As a result of globalization, large-scale modern-day businesses extend across borders as they engage in multinational enterprises. Such enterprises must conduct operations in disparate, culturally diverse contexts, which present challenges for implementing human resource management activities, such as whether to standardize or localize activities across borders. The current study focuses on recruitment activities, as they represent firms’ initial efforts to attract highly qualified talent. However, the extant recruitment literature has primarily been conducted in a single context or in Westernized societies; thus, it is unclear how organizations recruit across borders. Drawing on signaling theory, we explore how Fortune 1000 firms use recruiting signals in their domestic and international operations. In general, we find that firms standardize the recruiting signals across their domestic and international operations. Yet, the amount that each signal is emphasized differs in domestic and international operations and is contingent upon language. Furthermore, cultural distance between the home and host country largely does not explain the standardization of the recruiting signals. We summarize the findings and provide direction intended to guide future research.

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to identify how employees feel about having more meetings and what can be done to improve employees' feelings about their work meetings. Design/methodology/approach-Data were obtained from three samples of working adults. The first was a convenience sample recruited by undergraduate students (n = 120), the second was a stratified random sample from a metropolitan area in the southern USA (n = 126), and the third was an internetbased panel sample (n = 402). Constant comparative analysis of responses to open-ended questions was used to investigate the overarching research questions. Findings-It is found that employees enjoy meetings when they have a clear objective, and when important relevant information is shared. Consistent with conservation of resources theory, most employees are unhappy with meetings when they reduce their work-related resources (e.g. meetings constrain their time, lack structure and are unproductive). Practical implications-The data suggest that meetings appear to be both resource-draining and resource-supplying activities in the workplace. Researchers and managers should consider overtly asking about how people feel about meetings, as a means of identifying areas for future research inquiry and targets for improvement in the workplace generally. Originality/value-The paper describes one of the few studies on meetings that ask the participants overtly what their feelings are regarding their workplace meetings. Additionally, the paper illustrates the usefulness of qualitative data analysis as a means for further understanding workplace activities viewing respondents as informants.

Substantial research has documented challenges women experience building and benefiting from networks to achieve career success. Yet fundamental questions remain regarding which aspects of men’s and women’s networks differ and how differences impact their careers. To spur future research to address these questions, we present an integrative framework to clarify how and why gender and networks—in concert—may explain career inequality. We delineate two distinct, complementary explanations: (1) unequal network characteristics (UNC) asserts that men and women have different network characteristics, which account for differences in career success; (2) unequal network returns (UNR) asserts that even when men and women have the same network characteristics, they yield different degrees of career success. Further, we explain why UNC and UNR emerge by identifying mechanisms related to professional contexts, actors, and contacts. Using this framework, we review evidence of UNC and UNR for specific network characteristics. We found that men’s and women’s networks are similar in structure (i.e., size, openness, closeness, contacts’ average and structural status) but differ in composition (i.e., proportion of men, same-gender, and kin contacts). Many differences mattered for career success. We identified evidence of UNC only (same-gender contacts), UNR only (actors’ and contacts’ network openness, contacts’ relative status), neither UNC nor UNR (size), and both UNC and UNR (proportion of men contacts). Based on these initial findings, we offer guidance to organizations aiming to address inequality resulting from gender differences in network creation and utilization, and we present a research agenda for scholars to advance these efforts.

Summary Despite women's advancements in the workplace, gender inequality persists. We classify and test two frameworks used to explain gender differences in career success: unequal attributes and unequal effects. The unequal attributes framework suggests that gender is related to other attributes, which result in unequal career outcomes for men and women (i.e., a mediated effect). The unequal effects framework suggests that even when men and women share the same attribute or circumstances, they are rewarded differently, such that individual attributes have unequal effects on career outcomes for men and women (i.e., a moderated effect). We collected survey data from a gender‐balanced sample of 394 business school alumni. Using structural equation modeling to test the unequal attributes framework, we found that work hours, career orientation, having a nonemployed spouse, and working in a predominantly female job were unequal attributes that explained gender differences in career success. Using multigroup path analysis to examine unequal effects, we found that being agentic, married, having children at home, and working in a predominantly female workplace had unequal effects in relation to career success for men and women. We find support for both models across three categories of career success antecedents (i.e., personal, family, and job attributes).