Open Access

Rosalie Schwoerer, Jörg BüechlORCiD, Yoany Beldarrain, Ralf-Christian HärtingORCiD

• Enriching the cross-cultural employee satisfaction literature in the remote work context, our qualitative study develops a cross-cultural and multi-dimensional model illuminating how four dimensions affect employee satisfaction. Our analysis is based on a complex qualitative research design comprising in total 53 semi-structured interviews of individual contributors and leaders from Germany and Japan. Findings reveal that employee satisfaction and the underlying cultural, contextual and personal factors and ramifications extensively vary across these countries. As part of our model, we identified a series of national, organizational, managerial, and individual dimensions that influence employee satisfaction in multiple ways. The data gathered confirm that cultural aspects have a significant impact on employee satisfaction on three of the dimensions which emerged from our data (organizational, national, and individual). Based on our findings we formulate specific propositions, guiding future research and practice.