Employeeship across borders

Abstract

Driven by our curiosity to learn more about international human resource management, we study employeeship in this thesis. The term is a new concept that has been tackled only by Claus Møller and Stefan Tengblad.

This thesis introduces a model for employeeship that consists of commitment, cooperation, and taking responsibility. We compare how employeeship is expressed in fifteen different countries and across three occupational categories: management, white collar workers, and blue collar workers. We employ the postmodern theory by Inglehart and Hofstede’s national culture theory to explore the grounds of employeeship variations expressed by employees. In addition, we use the human development index (HDI) to establish some correlations. The empirical data is collected from Volvo Group and Volvo Cars attitude survey.

Employeeship is expressed differently across borders and occupational categories. It is negatively correlated with postmodernism, especially on the blue collar workers level. Employeeship is not only expressed differently by the three occupational categories but we also find that it is influenced by group size and leadership orientation. Our findings do not coincide with Hofstede’s theory. Postmodern theory of Inglehart explains part of the results.