Anne Tempel

Power, institutions and the cross-national transfer of employment practices in multinationals:

This article argues for the systematic incorporation of power and interests into analysis of the cross-border transfer of practices within multinational companies (MNCs). Using a broadly Lukesian perspective on power it is argued that the transfer of practices involves different kinds of power capabilities through which MNC actors influence their institutional environment both at the ‘macro-level’ of host institutions and the ‘micro-level’ of the MNC itself. The incorporation of an explicit account of the way power interacts with institutions at different levels, it is suggested, underpins a more convincing account of transfer than is provided by the dominant neoinstitutionalist perspective in international business, and leads to a heuristic model capable of generating proposed patterns of transfer outcomes that may be tested empirically in future research.

Subsidiary responses to institutional duality: Collective representation practices of US multinationals in Britain and Germany

New institutionalist studies of human resource management in multinational companies argue that subsidiaries are faced with institutional duality-pressures to conform to parent company practices and to the local institutional environment in which they are based. To date, they have concentrated on how subsidiaries respond to parent company pressures. This article considers how subsidiary management responds to both parent company demands and host country pressures in trying to reconcile the challenges of institutional duality. It focuses on how such responses are shaped by the interdependence of subsidiary management with the parent company and the local environment. It does so by comparing case study evidence of collective representation practices in US-owned subsidiaries in Britain and Germany.

Between home and host country: multinationals and employment relations in Europe

Foreign-owned firms employ a significant proportion of the European workforce. This varies considerably between countries but in manufacturing, where the figures are highest, it generally represents more than 10 per cent of employment (see Table 1). Furthermore, it increased strongly between 1985 and 1995. Foreign-owned transplants are likely to provide a challenge for national systems of employment relations (ER) in Europe. They represent the most visible manifestation of the influence of global pressures on national economies and societies. However there is only limited empirical evidence to support such an assessment. Existing research has largely concentrated on the behaviour of US and Japanese multinational companies (MNCs). This suggests that US firms in Europe have transferred practices from their home country and thereby challenged national systems of collective representation and bargaining and acted as HR innovators in areas such as pay and work organisation (Almond, Edwards and Muller, 2001; Ferner, forthcoming). Innovations by Japanese firms have mainly been in the area of work organisation (Elger and Smith, 1998; Morris, Wilkinson and Munday 2000). The more limited research about ER practices of firms from other countries suggests that they also transfer home country practices, but in a way that is less challenging to their

Subsidiary Managers and the Transfer of Human Resource Practices in Multinational Companies – Institutional Work at the Intersection of Multiple Institutional Frameworks

We develop a conceptual framework to show how agency can be integrated more centrally into new institutionalist work on practice transfer in multinational companies. Drawing on the discussion on institutional multiplicity, we show the potential for agency that subsidiary managers enjoy at the intersection of multiple institutional environments. Referring to structuration theory, we analyze the conditions that shape whether managers can realize this potential. We argue that the nature of host country rules and the abundance of resources at subsidiary level create situations in which subsidiary managers are either enabled or constrained in their ability to influence the transfer process.

Multinationale Unternehmen und internationales Personalmanagement: Eine vergleichende institutionalistische Perspektive

In diesem Beitrag wird ein Ansatz zur Erforschung der Personalpolitik in multinationalen Unternehmen vorgestellt, der sich inzwischen zu einem eigenständigen Forschungsstrang in der internationalen Personalforschung entwickelt hat. Dieser Ansatz hat im deutschsprachigen Raum bisher nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Es werden sowohl die Vorgehensweise in der Forschung als auch bereits vorliegende Befunde empirischer Studien auf der Basis dieses Ansatzes vorgestellt. Anschließend erfolgt eine kritische Würdigung des Ansatzes und der empirischen Studien. Dabei werden der Erklärungsbeitrag und die Erklärungsgrenzen des Ansatzes mit Blick auf die Personalpolitik multinationaler Unternehmen herausgearbeitet. Darüber hinaus werden Überlegungen zu den Entwicklungspotenzialen dieses Ansatzes angestellt.