Sully Taylor

Employee commitment in MNCs: Impacts of organizational culture, HRM and top management orientations

This article tests a model of organizational commitment in multinational corporations (MNCs). According to the model, organizational culture and human resource management (HRM) affect employee commitment directly as well as indirectly through top management team orientations. Szpecifically, we examined the effect of top management team global orientation and geocentric orientation, which are seen as contributing uniquely to employee commitment in MNCs. The model was tested on a sample of 1664 core employees working in 39 affiliates of 10 MNCs. We found strong overall support for the model. In particular, organizational culture characterized by high adaptability and a HRM system characterized by high performance work practices were found to have a significant and direct effect on employee commitment. In addition, we found that the effect of these traditional elements of the human organization is partially mediated through top management orientations, specific to international firms. The validity and generalizability of these results are reinforced by the control of a set of demographic variables as well as nationality of parent company.

A typology of international human resource management in Japanese multinational corporations: Organizational implications

This article outlines a typology of approaches to the design of international human resource management (HRM) systems in multinational corporations based on a ten-year study of Japanese affiliates in the United States, Europe, and Asia. After outlining four different approaches based on the dimensions of parent company imprint, problem attribution, and diffusion of HRM innovations, the article discusses the implications for organizations in the areas of flexibility, organizational learning, integration and coordination, and cost.

Global Mindset: A Review and Proposed Extensions

In this section, we offer a careful and systematic review of the theoretical and empirical studies relating to global mindset that have been published in books and peer-reviewed journals. This review includes studies that use differing terms to refer to the idea of global mindset but consider the same general concept. At the same time, we exclude studies that do not specifically pertain to global mindset but concentrate on such areas as global leadership, expatriates, and expatriation, even though they may focus on similar underlying themes found in the global mindset literature. We then identify two fundamental themes in the global mindset literature – cosmopolitanism and cognitive complexity – and use these concepts to develop a new integrative approach to global mindset.

Western women working in Japan : breaking corporate barriers

Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgments Wanted: Adventurers for the Next Century Foreign Professional Women in Japan: The Realities What Next for Foreign Professional Women? Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Bibliography Index

Management commitment to the ecological environment and employees: Implications for employee attitudes and citizenship behaviors

In this article, we examine the implications of perceived management commitment to the ecological environment for employee attitudes and behaviors. Following deontic justice theory, which suggests that individuals are capable of feeling and expressing moral outrage when others are treated poorly, even if such treatment has no direct implications for themselves, we expected that employee attitudes and behaviors would be related to perceived organizational treatment of the environment. At the same time, we expected that these reactions would be moderated by how employees themselves were treated by the organization, in the form of perceived organizational support. In a study of employees and supervisors in a textile firm in Turkey, the results indicate that perceived organizational support moderated the effects of management commitment to the environment on organizational justice, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors targeting the environment.

The End of a 'Period': Sustainability and the Questioning Attitude

Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. From Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner (1969) in Teaching as a Subversive Activity. The aphorism above suggests that students exit secondary school thinking they “know” what needs to be known…period. Higher education may simply serve to replace the period (.) with an exclamation (!). Upon exit from college, students “know what is to be known” even better, are more confident in stating it and think they are prepared for job placement. Can universities help students recapture the thrill of being question marks (?), suggesting a joyful pursuit of continual self-discovery? In addressing this question, we submit that only with enduring questioning, life-long pursuit of new insights and continual adaptive change, are college graduates able to contribute to and partake in the paradigm shift of sustainability. Our essay seeks to connect the mindset of questioning and adaptive change to the current sustainability transformation within universities. In doing so, we set forth a foundation for understanding how universities, particularly schools and colleges of business, can empower students to leave our halls as “?”s and effectively participate in the sustainability transformation.

Emerging Motivations for Global HRM Integration

For many years, the field of international human resource management (IHRM) has struggled with the question of whether or not it is better for a multinational firm (MNC) to integrate its IHRM practices across the various geographies in which it operates. The debate revolves around two issues: whether it is desirable, and whether it is possible. The obstacles to integration are obvious, and include such barriers as the vast array of labour law regimes, the enormous divergence in labour market characteristics and highly divergent cultures, all of which impede global integration of HRM. Yet MNCs, and the IHR function within them, are likely to become ever more intent on overcoming the many barriers that exist to integrating their HRM practices on a global basis. In short, global integration of HR is becoming more desirable. There are two emerging trends in particular that are creating strategic imperatives for greater HRM global integration. These two trends are the increasing need to focus on the creation of social capital within the MNC’s global internal network, and the growing need to focus on sustainability as part of the company’s global strategic imperative. Interestingly, and fortuitously for MNCs and their management, achieving these two goals is a mutually reinforcing process.

DOES IT REALLY MATTER IF JAPANESE MNCs THINK GLOBALLY

This paper explores the empirical relationships between the global orientation of the top management team, geocentrism of the staffing and promotion system, and boundary spanning structures and processes with the individual outcome variables of employee commitment to, and excitement about, their job and organization in ten units of two highly diversified high-technology Japanese multinational corporations. The results from the study show that employee perceptions of the top management team’s global orientation, geocentrism, and boundary spanning structures and processes influence individual attitudes of employees in Japanese MNCs. The implications of these results for further research and managerial practice are discussed.

Organisational Learning in Japanese MNCs: Four Affiliate Archetypes

For much of the history of international business, academics have focused on the foreign direct investment decision. While the decision to expand overseas is an important one, it is only the first step in a long journey for multinational company (MNC) managers. Setting up the necessary systems for managing the overseas affiliate and ensuring that it contributes to organisational goals are much longer-term, more complicated issues that have only recently received the scholarly attention they deserve.

The transfer of human resource management systems overseas: An exploratory study of Japanese and American maquiladoras

The field of international management has, until recently, largely ignored how human resources management (HRM) systems in overseas subsidiaries are designed and how design impacts performance. In addition, there is virtually no research comparing the HRM systems in Japanese and Western affiliates. In an attempt to begin to address this important issue, this chapter presents the results of a study of Japanese and American maquiladoras (in-bond assembly plants) in Mexico. The research builds on two streams of recent work in the international management field the first on international human resource management systems and the second on strategic roles of business units in MNCs. This chapter examines the relative influence of parent company strategy, strategic role of the affiliate, parent company administrative heritage, and host country environment on the HRM systems in eight maquiladoras, four Japanese and four American, located in Tijuana, Mexico. Using a contingency framework, this chapter also describes the fits between each maquiladoras HRM system and its internal and external environments. Finally, it identifies