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This article aims to explore how Japanese women with younger children changed their commitment to the labour market between 2000 and 2019 by comparing mothers in three-generation and nuclear family households.

Japan currently has the highest ageing rate in the world at nearly 30%. Since the 1990s, employment flexibilization and women's labour market participation have proceeded in parallel, and the conservative family values of the patriarchy and gender division of labour that have provided intergenerational aid for care within households have been shrinking, by conducting a descriptive analysis of the Labour Force Survey (LFS).

This study identified that a conspicuous increase in part-time employment among mothers in both household types and a decrease by half in the working mother's population in three-generation households. These results suggest that the function of inter-generational assistance by multi-generation cohabitation, which was once thought to be effective in helping working mothers with younger children, is declining.

A study examining the transformation of mothers' employment behaviour differences between three-generation households and nuclear family households is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the research regarding the grandparents' caregiving, household types and mothers' employment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate older volunteers’ motivations, with special focus on country differences, considering the kind of activities carried out and age differences.

Using the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI), the authors measured motivations to volunteer of volunteers aged 50 or older, belonging to organizations engaged in the largest activity sectors of three European countries: The Netherlands (n=468), Germany (n=113) and Italy (n=279), for a total sample size of 860 subjects.

Altruistic motivations are found to be more important for German older volunteers compared to Dutch and Italian older volunteers, but in the latter country they increase with ageing. Older volunteers engaged in selfless activities are more driven by altruistic motivations, especially in Germany and Italy, whereas egoistic motivations on selfish activities are important in all countries. As age increases, older volunteers’ emotional gratification goals are pursued especially in Italy, whereas the desire to pursue new knowledge is greater for younger‐old volunteers in general, but especially in The Netherlands.

The findings are relevant for local, national and European policy makers and NGO‐managers concerned with the issue of recruiting and retaining older volunteers – a crucial issue for promoting active ageing outside the labour market. The results show how motivations influence the decision to volunteer in later life and will enable better planning of appropriate recruitment and retention strategies.

This research represents, to the authors’ knowledge, the first cross‐national investigation based on the VFI tool to specifically analyse the motivations of older volunteers across Europe.

Asserts that the concept of quality circle autonomy includes the issues of members’ development, relations with middle managers and supervisors, determining time of meetings, evaluating suggestions, selecting discussion topics, applying solutions and electing leaders. Investigates these dimensions in one Japanese and one French subsidiary in Greece. Findings show that in situations of limited autonomy, quality circle members raise no demands for more. On the other hand, when autonomy is ceded to members without their input, not only do they not demand more but, on the contrary, they may wish for the abolition of certain prerogatives requiring responsibility. Contends that quality circles possess practically insignificant bargaining power and that the satisfaction of their demands depends mostly on management benevolence, a fact likely to obstruct members’ claims for, and sustenance of, substantial autonomy. Suggests that future research focuses on the relationship of quality circle autonomy and creativity.

This article seeks to explain why the public provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in Reggio di Calabria – the largest city of the Calabria region in Southern Italy – has remained among the lowest in the country, failing to respond to the growing local demand for such services. Most of the limited formal supply of ECEC services currently available in the city is almost exclusively provided, for a fee, by private – until recently unregulated – day care centres, whereas households who cannot afford them must still rely on family care.

Based on original research findings, the article explains how such a supply configuration is the result of several concurrent factors – structural, institutional and cultural, on both the demand and the supply side of the service relation – and has been conditioned by both national and local specificities.

The complex interplay of these factors accounts not only for the enduring absence of an adequate public provision of ECEC services in the city and its region but also for the reproduction of an “unsupported” familistic model of care, while a loosely regulated private supply answers the growing demand coming from the working women who can afford it.

The lack of public ECEC, which was significantly aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis, represents a major constraint for women's emancipation and social justice in an already difficult socio-economic context.

The article provides in-depth knowledge on the enduring deficit of public ECEC services in a region and city that are little studied, together with a contextualized interpretation of its causes and implications.

Using data from 184 employed Hispanic‐American and Anglo‐American participants in the United States, the present study examined the relations between four cultural values (i.e., collectivism, power distance, familism, present time orientation) and job choice preferences. Results revealed that (1) collectivism was positively related to the importance of coworkers and working in a diverse organization, (2) familism was related to preferences for jobs with personal time off, and (3) power distance was related to the importance of organizational reputation and promotion opportunities. In addition, the findings revealed that, relative to Anglo‐Americans, Hispanic Americans felt that organizational reputation, flexible work hours, bonuses, and diversity were more important job choice factors. Implications are offered for conducting future research on job choice and developing recruitment practices in multicultural organizations in the United States.

The aim of this paper is explore how organizational culture is influenced by collectivism in Russia and draw some recommendations from human resources perspective because Russia differs from most Western countries in several ways, one of the key ones being a much higher tendency to collectivism.

The survey questionnaires were used in order to discover interrelations between characteristically collectivism and organizational culture. Organizational culture was turned into the task and relationship orientations approach and three levels of collectivism were distinguished. A total of 586 employees working for various organizations in Russia participated in this study.

First, it was discovered that Russians hold collectivistic attitudes (familism and patriotism) showing correlation with both orientations (task and relationships) of organizational culture. The results show that familism is negatively correlated with task orientation, while Patriotism is positively correlated with task and relationship orientations. These findings make it possible to develop recommendations for human resources management (HRM).

The limitations of the study are related to organizational culture approach and the Russians' multifaceted ethnic and cultural background. Nevertheless, this study illuminates various issues that may influence HRM practices in Russia.

The Russian organizations have some specific characteristics and this paper explains how those might be better managed. Special attention is paid on the HRM strategy and policy in the Russian context.

The main value of the paper is related to the contribution to the understanding which cultural factors may influence the HRM practices in Russia.

Debt is at a peak and consumers purport needing help with financial planning. To better understand the antecedents of financial planning behavior, the purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of cultural values in financial decision making within the context of Hispanic American consumers. A new conceptual model is proposed to integrate affect (cultural value) and cognition (financial knowledge) in financial planning.

To uncover respondents’ views on cultural values, financial knowledge, financial attitude, and financial planning behavior, an online survey hosted on a business school’s website was distributed to members of two Hispanic Chambers of Commerce. The survey consisted of five parts, and took each respondent an average of 15 minutes to complete. The final data set has 158 observations.

Results analyzed using structural equation modeling confirmed the hypotheses that financial knowledge, attitude, and perceived control simultaneously influence Hispanic consumers’ intentions to purchase financial planning products or services. More interestingly, these results confirm that multiple different routes coexist in the decision-making process, especially within the Hispanic financial planning context.

Key contributions of this paper include the conceptualization of cultural value as an antecedent to Hispanic financial behavior; detailing the different routes to financial decision making for US Hispanic consumers; and informing financial service managers on marketing strategies toward Hispanic consumers.

Existing research focuses on the pension systems and reforms in China from a macro-level and financial perspective. The expectations of mid-life Chinese people regarding their retirement and pensions have been ignored to date, and this research set out to address this lacuna.

The application of qualitative research methods is relatively novel in Chinese social science. As a grounded theory (GT) study, the research reported here deployed semi-structured interviews to investigate middle-aged Chinese women's and men's perceptions of their pensions and retirement. In total, 36 interviews were conducted, following the constructivist GT method.

The data point to disparities between the choices and perceptions of individuals on the one hand and the official assumptions underlying the current pension regime on the other hand. Research participants had varying interpretations of the inequality in retirement incomes in China, the main division being between enterprise workers and public-sector employees.

Although there are in principle rigidly fixed retirement ages for men and women in contemporary China, the phenomena of early retirement and working post-retirement are increasing. There are trade-offs between work/retirement and family needs, which influence the choices of middle-aged citizens. Retirement pathways are increasingly individualised, reflecting broader patterns of individualisation and inequality in China.

Data drawn from the 1985 British Social Attitudes survey are considered with respect to the implications for ideas about the sphere of government responsibility in relation to economic life. A factor analysis of the pattern of answers is described.

South Korea has shown ultra-low fertility since the 2000s despite a massive expansion of pro-natal policies. The purpose of this research is to analyse institutional and socio-cultural configurations surrounding Korea's pro-natal policy and provide implications as to why the comprehensive packages have not produced intended outcomes.

This study assumes institutional complementarities, suggesting that the effectiveness of policy depends on various support factors. Drawing out insights from the framework of de-familisation, the authors construct a gender and family framework to analyse the pro-natal policy configurations in Korea.

Labour market policies in Korea have explicitly aimed to support dual-earner couples and protect women's employment status after childbirth. However, the dualistic labour market and remaining female-caregiver norms lead to the polarisation of couples into dual earners and male breadwinners. In family policy, the government has rapidly increased affordable childcare services, but widespread distrust in private services and generous birth-related cash benefits formulate a tension between de-familisation and continued familisation. Other welfare programmes that attach welfare rights to marital status also prolong female-caregiver norms in institutional arrangements. The findings suggest that the ambivalence between recent policy developments and the existing arrangements can limit the effectiveness of the policy packages.

The framework based on institutional complementarities addresses the limitations of previous studies concentrating on the statistical testing of individual policy effects. A similar approach can be applied to other countries showing major policy efforts but producing unsatisfactory outcomes.