The Routledge Companion to International Human Resource Management

David Collings, Geoffrey Wood, Paula M. Caligiuri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317644712
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

International human resource management (IHRM) is a key area of research in the sphere of international business and management. Described as a field in its infancy in the 1980s, IHRM has quickly advanced through adolescence and into maturity. Today, it is a vibrant and diverse discipline which boasts a large and active body of researchers across the globe.

This volume examines cutting-edge themes, with the input of contributions from both established and emerging scholars. The Routledge Companion to International Human Resource Management gives a state-of-the-art overview of the key themes, topics and debates in the discipline, with valuable insights into directions for future research.

Drawing on a large and respected international contributor base and with its focus on mature and emerging markets, this book is an essential resource for researchers, students and IHRM professionals alike.

1 Introduction

David G. Collings, Geoffrey T. Wood and Paula M. Caligiuri

DOI: 10.4324/9781315761282-1

Introduction

International human resource management (IRHM) is one of the key areas of research in the field of international business and management. Described as a field in its infancy in the 1980s (Laurent, 1986), international human resource management has quickly advanced through adolescence and into maturity. A key objective of the current volume is to reflect on the key advancements that have been made in our understanding of IHRM over the past few decades. More significantly, the volume will provide valuable insights into the key directions in which research should be directed as the field continues to develop over the coming decade and beyond.

In this introduction we briefly set the context of the chapters that follow. It is not our intention to chart the landscape of the field in the current chapter. Rather we leave it to the authors in the chapters that follow to provide an overview of current knowledge in the specific topic of the chapter. Each chapter will identify key issues and debates around the topic and consider how the research agenda of the area is likely to unfold. Authors were chosen for their expertise in the respective areas and hence we hope that as a whole the Companion provides a relatively authoritative overview of the broad field of IHRM and equally charts the important directions which research should evolve over the coming decade or more. We are conscious that IHRM is ‘a highly dynamic and constantly evolving field, with new themes emerging that transcend traditional approaches’ (Björkman and Stahl, 2006: 6). This means that the boundaries of the field are constantly evolving with new issues and questions emerging which require insights from parallel fields that have traditionally been neglected by IHRM studies. Indeed, critics of the research direction of the field point to what they perceive to be a narrow performative and managerialist perspective that has dominated research in the field. For example, Delbridge et al. (2011: 489) argue that

IHRM will become increasingly irrelevant to both researchers and practitioners if it does not extend and replenish the theoretical resources at its disposal in order to allow a more comprehensive and compelling articulation of the increasingly diverse and complex range of issues that are important in managing people in international contexts.

Thus the current volume considers key issues and topics which have had a central place in international HR studies for a number of decades and some wider contemporary perspectives and issues. The former includes the chapters in part three which focus on the management of international assignments. Indeed, of all topics within the broad field of IHRM, arguably the management of international assignees has dominated the research agenda in the field for over three decades (Collings et al., 2007; Harvey and Moeller, 2009). Equally, part two which considers more broadly the issues around managing international HRM in the MNE. The chapters in this section very much focus on the acquisition, development, deployment and motivation of employees in the contemporary MNE. The focus of this section is on the key functional area of human resource management, highlighting how strategic, cultural, and comparative issues can influence the effectiveness of those practices within global organizations. Such approaches offer important insights for the consideration of IHRM issues.

Additionally parts one and four consider a wider range of issues which impact on IHRM. Recognizing the wide range of disciplinary traditions which inform IHRM, part two considers a number of key theories which frame discussions on IHRM. While some of these chapters present research from relatively developed research streams within the IHRM field (for example, Minbaeva and DeCieri’s chapter on strategic IRHM, Brewster and Wood’s chapter on comparative HRM and Jackson’s contribution on cultural approaches), other present more critical and under-represented perspectives in the IHRM field (for example, Almond and Gonzalez introduce an economic geography perspective, Hughes and Haworth consider the challenges of transnational governance of labour relation, Lamare, Farndale and Gunnigle introduce a wider employment relations perspective and Klerck highlights the relevance of sociological theories).

The final section of the Companion reflects the vibrancy and diversity of the field and engages with the increasingly complex range of issues which are important in contemporary debates on IHRM. These include with the impact of supply chains (Cooke), ethics and corporate social responsibility (Muller-Camen). Topics such as, inter alia the role of language in IHRM (Tietze et al.) global teams (Gibbs and Malgorzta) and international mergers and acquisitions (Teerikangas et al.) are also given consideration.

The following section provides an outline of the structure of the book and the content of each part.

Chapter summaries

This handbook brings together a wide range of accounts to look at HRM and the multinational. However, what unites them is a broad rootedness in the overall literature on political economy, and a concern with not only national difference, but the nature and circumstances of fluidity thereof.

In Chapter 2, Dana Minbaeva and Helen De Cieri explore the rise of the study of strategic international HRM. The latter borrows the concepts and tools of strategic HRM, but focuses on inter-unit dynamics across national boundaries. Recent analysis takes explicit account of the nature of global changes and challenges, encompassing issues ranging from demographic change to economic and human-created environmental crises. The authors argue that such challenges may pose barriers to the internationalization process. The authors conclude the chapter by drawing out an agenda of pressing issues and concerns for future researchers, and key methodological challenges.

In Chapter 3, Gilton Klerck highlights the relevance of sociological theories, perspectives and tools for understanding the nexus between global commonality and local adaption in HRM within the MNC. Whilst they have much to offer at the theoretical and methodological level, as Klerck notes, there is always a tension between benefits of disciplinary rigour and the virtues of cross-disciplinarity. However, many of the concepts central to management studies are borrowed from sociology, although generally at the macro-level; micro-level work has tended to be more psychological. A further issue is sociology’s emphasis on the public intellectual, which raises the question as to whether enquiry in the field of international HRM should be vested with a moral question, especially in a world beset with economic crisis and worsening social inequality. This raises the issue as to whether international HRM should place less emphasis on taxonomies of practice, and more on placing them within historical, socio-economic, and, ultimately, transformative terms.

In Chapter 4, Mick Brookes explores the insights the fields of heterodox economics and socio-economics can bring to bear for exploring the nature of the multinational firm. He highlights the impact of conceptualizations such as legal origin, national regulatory framework, and how cultural accounts relate to such an analysis. At the core of the chapter is a focus on what really determines the investment decisions of the multinational firm, highlighting the value of recent advances in heterodox thinking for such an analysis.

Although economic geography seeks to explore the variations in the nature and extent of economic activities according to scale, the relations between the study of economic geography and international HRM are very much more tenuous than say, between economics, psychology and the latter field. In Chapter 5, Almond and Gonzalez Menendez argue that, given that many nations are now seeking to compete on basically the same basis to attract FDI – low labour costs, deregulated labour and financial markets and low taxes – yet FDI remains very unevenly spread, it is important to reopen the debate as to what really attracts MNCs to different locations. It is further argued that economic geography provides useful tools for the analysis of local and global socio-economic relations and ties that is essential to understanding the real causes of FDI flows, and the impoverishment of race to the bottom strategies for national competitiveness.

Hughes and Haworth look at the challenges of transnational governance of labour relations in Chapter 6. They argue that international cooperation in this domain reflects not only the outcomes of accommodations between national governments, but also the interaction between competing and diverging national and international interests. Transnational bodies such as the ILO open up political space for the forging compromises and alliances between competing interest groupings. Out of such alliances, shared expectations and norms can develop around what is acceptable, whilst allowing for sufficient flexibility to cope with variations in national regulatory framework. The authors argue that mainstream international HRM has taken insufficient account of the possibilities of, and genuine progress that has been made by, transnational institutions and those that engage with them.

In Chapter 7, Lamare, Farndale and Gunnigle explore both country and firm-oriented accounts of the relationship between employment relations and international HRM. They highlight the extent to which the literature on comparative capitalism has facilitated the development of a common ground, which has helped infuse employment relations with a more rigorous transnational comparative dimension, and international HRM with insights that take account of variations in national political economies. They then draw on two different empirical data sources, the Cranet surveys and a study that looks at the individual cases of a panel of prominent MNCs. This sheds light on the different ways MNCs deal with workers and their collectives, in different national settings, and in the case of different types of firm.

In the following chapter, Brewster and Wood highlight the common ground between comparative and international HRM. They make the case for the utility of some of the key analytical categories derived by the literature on comparative capitalism, but argue that contemporary comparative institutional analysis needs to take account of bounded internal diversity within context, and the structural dynamics of institutional change. They further explore the challenges of operating within contexts where institutional arrangements are weak and fragile, and the extent to which in a significant number of national contexts, MNCs have been agents of corruption and human rights abuses.

In Chapter 9, Terry Jackson brings to bear a cross-cultural perspective for understanding ways in which firm practice differs according to context. After looking at well-established approaches to cross-cultural management, such as that of Hofstede, Jackson moves on to look at more recent theories of cross-vergence, whereby different national cultural contexts infuse features of each other. Jackson then moves on to consider underlying common ground between institutional and cultural approaches, and argues for an understanding of culture that is more dynamic. He moves on to highlight the relevance of the radical development studies literature for understanding the relative imbalances between different national economies, and how this may impact on the behaviour of MNCs. Finally, he draws together a list of key research challenges for the study of international HRM from a culturalist starting point.

Part two

Part II of the Companion highlights practices along all phases of the employment lifecycle that include the way talent is acquired, developed, managed, and motivated. Each chapter provides a deep dive into a key functional area of human resource management, highlighting how strategic, cultural, and comparative issues can influence the effectiveness of those practices within global organizations.

In the first chapter of this section, Robert Ployhart and Jeff Weekley provide a comprehensive review of the strategic and implementation issues affecting the science and practice of recruitment and selection in a global organization. Offering a broader resource-based strategic framework within which these global staffing practices occur, this chapter structures and organizes the key issues of global staffing from the perspective of strategic alignment and human capital resources. As the authors underscore in this chapter, staffing choices within global organizations involve significant HRM decisions regarding whether to hire at the entry level (and grow internally), buy more experienced workers, acquire companies with critical talent, or engage talent through other means such as outsourcing or joint ventures. The authors present a comprehensive overview of this literature along with future directions for both practitioners and researchers.

In Chapter 11, Arup Varma, Pawan Budhwar, and Christopher McCusker delve into the key challenges of performance management in global organizations. Performance management is the functional area within HRM with practices related to the way work is assigned, goals are set, standards are determined, and work output is reviewed and evaluated. As precursors to the way rewards are distributed, effective performance management practices are fundamental for employee motivation and retention. The authors begin by discussing performance management systems in MNCs and then highlight the most critical elements of the global context and affecting the design and delivery of performance management systems across cultures. Within this discussion they focus on two key dimensions affecting individual performance: motivation, and supervisor-subordinate relationships. The authors offer the challenges related to performance management of international assignees, a specific area centre for MNCs. The authors conclude the chapter illustrating the global contextual issues related to performance management by highlighting differences in three countries, USA, China, and India.

Following from a performance management, Chapter 12 by Yoshio Yanadori discusses the compensation and benefits issues within global organizations. This chapter reviews the various antecedents affecting the type of compensation practices MNCs employ and consequences resulting from those practices. In the context of a global organization, the managerial decisions around two features of compensation (pay level and pay mix) for both managerial and non-managerial compensation are discussed. Given the wide variety of institutional and cultural differences affecting employee compensation and benefits practices, the author concludes the chapter with a comprehensive list of suggestions for future research and practical implications.

Extending the previous chapters within this section of the Companion, the next chapter focuses on global talent management practices designed to acquire, motivate, develop, and retain the most critical employees and allocate them into necessary roles where and when needed globally. In Chapter 13, Vlad Vaiman and David Collings delineate the conceptual and intellectual boundaries of global talent management and examine the critical trends affecting global talent management, including: the shortage of talented employees, changes in demographics, changes in the attitudes of employees towards work, and national cultural differences. The authors delve into the current role of HR function in global talent management and then, looking towards the future, identify the research directions that could better inform managerial practice in this critical area for MNCs future competitiveness.

Within global talent management, an important functional area is leadership development. In MNCs, leadership development focuses on building a pipeline of business leaders who can effectively work in complex, ambiguous and dynamic environments and lead those from different cultures and in different cultures. In Chapter 14, Paula Caligiuri and Lisa Dragoni highlight relevant research on what global leadership competencies need to be developed, how to develop them, and individual characteristics that accelerate global leadership development. The authors also describe key practices that can effectively develop global leadership competencies.

Part three

Part three of the Companion considers international mobility which as discussed above has represented a central theme in research on IHRM for a number of decades.

In the first chapter in this section, Yu-Ping Chen and Margaret Shaffer consider the individual and organizational motivations of global mobility. Adopting a career perspective, they answer the important questions of why organizations use international assignments and why individuals undertake them. They also move beyond traditional long-term assignees and consider the wider pool of global travellers within the contemporary multinational. These decisions are classified in terms of a three stage process consisting of the exploration stage, the establishment stage, and the embeddedness stage. This is a useful framework which moves beyond the traditional internal assignee cycle which tended to consider global mobility in a parsimonious but relatively disjointed series of discreet stages which aligned with different stages of organizational support.

In Chapter 16, Collings, McDonnell and McCarter consider the changing landscape of global mobility by outlining the different types of global mobility utilised in the contemporary MNC. Their chapter begins by considering the role of international assignees in the MNE. The challenges to traditional models of global mobility which relied on longer-term assignments are then outlined. Emerging alternatives to global mobility are then introduced, highlighting temporal and special characteristics of each alternative. This is followed by a consideration of the HR challenges and issue...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Front Other
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Perspectives on IHRM
• PART II Managing IHRM
• PART III Managing global mobility
• PART IV Contemporary issues in IHRM
• Index