particularly useful to employers, managers and staff in human resources who work with cross-cultural workforce.

The paper's aim is to introduce the interactive acculturation model (IAM) of Bourhis et al. to predict how disconcordance in acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers relates to the quality of intergroup work‐relations.

The sample consisted of 141 host community (Dutch) and 41 non‐western immigrant workers of a postal service company who filled out a questionnaire. Methods of analyses include analysis of variance and multiple regression.

In line with the IAM, results showed that a higher disconcordance in preferred acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers related to a poorer quality of intergroup work‐relations. However, intergroup contact moderated this relationship differently for host community and immigrant workers.

Data are cross‐sectional and collected in one organization. Future studies should replicate the findings to other organizational contexts, cultural groups, and collect longitudinal data to determine causal effects.

Organizations should monitor disconcordance in acculturation orientations amongst host community and immigrant workers. A multicultural culture in organizations may reduce disconcordance in acculturation orientations between host community and immigrant workers.

The paper helps to explain the mixed findings in cultural diversity research so far, by demonstrating that disconcordance in acculturation orientations relates negatively to intergroup work‐relations in a multicultural workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to unexplore the area of information and communication technology (ICT) use in organizations related to the assumed productivity gains by the use of ICTs. On the one hand, the paper focus on the losses of labor time that are caused by malfunctioning hardware or non-functional software, and on the other hand, the paper focus on the labor time losses that are caused by a lack of skills to maximize ICT.

To estimate these losses, the paper conducted a large-scale survey among the Dutch workforce. The respondents were presented scenarios, and then they were asked to assess the loss of labor time.

When working with ICTs, malfunctioning ICT and ICT skill insufficiencies lead to a loss in labor time of 7.5 percent. The losses increase with decreasing educational attainment level. Age does not contribute to the total average losses. Workers highly underestimate the effects of ICT-related training. The role of co-workers is more significant than the formally organized means by the organization.

Due to ICT's significance among the labor force, investigating the reported losses is an important step to further improve the use of ICTs in the workplace.

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare the effects of emotional and task conflict on team performance and member satisfaction in two distinct cultures, Brazil and The Netherlands.

A survey with 366 team members and interviews with 20 team managers were conducted. To analyse data and test the proposed hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses were used.

Findings suggest that cultural differences between these two countries not only influence the way intragroup conflict is experienced, but also its impact on members' satisfaction and group performance. In Brazil, emotional and task conflict were both negatively associated with individuals' satisfaction and perceived team performance, while in The Netherlands no significant relationships were found between both types of conflict and team performance.

Several limitations of this research must be recognized: the use of self‐report measures that may have some inherent social desirability bias; and the use of linear regressions to test relationships that may be non‐linear.

This paper shows that managers need to focus on differentiating emotional and task conflict and find ways to seize the potential of task‐related conflicts.

The paper sheds light on how culture influences intragroup conflict and its impact on team outcomes, enlightening the role of cultural context in conflict research.

The purpose of this article is to explore the pollution prevention practices performed by workers in the Mexican auto refinishing industry as well as their implications on the occupational, safety and environmental health of workers and community.

Interviewer‐administered questionnaires were conducted with shop owners, workers, and neighbors, and repeated site visits to collect information on occupational practices (personal protective equipment (PPE) in use, engineering controls, hazard communication, level of technology), environmental impact (chemicals usage, wastes amounts, disposal, supply chain, impact to the neighborhood), and possible symptoms of work‐related adverse health effects.

The findings indicate that the Mexican auto body shop industry is not consistent with the accepted precepts of sustainability because it is not addressing the underlying topics of health, safety, and environment. When comparing working conditions between auto body workers in developed countries and those in Mexico, it is evident that Mexican workers perform their tasks under critical conditions; therefore, under considerable occupational and environmental risks.

This article reveals five P2 opportunities that seem to have a potential relevance to the development of prevention and intervention strategies in the region to secure long‐term economic growth while improving environmental and working conditions.

This article provides the first insights about several opportunities for adopting pollution prevention strategies that improve environmental and occupational conditions in the auto refinishing industry in developing countries.

Outsourced information technology (IT) workers establish two different employment relationships: one with the outsourcing company that hires them and another with the client organization where they work daily. The attitudes that an employee has towards both organisations may be influenced by the interpretations or attributions that employees make about the reasons behind the human resource (HR) management practices implemented by the outsourcing company. This paper aims to propose that commitment‐focused HR attributions are positively and control‐focused HR attributions are negatively related to the affective commitment to the client organization, through the affective commitment to the outsourcing company.

These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 158 highly skilled outsourced employees from the IT sector. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM).

The paper's hypotheses were supported. It can conclude that, if an employee interprets the HR practices as part of a commitment‐focused strategy of the outsourcing company, it has clear attitudinal benefits. The study found that the relationship between HR attributions and the commitment to the client organization is mediated by the commitment to the outsourcing company.

These findings hint at the critical role of outsourcing companies in managing the careers of these highly marketable employees.

This paper is the first to apply the concept of HR attributions to contingent employment literature in general and to outsourced IT workers in particular.

Temporary agency working continues to grow in the UK. The purpose of this paper is to look at a number of important developments in the agency industry, which generate implications for the performance of agencies, temps and the user firms in which temps work and to set out some of the key performance implications of these developments. These developments are: the increasingly complex set of contractual arrangements between agencies and user firms; the changing regulatory environment; and the changing role of agencies in pay setting.

The paper reviews the state of the art literature on agency working, and draws on 15 years of primary research and secondary analysis of the sector by the authors.

The paper shows that there is a proliferation of models of temporary agency worker supply, some of which involves agencies playing a greater role within firms in the management of temps, with other involving a deliberate and strategic distancing of client firms and/or agency in the day-to-day management of temps. This creates significant challenges for the management of temps. The paper also finds that there are significant tensions and challenges arising from the implementation of the Agency Working Regulations, even though these regulations have the potential to raise motivation and performance of temps.

The management of temps creates significant challenges for organisations and agencies. New models of supply of agency labour have the potential to make these challenges even more problematic, if not addressed effectively. The implications of the shifting regulatory and political environment also need closer scrutiny, particularly in the context of the recent EU referendum result in the UK.

The paper sheds light on a number of new developments in the agency sector, and by demonstrating their effects on organisations, agencies and temps, draws out some of the performance implications of the continued and changing use of agency temps.

In this paper, we study the influence of temporary workers in the relationship between innovation effort and product innovation in a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms in a six-year period.

The article uses a zero-inflated regression model to analyse how the performance of innovation efforts is affected by the impact of temporary employment.

Our results show that the use of temporary employment has adverse effects for the conversion of innovation investments into innovation outputs. Firms with higher levels of fixed-term workers have less product innovations in comparison to firms that do not use this kind of workforce. However, this negative impact is less detrimental in technological-intensive sectors.

The value of this research for employment relations is salient as workers long-term protection seems to enhance the effectiveness of the innovation process. At the same time, the effects of temporary work vary depending on the sector.

With a focus on the position of EU mobile workers in the Dutch meat industry, this article discusses the multi-level State efforts to enhance protection of workers who experienced limited protection of existing State and private enforcement institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic, with virus outbreaks at Dutch meat plants, fuelled public and political will to structurally improve these workers' precarious work and living conditions. Yet, the process of policy change is slow. The authors show it is the gradual transformation in the institutional environment that the State needs to counter to become more protective for EU mobile workers.

Using the gradual institutional change approach and the concept of State ignorance, the authors examine State responses drawing on interviews with expert stakeholders in the public and private domain, public administration records and newspaper articles.

Through knowledge creation, boosted social dialogue mechanisms, enhanced enforcement capacity and new housing legislation, the Dutch State focuses on countering gradual institutional change through which existing institutions lost their effectiveness as protectors of EU mobile workers. The organization of work is, nevertheless, not (yet) fundamentally addressed with tighter public legislation.

The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of the State as multifaceted actor in institutional change processes towards increased protection for EU mobile workers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Dutch social workers make sense of the cultural otherness produced by clients with migrant origins and relates this to the various discourses that constitute the legacy of Dutch social work.

The paper relies on a historical discourse analysis based on secondary sources and on a fieldwork study performed in a contemporary organization.

The analysis reveals three different discourses. The first relates to how the association of social work with government policy produces a generalised “otherness” as the practical starting point for the social workers’ interventions, and a specific kind of cultural indifference. The second concerns a discourse around lifestyle interventions influenced by a specific tradition of institutionalised diversity called pillarization. Finally, there is a discourse in which social workers are expressly expected to be “open” to their individual clients’ specific backgrounds which generates scope for a “constructivist” conceptualization of cultural diversity.

The paper offers insights into the discursive construction of social work.