The cross national transfer of human resource management practices in German and British multinational companies

This study adopts an institutional approach to analysing the transfer of human resource management (HRM) practices across borders within multinational companies. It considers the extent to which multinational companies are informed by their country-of-origin business systems and attempt to transfer country-of-origin HRM practices to their foreign subsidiaries, the extent to which they are prevented from doing so by host country business systems and the extent to which they attempt to learn from the HRM practices of their foreign subsidiaries. Drawing on new institutional theory, the comparative theory of national business systems, international business literature and comparative industrial relations literature, it develops a framework for the analysis of the cross-border transfer of HRM practice between German-owned multinational companies and their British subsidiaries and British-owned multinational companies and their German subsidiaries. Detailed case studies reveal that the cross-national transfer of HRM practices within multinational companies is shaped but not determined by institutional environments and highlight how company and subsidiary structure and strategy and the strategies of organisational actors can facilitate and inhibit the transfer of practices.