No abstract

Spousal adjustment issues, increasingly career related, are a major reason for expatriate assignment failure. Employer-provided spousal assistance programs have been proposed to address this situation. This field study of 238 expatriate spouses found that those who experience a severe disruption or cessation of employment have significantly lower interaction adjustment to the expatriate experience than others. For spouses with a career orientation to work, females had higher cultural and interactional adjustment than males. Only 18% of the spouses received employerprovided career assistance, and there was no significant difference in adjustment between spouses who received assistance and those who did not. Interviews with 100 spouses indicated that their greatest needs are for networking information to assist with their job search and for a 'go to' person for practical settling-in assistance.

A training program, based on procedural justice theory, was developed for teaching supervisors to take effective disciplinary action with employees. Canadian supervisors of unionized employees were randomly assigned to the training (n = 35) or the control group (n = 36). Analyses of variance revealed that both supervisory self-efficacy and outcome expectancies were significantly higher in the training than in the control conditions. Following simulated role-play exercises derived from organizational incidents, both unionized employees and disciplinary subject matter experts (managers, union officials, and attorneys) rated the trained supervisors higher on disciplinary fairness behavior than the supervisors in the control group. Self-efficacy was found to mediate the relationship between training and perceptions of disciplinary fairness.

The self-interest and relational models of organizational justice were tested to explain the relationship between benefit plan type and organizational justice. Benefit plan types considered were flexible and traditional plans. In support of the self-interest model employees in flexible benefit plans had significantly higher perceptions of procedural justice than employees in traditional benefit plans. There were no significant differences in perceptions of distributive justice between the plan types.This study tests two competing theories to explain the nature of the relationship between benefit plan type and organizational justice. The plan types examined are flexible and standard plans. The organizational justice theories considered are the self-interest model (Thibaut and Walker, 1975) and the relational model (Lind and Tyler, 1988).Organizational justice is related to both procedural and distributive justice (Cropanzano and Greenberg, 1997). Distributive justice relates to the perceived fairness of outcomes or allocations that an individual receives. The outcomes considered in this research are life insurance, long-term disability, health insurance, dental insurance, and pensions. Procedural justice relates to perceptions of fairness regarding the methods, mechanisms, and processes used to determine these outcomes (Folger and Cropanzano, 1998). The procedures considered in this study are those for making benefit claims, design of benefit plans, communication of benefit information, and making amendments to benefit plans.Organizational justice is important in general terms because perceptions of organizational justice have been found to affect a number of behaviors and attitudes including organizational commitment (

This field study of 45 male expatriate accompanying partners in the Asia Pacific region explored the issues they face in their unique role. The results showed that these male partners were comfortable with their role in female breadwinner families, although people around them found it difficult to understand their status. Eighty‐five percent of the male partners faced career challenges while accompanying a female expatriate on international assignment, yet only 21% of them received employer‐provided employment assistance. Male partners felt particularly isolated because of their small numbers. The male partners identified their greatest needs as being for male expatriate partner groups and for employment networking contacts.