AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
CASE STUDY: IMPACTS OF GLOBALIZATION ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC DOMAIN OF
EMPLOYEES IN THE AREA OF CZECH AND SLOVAK REPUBLIC
a
SOŇA DÁVIDEKOVÁ,
b
MICHAL GREGUŠ
Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Management,
Comenius University in Bratislava, Odbojárov 10, Bratislava,
Slovak Republic
email:
a
michal.gregus@fm.uniba.sk,
b
sona.davidekova@fm.un
iba.sk
This work was supported by the Faculty of Management, Comenius University in
Bratislava, Slovakia. This publication is the result of the project implementation
BiDaC: Big Data Industrial Research and Development Center project, ITMS2014 +
[project number 313011B814] supported by the Operational Programme Research and
Innovation funded by the ERDF.
Abstract: “Globalization” widely used for increasing internationalization comes along
with shifting power from national governments towards multinational corporations.
The international division of labour is changing due to shifts of labour-intensive
production to countries with lower labour cost with corporate governance, technology-
intensive production and research kept in wealthy countries significantly increasing
the development differences among countries including employment opportunities.
This article focuses on sociological, economic and social aspects of globalization and
emphasizes the development of human potential and changes in working conditions
and employment character in Czech and Slovak Republics based on survey the socio-
economic trends of today’s employees towards their future and level of satisfaction.
Keywords: globalization, internalization, employment, employee´s satisfaction,
employment opportunities, socio-economic domain, multicultural environment,
employee benefits
1 Introduction
The ways of life has significantly changed over the past century
(Dávideková et al., 2015) through the emergence of information
and communication technology (ICT). The Internet that allowed
the most accessible “transport” media for informational
exchange enabled the globalization to evolve (Bauman, 2000).
Globalization brings together people from various countries into
one place building one team committed to a common goal and
purpose creating an international and multicultural environment
(Dávideková & Greguš, 2016). To further drivers of
globalization besides ICT belongs the so called economic
migration (Bartram, 2011) enabled by liberal trade where
individual companies can allocate resources independently on
place of origin on their own (Coslovsky, 2016) that has been
exploited within Schengen Area and represents a never-ending
ongoing process (Papastergiadis, 2013). Cultural diversity
enriches interactions with new insights to work problems and
tasks (Han & Beyerlein, 2016) despite its negative effect due to
language barrier (Downes-Martin et al., 1992). Experiences of
global virtual work lead to positive work’s complexity and
learning potential that in turn improves innovation, satisfaction
and engagement (Nurmi & Hinds, 2016).
However, the higher the cultural diversity at workplace is, the
more demanding is the leadership and management of such a
multicultural group or team. The diversity of cultures denotes a
significant factor that influences mutual collaboration, often
leading to destructive conflicts due to clashes of mentalities with
impacts team’s coherency (Dávideková & Greguš, 2017). A
collaboration in such an environment requires more intensive
motivation of its team members and an extensive support by its
team leader to maintain the same level of performance effectivity
(Carter et al., 2015). This adds extra load to skills of the team
leader. Insufficient and ad-hoc motivation of workers and
insufficient support of their collaboration can cause stagnation
similar to a strategy loss (Dávideková & Hvorecký, 2017).
Managing employee performance is currently becoming an
important topic in human resource management recently and
involves individual participation in setting performance goals,
feedback on the way to achieve the goal, opportunities to
improve based on performance assessment, training and human
resource development, connections between results and rewards
(Fenwick, 2005).
According to Urban (Urban, 2007), the basis for evaluating the
performance of international staff denotes individual goals.
Suggestions for personal goals of an employee working in an
international environment implements milestones he/she wants
to achieve in the future, often set by himself on the basis of
his/her personal ambitions and performance indicators of the
business or organizational unit he/she is a member of. To
enhance employee motivation, their personal goals can be
divided into two parts: basic and advanced goals (so-called
ambitious goals, stretch targets, aggressive goals, etc.), which are
the most challenging variant of goals. While meeting basic goals
is expected from employees, meeting the more demanding goals
requires a high employee commitment that will be appreciated
by the business.
Due to international competition and current ease of travel, job
mobility and employee benefits became one of significant
factors impacting employment and job satisfaction (Fasang et al,
2012). External upward mobility is decisive to enhance
satisfaction with objective working conditions and work-life
balance, while internal mobility is pivotal for satisfaction with
future career prospects (Fasang et al, 2012). Lower job qualities
are highly associated with flexible employment contracts and
several benefits (Dekker and van der Veen, 2017). Whereas
better paid jobs are usually connected with longer commuting
and less employee benefits. However, cultures differ in value
hierarchies and thus the preferences in job selection may vary
from culture to culture. Furthermore, people are individual
beings and therefore, their satisfaction varies depending on their
individual preferences.
However, a job dissatisfaction due to various reasons leads to
fluctuation of employees that may lead to knowledge loss and
thus has a long-term effect on the profit ability of given
company. Therefore, this paper analyses the satisfaction of
employees in global companies with focus on their preferences
in selection of jobs to outline the directions of employee benefits
that have the most significant impact on employee staying.
Benefits are specific to the remuneration of workers with a
contradictory position. It is the incentive effect of benefits to
employees in an effort to increase their satisfaction and keep
them at work (Branham, 2009). Benefits are seen as corporate
social responsibility that denote organizations' responsibility to
provide dietary, continuing education, health care, and
maintenance of the physical fitness of employees (
Staňková,
2007).
Other experts state that employees are very different and, above
all, are dissatisfied with the flat benefits allocation (Katcher &
Snyder, 2009). A solution to this issue is represented by
individual programs (Walker, 2003) that makes it possible to
deduce the need to distinguish employees in an effort to achieve
greater satisfaction. It is also necessary to distinguish the
employees in relation to their position and "talent" to ensure
"supposed justice" and future satisfaction (Nohria et al., 2003).
This paper is organized as follows: next section describes used
methodology and sample. Section 3 describes achieved research
findings followed by discussion. The conclusion summarizes the
outcomes.
2 Methodology and Sample
Surveying was made via electronic questionnaire. The
questionnaire was available on Facebook and sent by e-mail to
target groups working in selected companies in Czech Republic
and Slovakia with more than 3000 employees and self-employed
professionals such as Dell or Czech Aeroholding. Questionnaires
were filled out online within the duration of one month. The
final processing and evaluation of the survey was focusing on
having equal coverage of male and female individuals in the
- 46 -