Title: Cross-cultural diversity management in service firms

Authors: Ricarda B. Bouncken; Andreas J. Reuschl; Roman W. Barwinski; Céline Viala

Addresses: Faculty of Law and Economics, Chair of Strategic Management and Organization, University of Bayreuth, Preiserstraße 2, 95444 Bayreuth, Germany ' Faculty of Law and Economics, Chair of Strategic Management and Organization, University of Bayreuth, Preiserstraße 2, 95444 Bayreuth, Germany ' Faculty of Law and Economics, Chair of Strategic Management and Organization, University of Bayreuth, Preiserstraße 2, 95444 Bayreuth, Germany ' International Business School, Department of Entrepreneurship, Ecole Supérieure du Commerce Extérieur, CEPN, 10 rue Sextius Michel 75015 Paris, France

Abstract: The European healthcare sector is facing tremendous challenges, especially related to international diversity. The demographic change is generating an ageing population with rising demands for medical services, combined with a lack of the ability to train sufficient numbers of medical professionals. Foreign healthcare professionals migrate to central Europe, especially to Germany, to fill the gap in the healthcare labour market. The migration and internationalisation increases national and cultural diversity in hospital workforces. Our study contributes an adaptation of a Service-Profit Chain model for hospitals and then empirically investigates the impact of diversity on the service capabilities of German hospitals. Our results show that the Service-Profit Chain is applicable to hospitals and that workforce diversity has a negative indirect impact on employee job satisfaction and thereby on productivity.

Keywords: healthcare; diversity; diversity management; workforce migration; service profit chain; quantitative analysis; social identity theory.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIM.2018.094496

European Journal of International Management, 2018 Vol.12 No.5/6, pp.510 - 535

Received: 22 Jan 2018
Accepted: 13 Feb 2018
Published online: 03 Sep 2018 *

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