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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of a multi-level approach consisting of individual, human resource management (HRM) team, and organizational contingency factors when considering the efficacy of HR devolvement efforts. The authors accomplish this through a review of the relevant devolvement literature to show how outcomes are impacted by contingency factors, which highlights a gap in extant scholarship, and the authors organize the literature in a way that is meaningful to future researchers interested in the topic as well as practitioners involved with its implementation.

The authors use a narrative review approach to describe previous devolvement research (e.g. Hammersley, 2001; Harvey and Moeller, 2009). In contrast to a systematic review more commonly seen in quantitative meta-analyses, a narrative review allows for a more descriptive and detailed analysis and critique of quantitative, qualitative, and theoretical research (Bezrukova et al., 2012; Posthuma et al., 2002). This methodology produced over 300 books, journal articles, magazine articles, and discussion papers. In this review, the authors chose to focus only on those peer-reviewed papers reporting empirical findings or developing theoretical arguments surrounding devolvement.

While the studies reviewed herein are admirable and help call attention to an important topic in HRM, they nonetheless fail to provide a comprehensive understanding of contingencies affecting devolvement as they do not consider the multi-level nature of the phenomenon. Therefore, the authors’ contribution lies in the identification and categorization of contingency factors affecting the occurrence of devolvement operating at the individual, HRM team, and organizational levels.

As devolvement continues to be a viable means for assigning HR responsibilities from the human resources department to managers, its effects can have an impact on organizational performance, the strategic positioning of HR, and various job attitudes of line managers. Therefore, a clearer picture of devolvement in order to understand its continued significance is an important contribution.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the special issue which considers the impact that the global world has had on the profession of HRM.

In June 2009, the International Human Resource Management Conference was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Various IHRM papers were presented, and of these, many were subjected to a second round of reviews for this special issue. This special issue is made up of the best papers.

The article highlights that as IHRM has emerged as an academic discipline, a variety of debates and issues have come to dominate the literature. For practitioners, a long‐standing issue has been the delineation of specific practices to be used in the management of people within international organizations. Over time, practices have emerged, and texts today can readily be found that represent such practices for those working in MNCs as HR managers.

A number of concerns about HRM are raised in this issue, most of which are addressed by the papers chosen.

Cross border managers are an important feature of the global economy. Despite this, research evidence suggests that the primary selection criteria for cross border managers are technical expertise and domestic business knowledge. This has resulted in insufficient numbers of high calibre candidates to meet the demands of today's global business context. This paper aims to argue that an understanding of an individual's value orientations is important for selecting cross border managers and predicting subsequent performance.

The paper reports the testing of a multidimensional value orientated taxonomy on a sample of 658 managers employed by three multinational organisations. The model was tested via SEM. OLS multiple regression was carried out to identify whether the dimensions of the taxonomy predict the performance of managers in cross border roles.

Results yielded sound factor structure of the taxonomy with a single factor solution identified on each of the two individual value dimensions. SEM confirmed significant relationships and a sound goodness‐of‐fit of the model. OLS regression results indicated that the model accurately predicted the performance of managers during cross border assignments.

Surveys were administered at one point in time and do not account for any change in value orientations.

The model and results provide guidance to HRM professionals for selecting candidates for cross border business roles.

The study addresses a limitation of earlier work by testing the efficacy of the multi‐dimensional taxonomy with a larger and more diverse sample. The paper evaluates the strength of the taxonomy in predicting performance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework in order to understand the impact of organizational justice climate on firm performance.

This paper reviews the literature on organizational justice and social capital and theorizes their relationship with firm performance. The underlying argument of this paper is that a climate of organizational justice influences firm performance indirectly through its influence on social capital.

The paper suggests ways through which different types of justice climate – distributive, procedural, interactional – are related to different dimensions of social capital. This paper also extends the findings of organizational justice research from an individual level to organizational level by proposing an indirect relationship with firm performance.

This paper is unique, as no research to date has proposed a conceptual framework integrating organizational justice climate, social capital and firm performance.

As the interest in talent management (TM) gathers momentum, this paper aims to unravel how talent is managed in multinational corporations, what factors mediate the talent management process and what computerised systems may contribute to the management of talent.

The study employs a single case study but multiple units of analysis approach to elucidate the factors pertaining to the transmission and use of talent management practices across the German and Irish subsidiaries of a US multinational corporation. Primary data for this study derive from a series of in‐depth interviews with key decision makers, which include managers at various levels in Germany, Ireland and The Netherlands.

The findings suggest that the diffusion of, and success of, talent management practices is contingent on a combination of factors, including stakeholder involvement and top level support, micro‐political exchanges, and the integration of talent management with a global human resource information system. Furthermore, the discussion illuminates the utility and limitations of Cappelli's “talent on demand” framework.

The main limitation of this research is the adoption of a single case study method. As a result, the findings may not be applicable to a wider population of organisations and subsidiaries. Additional research will be required to substantiate the relevance of these findings in the context of other subsidiaries of the same and other corporations.

This paper accentuates a number of practical implications. Inter alia, it highlights the complex nature of institutional factors affecting the talent management process and the potential efficacy of a human resource information system in managing talent globally.

The paper extends the body of knowledge on the transfer of talent management practices in the subsidiaries of multinational corporations. The discussion presented herein may engender further academic debate on the talent management process in the academic and practitioner communities. The link between talent management and the use of human resource information systems established by this research may be of particular interest to human resource practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: first, the degree to which career adaptability, career optimism, and career knowledge predict career decisiveness in China, Germany, and the US is to be examined; second, the effect of the five personality traits on the determinants of career decisiveness, on career decisiveness, and on the relation between career decisiveness and its determinants in the three countries is to be investigated.

A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. The sample consists of 555 business students from three countries: China (196), Germany (210), and the USA (149). A two‐stage OLS regression analysis was applied for assessing the relation between career decisiveness, its determinants, and the personality traits.

The results show that personality traits have direct and moderating effects on career decisiveness and its antecedents. In addition, the influence of personality and the antecedents of career decisiveness differ in the three countries examined.

The conclusions of this study may be subject to several limitations that suggest further possibilities for empirical research, e.g. the study does not examine the influence of cultural traits on career decisiveness, its determinants, and their relation.

The identified cross‐country differences lead to the need for diverse career counseling for students with different personalities in different countries.

So far research on students' career decisiveness has focused only on national samples. The explorative paper examines the influence of personality traits on business students' career decisiveness in three countries.

The aim of this paper is to challenge the person‐related aspect of the stereotype that older employees are unmotivated. In an overall model, it seeks to examine how age, perceived age discrimination, and perceived organizational support relate to each other and how they affect the achievement motives' hope of success and fear of failure.

Data were collected in six large German enterprises using a standardized questionnaire. The sample included 631 older employees aged 50 to 64 and 624 younger employees aged 30 to 40. For the data analysis, PLS structural equation modeling was used.

The results showed that older employees were more strongly affected by age discrimination than their younger colleagues. Perceived age discrimination, in turn, led to less perceived organizational support and a higher fear of failure. Age, in contrast, was not substantially related to achievement motives. Thus, the stereotype of unmotivated older employees is not justified.

The findings outline the central role of perceived age discrimination. Thus, with an increasingly aging workforce, organizations have to amplify their anti‐discrimination efforts by applying suitable human resource management and leadership practices.

This paper contributes to the literature by challenging a stereotype common in Western societies and examining the achievement motives of older employees. Moreover, it tries to shed light on the organization's role regarding the perception of discriminating and non‐supporting environments.

It has been known for some time that job stress has a wide‐ranging, negative impact on employees. It has also been known that providing employees with autonomy and/or control over their work environment reduces the deleterious consequences of job stress. The purpose of this study is to examine whether control in the form of flex‐time (i.e. allowing employees to create their own work schedules) moderates the impact of stress on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation among Russian, Canadian, and Israeli Arab employees (n=933).

Archival data that was obtained from employees (n=933) residing in three different nations was analysed via hierarchical moderated multiple regression.

In relation to extrinsic motivation, a significant interaction was observed between job stress, flex‐time, and country of residence. Although flex‐time and country of residence were significant predictors of intrinsic motivation, no significant interactions were observed.

This is one of few papers to examine flex‐time from an international perspective. In terms of value, human resource managers are made aware that the impacts of flex‐time on employees' motivation depends, in part, on the nation in which they are employed.