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Immigrants are important contributors to workplaces, but HRM scholars have only recently begun to study them systematically. We document the prevalence and cross-national variation in populations of immigrant employees. Going beyond a treatment that considers them as another element of diversity, we propose how gradients of status at each level of country, organization, and work group admittance can result in unique outcomes for immigrants who are equally (dis)similar. We offer a taxonomy of immigrant pathways into their destination countries to explore the status hierarchies they are assigned by governments and reinforced by organizations. We provide insights into the ascribed status of immigrants and develop a typology of individual and organizational acculturation strategies based on the cultural tightness and looseness of the destination and origin cultures. We then describe how the reactions of members of an immigrant employee’s social environment are sensitive to ascribed status and cultural tightness-looseness. We do so in a three-stage process that begins with immigrant categorization, followed by conferral of (il)legitimacy, and finally brought together with perceptions of outcome interdependence. Finally, we offer ideas about HRM interventions to guide management scholars in their quest for understanding and improve the experiences of immigrants in the workplace.

As part of the globalizing work environment, new forms of organizations have emerged, ranging from international to multinational and transnational organizations. These forms of organizations require high levels of cross-national interdependence, and often the formation of multicultural teams (MCTs), nested within multinational organizations. Employees who operate in the global multinational context should share common meanings, values, and codes of behaviors in order to effectively communicate with each other and coordinate their activities. What helps global multicultural team members create the social glue that connects them to each other, above and beyond the national cultures to which they belong? We propose that a more macro-level meaning system of a global work culture, which is the shared understanding of the visible rules, regulations, and behaviors, and the deeper values and ethics of the global work context, that is formed outside of the level of national cultures, binds members of MCTs. At the individual level, the representation of these global work values in the self leads to the emergence of a global identity, which is an individual's sense of belonging to and identification with groups (such as MCTs), operating in the global work environment of multinational organizations. The chapter focuses on the potential influence of a global work culture, and of a global identity on the effectiveness of MCTs.

Human resource (HR) process research emerged as a response to questions about how (bundles of) HR practices related to organizational outcomes. The goal of HR process research is to explain variability in employee and organization outcomes by focusing on how HR practices are intended (adopted) by senior managers, the way that these HR practices are implemented and communicated by line managers, and how employees perceive, understand, and attribute these HR practices. In the first part of this chapter, we present a review of 20 years of HR process research from the start, to how it developed, and is now maturing. Within the body of HR process research, several different research theoretical streams have emerged, which are largely studied in isolation without benefiting from each other. Therefore, in the second part of this chapter, we draw on previous work to propose a staged process model in which we integrate the different research streams of HR process research, recognizing contingencies in the model. This leads us to an agenda for future research and practical implications in the final part of the chapter.

In this response, we address the thoughtful commentaries by Chen and Tsui, and Erez and highlight three overarching themes emerging from their contributions. First, we address the challenge of balancing complexity and parsimony in our model of values, HRM practices and fit in cross-cultural contexts. Second, we provide further explanations of the linkages between societal and organizational values. Third, we address the question of whether culture and climate should be treated as separate constructs in the model. In doing so, we hope to stimulate future progress in multi-level and cross-cultural perspectives of HRM and fit.

In this chapter, we discuss Cohen and Doveh's (this volume) proposed protocol for testing differences in intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs). We believe that there are many research questions that can be addressed by this procedure. We provide several potential examples of using this procedure at the individual, group, and organizational/society levels of analysis. We do, however, raise concerns about interpreting the ICC as an index of within-group homogeneity.

Pervasive forms of worldwide communication now connect us instantly and constantly, and yet we all too often fail to understand each other. Rather than benefiting from our globally interconnected reality, the world continues to fall back on divisiveness, a widening schism exacerbated by some of the most pronounced divisions in history along lines of wealth, culture, religion, ideology, class, gender, and race. Cross-cultural dynamics are rife within multinational organizations and among people who regularly work with people from other cultures. This chapter reviews what we know from our scholarship on cross-cultural interaction among expatriates, negotiators, and teams that work in international contexts. Perhaps more important, this chapter outlines what we need to learn – and to unlearn – to be able to see diversity as an asset in helping individuals, organizations, and society to succeed rather than continuing to understand it primarily as a source of problems.