ABSTRACT

As corporations increasingly strive to expand their operations across national boundaries, human resource managers are compelled to develop an enhanced appreciation of and responsiveness to the impact of different national contexts on the managerial form and function. The activities of multinational corporations (MNCs) influence the working lives of a growing number of employees in many different countries, and the sheer scale of their operations poses formidable challenges to conventional human resource management (HRM) practices. In the field of international human resource management (IHRM), scholars have endeavoured to assist practitioners by conducting research that is routinely framed by two questions: (a) what is general and universal in the management function; and (b) what is peculiar or specific to one nation or culture? A central theoretical concern underlying the field of IHRM is the tension between global integration and local adaptation. Straddling an escalating number of national spaces, MNCs are ever more concerned with the particularities of the institutional and normative frameworks of the countries within which they operate. An understanding of these national characteristics is imperative because MNCs do not organise their activities in a vacuum, but rather in the context of the multiple structural, organisational and cultural landscapes on which they operate. To be sure, given their often-substantial resources, MNCs may also play a part in constructing these environments (Almond et al., 2005; Boyer et al., 1998; Ferner & Quintanilla, 1998), which is likely to shape the experiences of employees and employers in the host countries. In other words, all national social relations have global as well as local conditions of existence and impacts.