Variations in evaluative repertoires

Purpose While it is acknowledged that societal context matters for employee expectations on training and development, the complexity of this relationship is still little explored. This paper aims to study which higher‐order principles employees of a German and Russian company use to justify their views on beneficial training and development in order to identify how evaluative repertoires differ between the two settings. Design/methodology/approach Building on interviews conducted in two professional services firms in Germany and Russia, the paper identifies patterns in the repertoire that employees use for evaluating training and development activities at each research site. Findings The findings reveal that employees working for the German company predominantly use the industrial principle for justifying their views on training and development. In contrast, employees in the Russian company apply market, industrial and domestic principles with a tendency for long‐term employees more often to justify their views using the market principle. Research limitations/implications The case comparison points to variations in the evaluative repertoire that the paper explains with the societal context of Germany and Russia. By examining evaluative repertoires, companies learn what employees expect from training and development. Originality/value Applying convention theory, the paper introduces a promising, but so far neglected approach for linking employee expectations with societal context and for comparing boundaries between people across different settings.