International Human Resource Management Edited yb Ane-Wi Harzing & Joris Van Ruys seveldt BBA

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International Human Resource
Management •
edited yb Ane-Wi Harzing &
Joris Van Ruys seveldt
International Human Resource Management

second edition
International Human Resource Management
edited by
Anne-Wil Harzing Joris Van Ruysseveldt
SAGE Publications London l Thousand Oaks l New Delhi

© Anne-Wil Harzing and Joris van Ruysseveldt, 2004 First published 2004
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Acknowledgements
So much has changed since the 1st edition. We cannot even begin to encompass the changes which have occurred in our now ‘globalized’ world. However, the nature of academic work has also changed considerably since the 1st edition of this book was published in 1995. Internet access and email have transformed our daily working lives. Internet access means having information at our fingertips. However, it also means an increasing challenge in assessing the relevance of all this information. The contributors of this book have done an excellent job in sifting the wheat from the chaff. The use of email has made it much easier to communicate with authors. While for the 1st edition, much of our editorial work was done via fax or even personal meetings with the chapter authors, the current edition was based on email contact alone (a lot of it!). This has made it possible to involve authors from a far wider range of countries than before.
Much has stayed the same as well. First, our philosophy that the book be developed as a research-based textbook has remained constant. The book reflects the characteristics of the transnational MNC in that we think it com- bines the benefits of knowledge transfer (authors who are experts in their field), integration (a coherent textbook) and local responsiveness (authors from many different countries as well as chapters specific to Asia, Europe and Africa).
What never changes is the fact that for such an undertaking many people deserve acknowledgements. First of all we would like to thank Arndt Sorge for encouraging us to embark on a 2nd edition. If he had not spoken so convinc- ingly about our duty to the field, this 2nd edition may never have materialized. Second, we owe a big vote of thanks to our authors. Given the scale of the task of coordinating the editing of 18 chapters from around the globe, Anne-Wil would particularly like to acknowledge their wonderful responsiveness to the repeated requests for text revision. Their cooperation in working within the deadlines made the job so much easier. Anne-Wil’s research assistant, Sheila Gowans, performed her job as proofreader with a perfect blend of commitment and conscientiousness.
At Sage, Kiren Shoman was the first to believe in the book and convinced the Sage board of the need for a 2nd edition. She was later joined by Keith Von Tersch and together they made a perfect team. Seth Edwards then ensured that the book moved through the production process smoothly, while Ben Sherwood took care of the all important promotion of the book.
Anne-Wil Harzing Joris Van Ruysseveldt
Foreword by Nancy J. Adler1
Which is farther, the sun at sunrise or the sun at noon? The first sage argued, ‘At sunrise, of course, the sun is closest when it is largest.’ The second sage vehemently disagreed, ‘No, at noon, of course! The sun is closest when it’s warmest.’ Unable to resolve the dilemma, the two sages turned to Confucius.com for help. Feeling the sun’s fading warmth as it lowered itself into a blazing sunset, Confucius remained silent.2
Myth, misinformation, and silence have pervaded the field of international human resource management (HRM) since its inception.3 Understanding the dynamics of people in organizations has always been challenging. However, never prior to the twenty-first century has the intensity of globalization inter- acted so profoundly with organizations and the people who lead them and work in them. To understand the challenges of twenty-first century organi- zational efficacy is to address the myriad of dilemmas facing people who con- stantly work outside their native country with people from wider and wider ranges of the world’s cultures.
Can we allow ourselves to continue to be guided by myth, misinformation, and silence? No. Do we, as scholars, researchers, and executives, know how to resolve the human dilemmas posed by extremely high levels of global inter- action? No, not yet. Do we need to know? Yes. In International Human Resource Management, the editors have brought together an eminent group of scholars from around the world to report on state-of-the-art international HRM research. Unlike Confucius, they have chosen not to remain silent in the face of dilemmas that were heretofore unresolvable. They offer research results and recommendations that can and should guide our scholarly and executive appreciation of global diversity and its impact on human system functioning. The book includes macro strategic perspectives along with micro individual-level
1Nancy J. Adler is a professor of international management at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
2Based on an ancient Chinese wisdom story as edited by Nancy J. Adler and Lew Yung-Chien while artists in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, 2002.
3For an in-depth discussion of the patterns of myths and errors undermining the field, see A.W.K. Harzing’s ‘The Role of Culture in Entry Mode Studies: From Negligence to Myopia?’ in Advances in International Management, Vol. 15, 2003, pp. 75–127; A.W.K. Harzing’s ‘Are Our Referencing Errors Undermining our Scholarship and Credibility? The Case of Expatriate Failure Rates,’ Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 23, February, 2002, pp. 127–148; and A.W.K Harzing’s ‘The Persistent Myth of High Expatriate Failure Rates,’ The International Journal of Human Resource Management, May 1995, pp. 457–475.

perspectives. It encompasses perspectives from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. It takes in the point-of-view of management and labour. Whereas neither this book nor any book can answer all our questions about people working globally, International Human Resource Management goes a long way in separating myth and misinformation from research-based fact. It fills some of the field’s silence with perceptive dialogue. It is a book well worth reading.
Foreword ix

Contributor Biographies
Chris Brewster
Professor of International Human Resource Management at Henley Management College, UK. He had substantial experience in trade unions, Government, specialist journals, personnel management in construction and air transport, and consultancy, before becoming an academic. Chris has con- sulted and taught on management programmes throughout the world and is a frequent international conference speaker. He has conducted extensive research in the field of international and comparative HRM; written some dozen books and over a hundred articles. In 2002 Chris Brewster was awarded the Georges Petitpas Memorial Award by the practitioner body, the World Federation of Personnel Management Associations, in recognition of his out- standing contribution to international human resource management.
Paula Caligiuri
Director of the Center for Human Resource Strategy and an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at Rutgers University in the United States. She researches, publishes, and consults in the area of international human resource management – specifically on the topics of expatriate management, women on global assignments, and global leadership. Her research on these top- ics has appeared in numerous journals and edited books. Dr Caligiuri is on the editorial boards of Career Development International, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Resources Planning Journal, and International Journal of Human Resource Management and is an Associate Editor for Human Resource Management Journal.
Christine Communal
Lecturer in International Management, Cranfield University, School of Management, UK. Christine has the ability to enthuse people with her passion for supporting individuals and organizations in the process of international- ization. She has developed a unique approach to personal, managerial and organizational development, with a strong focus on intercultural awareness. Her early work experience was in France and Germany and encompassed vari- ous industry sectors (petro-chemicals, mobile telephony and electricity distrib- ution). She then moved to the UK to complete a Doctorate examining the impact of national culture on managerial behaviour. Christine built on her doctoral specialization to become the youngest Faculty member at Cranfield School of Management, teaching on the MBA, Doctorate and Executive programmes.

Tony Edwards
Lecturer in Comparative Management at King’s College, London. His research is in the area of employment relations in MNCs. One of the themes of this research is the diffusion of employment practices across borders within MNCs, with a spe- cific focus on the process of ‘reverse diffusion’ in which practices are diffused from foreign subsidiaries back to the domestic operations of MNCs. Currently he is working on two projects, one of which is concerned with the ‘country of origin’ effect in American MNCs in the UK, while the other is concerned with the man- agement of employment relations following a cross-border merger or acquisition.
Paul Evans
The Shell Chaired Professor of Human Resources and Organizational Development and Professor of Organizational Behaviour at INSEAD, where he has led INSEAD’s activities in the field of human resource and organizational management since the early 1980s. He is co-author of Must Success Cost So Much?, a pioneering study on the professional and private lives of executives; Human Resource Management in International Firms: Change, Globalization, Innovation, and The Global Challenge: Frameworks for International Human Resource Management. He has a degree in law from Cambridge University, an INSEAD MBA, a Danish business diploma, and his PhD is from MIT.
Marilyn Fenwick
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at Monash University. She was awarded her PhD on expatriate performance management by the University of Melbourne. She has published journal articles and book chapters in the areas of international human resource management and international management. Marilyn convenes a special interest group in International HRM for the Australian Human Resources Institute in Victoria. Her research interests concern: non- standard and virtual international assignments; human resources development and performance management in multinationals; strategic HRM in international inter-organizational networks and international non-profit organizations.
Hilary Harris
Director of the Centre for Research into the Management of Expatriation (CREME) at Cranfield School of Management. Dr Harris has had extensive experience as an HR practitioner and has undertaken consultancy with a broad range of organizations in the public and private sectors. Her specialist areas of interest are International HRM, expatriate management, cross-cultural man- agement and women in management. She teaches, consults and writes exten- sively in these areas. Hilary was one of the lead researchers on the CIPD flagship research programme looking at the impact of globalization on the role of the HR professional.
Anne-Wil Harzing
Associate Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Melbourne. Her work on HQ-subsidiary relationships, staffing policies and
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xii Contributor Biographies
international management has been published in journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Organi- zational Behavior and Organization Studies. She also published Managing the Multinationals (Edward Elgar, 1999). Her current research interests include the role of language in international business, the transfer of HRM practices across borders, the interaction between language and culture in international research, expatriates and knowledge transfer, and HQ-subsidiary relationships.
Richard Hyman
Professor of Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is founding editor of the European Journal of Industrial Relations. He has written extensively on the themes of industrial rela- tions, collective bargaining, trade unionism, industrial conflict and labour mar- ket policy, and is author of a dozen books as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. His most recent book, Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society, was published by Sage in 2001 and is already widely cited by scholars working in this field.
Terence Jackson
Holds a bachelors degree in Social Anthropology, a masters in Education, and a PhD in Management Psychology. He is Director of the Centre for Cross Cultural Management Research at ESCP-EAP European School of Management (Oxford-Paris-Berlin-Madrid). He edits, with Dr Zeynep Aycan, the International Journal of Cross Cultural Management (Sage Publications) and has recently pub- lished his sixth book International HRM: A Cross Cultural Approach. He has pub- lished numerous articles on cross-cultural management ethics, management learning and management in developing countries in such journals as Human Resource Management, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, and Asian Pacific Journal of Management. He is currently directing a major research project on Management and Change in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mila Lazarova
Recently joined the International Management Department of the Faculty of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Mila’s primary research interests are in the area of international human resource management and, more specifically, management of global assignees. Her recent research has been focused on issues related to retention upon repatriation and the changing notions of international careers. She has also done research on other related topics such as cross-cultural adjustment and the expatriate experience of female assignees. Mila has published in the Journal of International Human Resource Management and the Journal of World Business and her work has been presented at conferences in North America and Europe.
Paul Marginson
Professor of Industrial Relations and Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. He has

researched and published extensively on the management of employment relations in MNCs and on the Europeanization of industrial relations. Major recent projects include studies of the agreements establishing, and the practice and impact of, European Works Councils; the industrial relations implications of Economic and Monetary Union; and European dimensions to sector and com- pany collective bargaining. A book with Keith Sisson – European Integration and Industrial Relations: Multi-level Governance in the Making – is due to be published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2004.
Mark E. Mendenhall
Holds the J. Burton Frierson Chair of Excellence in Business Leadership at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He is past president of the International Division of the Academy of Management, and has authored numerous journal arti- cles in international human resource management. His most recent book is Developing Global Business Leaders: Policies, Processes, and Innovations (Quorum Books).
Jaap Paauwe
(PhD, Erasmus University) is Professor of Business and Organization at the Rotterdam School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has writ- ten and co-authored eleven books on human resource management and pub- lished numerous papers on HRM, industrial relations and organizational change. Twice (1997 and 2001) he was in charge of the editing of a special issue on HRM and Performance for the International Journal of HRM. He is research fellow and coordinator for the research programme on ‘Organizing for Performance’ of the Erasmus Research Institute for Management (ERIM). Fields of interest include human resource management, industrial relations, organi- zational change, new organizational forms and corporate strategy.
Vladimir Pucik
Professor of International Human Resources and Strategy at IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland. Born in Prague, he received his PhD in business administration from Columbia University in New York and previously taught at Cornell University and the University of Michigan. He also spent three years as a visit- ing scholar at Keio and Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Dr Pucik teaches reg- ularly on executive development programmes in Europe, the US and Asia, and has consulted and conducted workshops for major corporations worldwide. His major works include The Global Challenge: Frameworks for International HRM, Accelerating International Growth and Globalizing Management: Creating and Leading the Competitive Organization.
Laurence Romani
Research Associate at the Institute of International Business (IIB) of the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden). She studied social anthropology and sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris. Her research interests are in the field of cross-cultural management. She is currently preparing her dissertation, which focuses on quantitative studies of culture and management. She addresses their
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xiv Contributor Biographies
issues and limitations with the endeavour of improving the current theoretical
models. Her research is inspired by an interpretative approach.
Hugh Scullion
Professor of International HRM at Strathclyde University. He previously worked at Nottingham and Warwick Business Schools. Hugh is a Visiting Professor at the Business Schools of Toulouse and Grenoble and also at Limerick University. He consults with leading international firms such as Rolls Royce and Bank of Ireland. Hugh researches on international strategy and international HRM in European multinationals and has developed a strong network of HR directors in Europe. He has written several books and over fifty specialist articles in International HRM. Hugh’s latest books are International HRM: A Critical Text (Palgrave, 2004) and Global Staffing (Routledge, 2004).
Keith Sisson
Head of Strategy Development at the UK’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations in the Warwick Business School’s Industrial Relations Research Unit (IRRU), having previously been its Director. In recent years, he has been extensively involved in cross-national comparative research involving projects funded by the UK’s Economic and Science Research Council and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, including those on the role of direct participation in organizational change, the impact of EMU and the handling of restructuring. A book with Paul Marginson summarising many of the results of this work (European Integration and Industrial Relations: Multi-level Governance in the Making) is due to be published by Palgrave in 2004.
Günter K. Stahl
Assistant Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD. Prior to joining INSEAD, he was Assistant Professor of Leadership and Human Resource Management at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He also held vis- iting positions at the Fuqua School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Günter has (co-) authored several books as well as numerous journal articles in the areas of leadership and leadership development, cross-cultural management, and international human resource management. His current research interests also include international careers, trust within and between organizations, and the management of mergers and acquisitions.
Arndt Sorge
Professor of Organization Studies at the Faculty of Management and Organization, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He has mainly worked in international comparisons of work, organization, human resources, technical change and industrial relations. This has implied uninterrupted expa- triation through a succession of positions at several universities and research institutes in Germany, his native country, The Netherlands, Britain and France. Next to writing more specialist publications, based on field research in three

different societal contexts, he has also edited standard Organization volumes in the series of the International Encyclopedia of Management and Organization, most recently Organization (London: Thomson Learning, 2002), and he was formerly editor-in-chief of Organization Studies.
Ibraiz Tarique
PhD Candidate at the School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. His research interests include human resource management issues in cross-border alliances and training and development issues in transnational enterprises. His teaching interests include strategic human resource management, international human resource management, and developing human capital. His research has been presented at the Annual Academy of Management Meetings and at the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychologist Conferences and has been published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management.
Joris Van Ruysseveldt
Associate Professor at the Open University of The Netherlands. He studied Sociology at The Catholic University of Leuven. His dissertation (2000) focused on collective bargaining structures in Belgium and The Netherlands. As research manager at the Higher Institute of Labour Studies (University of Leuven), he conducted research on topics like quality of working life, European works councils, organizational learning and teamwork. He presently develops courses in the field of human resource management. He has published articles and books on industrial relations in Europe, comparative employment relations, quality of working life and sociology of work.
Malcolm Warner
Professor and Fellow, Wolfson College and Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge. He is the Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Business and Management (London: Thomson, 6 volumes, 1996; second edition, 8 volumes, 2002) and Co-Editor of the Asia-Pacific Business Review. Professor Warner has written and edited over 25 books and over 200 articles on management. His most recent book, Culture and Management in Asia, is published by Routledge Curzon, 2003.
Ying Zhu
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management, the University of Melbourne. He graduated from International Economics Department at Peking University and worked as an economist in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in China. He completed his PhD at The University of Melbourne in 1992. He was invited to be a visiting scholar at International Labour Organization in Geneva in 1997. His research interests are international human resource man- agement, industrial development and employment relations in East Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. He has published a num- ber of books and journal articles covering Asian economies, labour, industry and human resource management.
Contributor Biographies xv

Abbreviations
APEC Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation CCC Chinese Culture Connection
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CCT Cross-Cultural Training
CEE Central and Eastern Europe
CFL Chinese Federation of Labour (Taiwan) COEs Collective-owned Enterprises
CSAs Country-specific Advantages
DPEs Domestic Private Enterprises
ECB European Central Bank
EEA European Economic Area
EEC European Economic Community
EMU Economic and Monetary Union
ETUC European Trade Union Confederation EU European Union
EWC European Works Council
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FOEs Foreign-owned Enterprises
FSAs Firm-specific Advantages
HCN Host Country National
HQ Headquarters
HR Human Resources
HRD Human Resource Development
HRM Human Resource Management
IHRM International Human Resource Management IR Industrial Relations
JVs Joint Ventures
KMT Kumintang (Nationalist Party in Taiwan) LDCs Less Developed Countries
LEs Large-sized Enterprises
M&A Mergers and Acquisitions
MNCs Multinational Corporations
MOL Ministry of Labour (Japan)
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
OJT on the job training
PCN Parent Country National
PRC People’s Republic of China
QCC Quality Control Circles

SHRM Strategic Human Resource Management
SIRHM Strategic International Human Resource Management
SMEs Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises
SOEs State-owned Enterprises
TCN Third Country National
TQM Total Quality Management
UNICE Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe VFTU Vietnam Federation of Trade Unions
WTO World Trade Organization
Abbreviations xvii

Introduction
WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK DIFFERENT?
This book provides a comprehensive, research-based, integrated and international perspective of the consequences of internationalization for the management of people across borders. The book’s comprehensiveness is evidenced by its wide coverage. Although we will pay due attention to expatriate management in this book, we will also look at the role of HRM in internationalization, the link between strategy, structure and HRM in multinational companies (MNCs) and the role of HRM in mergers and acquisitions. In addition, a discussion of comparative HRM, which focuses on the extent to which HRM differs between countries and the underlying reasons for these differences, will form a major part of this book. Finally, the book offers a detailed treatment of the collective aspects of the employment relation by looking at industrial relations from an international and comparative perspective.
A second distinctive feature of this book is its solid research base. All chapters have been specifically commissioned for this book and all authors are experts and active researchers in their respective fields. Rather than having a final chapter with ‘recent developments and challenges in IHRM’, we have given all authors the clear brief to supplement classic theories and models with cutting- edge research and developments. The chapter on cross-cultural training for instance includes a discussion on recent development in electronic CCT and in many chapters over two thirds of the references are less than five years old.
Although the book consists of 18 chapters written by a total of 23 authors, it has been very carefully edited to provide an integrated perspective. Even though the book is research-based, it is not a disparate collection of research essays. All chapters are part of a carefully constructed framework and together provide a coherent picture of the field of International HRM.
A fourth and final distinctive characteristic of this book is that it is truly international, both in its outlook and in its author base. Authors use examples

2 International Human Resource Management
from all over the world and their research base extends beyond the traditional American research literature. Although many authors are currently working at American or British universities, virtually all have extensive international experience and their countries of origin include: the Netherlands (2 authors), France (2 authors), Germany (2 authors), Bulgaria, Slovakia, Pakistan, Australia and China.
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
As a textbook this book will appeal to advanced undergraduate students and Master’s students wanting a comprehensive and integrated treatment of International HRM that includes the most recent theoretical developments. As a research book, it provides PhD students and other researchers with a very good introduction to the field and an extensive list of references that will allow them to get an up-to-date overview of the area. Finally, practitioners looking for solutions to their international HR problems might find some useful frame- works in Parts 1 and 3, while the chapters in Parts 2 and 4 will allow them to get a better understanding of country differences in managing people.
WHAT IS NEW IN THE 2ND EDITION?
The underlying philosophy of this book – presenting a comprehensive, research-based, integrated and international perspective on managing people across borders – has not changed. However, the 2nd edition has reinforced these four characteristics in the following ways:
• Since several reviewers commented that the comparative aspect of the 1st edition left room for improvement, Part 2 of the book has been completely revised and the current edition includes three new chapters on comparative HRM, covering Europe, Asia and developing countries. Two new chapters on the role of HRM in mergers and acquisitions in Part 1 and on repatriation in Part 3 reflect the increasing importance of these phenomena. Part 4 features a new chapter on transfer of employ- ment practices across borders, as well as a revised treatment of the most important aspects of industrial relations.
• The research base has been further reinforced by attracting new authors who are experts and active researchers in their field. This means that

most chapters have been written from scratch, while the remaining chapters (Chapters 1, 5 and 14) have been updated. In doing so, the authors have focused even more strongly on theoretical models and frameworks, cutting down on factual information that can easily be retrieved from other sources, including other textbooks.
• The integrated perspective has been strengthened by even more careful editing. Most authors went through three versions of their chapters and many read chapters of other authors in order to avoid overlap and con- flicting evidence. Links have been provided between chapters to further clarify the overall structure of the book, and in order to help instructors, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading are now pro- vided with each chapter.
• The book has moved from a predominantly Dutch author base in the 1st edition to a truly international group of authors, coming from or working in more than ten different countries, in this edition. The book has main- tained its distinctive European focus (especially in Part 4), but with new chapters on Asia and developing countries and new authors from the US, China and Australia, it has now reached out to other areas of the world as well.
WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THIS BOOK?
This book consists of four clearly delineated parts. Each part can be studied as an independent unit, so that readers may choose to study the parts most inter- esting to them, if they so desire. Taken together, however, the four parts present a consistent picture of the way in which international HRM can be approached as a discipline.
In Part 1 (Internationalization: Context, Strategy, Structure and Processes) we first place International HRM in a wider context. Chapter 1 touches upon recent developments in the field of internationalization and offers various theo- retical models which explain the existence of international trade and multi- national companies. We also look at the social consequences of the increasing internationalization of the global economy. Chapter 2 then discusses the different options that MNCs have in terms of strategy and structure in some detail and shows that these can be combined into a typology of MNCs that stands up to empirical verification. We also provide a preview of the link between strategy, structure and HRM, an issue that is further explored in Chapter 3. That chapter also traces the development of IHRM as a research field and examines the role of the corporate HR function in the international firm, global management development and the roles and responsibilities of transnational managers.
Introduction 3

4 International Human Resource Management
Finally, Chapter 4 focuses on integration processes in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), examining the potentially critical role that cultural differences and human resources play in the M&A process. It also systematically reviews the key HRM challenges at different stages in the M&A process.
Part 2 (HRM from a Comparative Perspective) starts with two chapters offering two different approaches – institutionalist and culturalist – to explain differences in human resource management across borders. Chapter 5 intro- duces these two approaches and explains the way in which comparative research differs between them. The chapter then reviews the institutionalist approach in some detail before proposing a framework – termed societal analysis – to integrate the two approaches. Chapter 6 then focuses on the study of cultural differences across countries that influence people in a work environ- ment. It presents the achieved knowledge on cultural dimensions which helps understanding and managing people from different cultural backgrounds and reviews three major and distinctive contributions to this debate. Subsequently, Chapters 7 to 9 discuss how HRM practices differ across countries by focusing respectively on Europe, Asia and developing countries. All three chapters come to the conclusion that there are no ‘one-size-fits-all best HRM practices’ and that Anglo-American HRM models need to be adapted to be effective in other countries. The focus in these chapters is on acquiring an analytical understanding of cross-national differences, since any factual description of such differences would soon be out of date.
In Part 3 (Managing an International Staff) we return to the perspective of the MNC and discuss the issues that an international HR manager encounters in managing people across borders. Although this part of the book has a clear focus on the management of expatriates, many chapters explicitly broaden their scope to include all managerial personnel. First, Chapter 10 discusses the challenges associated with building an international workforce. It reviews different staffing policies and the factors influencing the choice between host country and parent country nationals as well as the underlying motives for international transfers. It also covers recruitment and selection issues and expatriate adjustment and failure. Chapter 11 looks at the preparation of expatriates for their international assignments and proposes a systematic five-phase process for designing effective cross-cultural training programmes. Chapter 12 then deals with the compensation and performance management of staff in MNCs. It reviews the variables influencing international compensation strategy; options for compensating staff on international transfer within MNCs; and problems and enduring issues associated with international compensation and integrated performance management. Chapter 13 then closes the international transfer cycle with a look at the challenges associated with repatriation follow- ing global assignments from both an individual and an organizational point of view. Finally, Chapter 14 looks at the role of women in international manage- ment, taking into account individual, organizational and socio-cultural perspectives.

The fourth and final part of this book (Industrial Relations: a Comparative and International Perspective) looks at the collective aspects of the employ- ment relationship. First, Chapter 15 links back to Chapters 2 and 3 by discussing the transfer of HR practices – or more generally employment prac- tices as they are called in this chapter – within MNCs. It provides explanations for variations between MNCs in terms of the extent of transfer and a discussion of the likely nature of the relations between different groups within MNCs in the transfer process. Chapter 16 then draws on the recent literature on ‘varie- ties of capitalism’ to show that national economies can be structured in many different ways, and that these differences are associated with different indus- trial relations systems. It also disentangles the challenges inherent in globali- zation, and considers whether they imply convergence towards a more market-driven model, or whether distinctive forms of social regulation are likely to persist. In Chapter 17, we take this analysis of convergence and diver- gence one step further by moving to the regional level of analysis and reflecting about the prospects for the ‘Europeanization’ of industrial relations. In the final chapter of this book – Chapter 18 – we take our analysis back to the company level by examining the relevance of the concept of the Eurocompany and the role of European Works Councils within European industrial relations.