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Using an institutional lens, we investigate the isomorphic effects of both external and internal contexts on human resource management (HRM) systems. Our analysis uses data from 4768 organizations across 34 countries to focus on the similarities in HRM systems. By employing distance matrices, a commonly adopted method in geographic science, we find that both external and internal contexts affect (dis)similarities in HRM systems. Organizations in similar environments exhibit more similar HRM systems. Furthermore, we find that the devolvement of HRM activities from HRM to line management reduces the similarity of HRM systems across organizations. By contrast, a strong strategic position of HRM does not yield a comparable effect. Our study's main contributions include elucidating the multifaceted relationship between context and HRM, highlighting the HRM department's role in this relationship, clarifying the context–HRM connection via the concept of isomorphic pressures, and illustrating the use of distance matrices as tool with great explanatory power for the analysis of similarities among HRM phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What a 'successful career' means to teachers is little understood, although this would allow schools and educational governance alike to support teachers' development, and to reduce their attrition. This study examines how 240 school teachers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland conceptualize career success, as compared to 185 health-care/social workers and 125 information technology professionals. Using a cross-culturally validated, multidimensional scale, the authors find that teachers differ from other occupations in some, but not all, career success dimensions. Their findings underline the relevance of cross-occupational studies in research related to teachers' career development, and they suggest new levers for increasing teachers' motivation, creating more effective developmental opportunities for them, and -- ultimately -- reducing teacher attrition.

Over the recent decades, organizations have had to face a number of major external shocks and crises. Acquiring a better understanding of how human resources are managed under such critical conditions constitutes the main purpose of this study. We conducted a study triangulating different sources (employees, HR managers, and secondary data) and types of data (quantitative and qualitative) to explore how employees in Portuguese organizations perceived the HR practices' implementation during the years of the financial crisis (2011–2014) and how HR managers explained it. Longitudinal evidence from 53 organizations attests to perceived decreasing trends, particularly in training and development and performance management. HR managers legitimize these trends, embracing conventions and revealing the impact of coercive and normative pressures. Our findings highlight the need for renewed attention to be paid to the contextual pressures on HR managers' decision‐making and actions that could severely endanger their role as strategic partners and their embrace of sustainable HRM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although 'brain drain' from emerging economies is a well-documented problem, research on how Human Resource Management (HRM) can potentially address it is still scarce. Based on Signaling Theory, we argue that developmental HRM practices in home countries reduce self-initiated expatriation (SIE) of young healthcare professionals by increasing their focus on opportunities in their home country. Additionally, we hypothesize that individual financial stability as a personal resource constitutes an important boundary condition, as developmental HRM's positive effect on the focus on opportunities and its indirect negative effect on SIE intention may be even stronger for individuals with lower financial resources. We tested and found support for our hypotheses using a sample of 184 junior doctors in Lithuania in a time-lagged study. By bridging the HRM and SIE literature, our study extends the existing knowledge about the outcomes of HRM and highlights the importance of home country HRM in explaining SIE intention above and beyond its traditionally considered antecedents. In this way, our study has major theoretical and practical implications for decision-makers at organizational and national levels in managing brain drain from emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]