Farndale, E., Raghuram, S., Gully, S., Liu, X., Phillips, J. M., & Vidović, M. (2017). A
vision of international HRM research. The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 28(12), 1625-1639.
The field of IHRM is about understanding, researching, applying and revising all HR
activities in their internal and external contexts as they impact the processes of managing HRs
in organizations throughout the global environment to enhance the experience of multiple
stakeholders. The 2nd Global Conference on IHRM was held on 14–15 May 2015 at The
Pennsylvania State University (USA) with the aim of encouraging IHRM scholars to share
current thinking in the field. In particular, the theme of the conference was to explore ‘big
picture’ findings; in other words, placing an emphasis on understanding our observations
beyond describing them, answering the ‘why’ questions and providing implications for theory
development and practice.
it is a conventional approach to study the generalizable relationship between a set of HRM
practices and employee outcomes such as commitment, satisfaction or engagement, while
downplaying the role of national settings and cultures. From an IHRM perspective, however,
researchers recognize the need to develop more nuanced models to explore the specificity and
conditionality of contextual factors: Why is such a relationship found to exist in some but not
all national settings? To give an example: In Germany (as in some other Western European
countries) there is legislation requiring employers to listen to the voice of employees through
co-determination systems. In contrast, in the USA there is no such legislation, and therefore
employee voice occurs more commonly through informal, direct communication between an
employee and his or her line manager. Therefore, we might expect HRM practices that
promote indirect employee voice to have differing outcomes in these two different contexts.
We could argue that employees in Germany, who feel protected by the codetermination
legislation, are grateful to have their voice heard through representation, whereas employees
in the USA may have less trust in such a system due to the lack of legislative (and
organizational) support. Alternatively, employees in the USA may have more trust in such
systems because they are not mandated and thus may be used with a more sincere intent by
employers.
There are current debates within the IHRM literature that are based on the relevance of
context. First there is the contrast between adopting a universalist vs. a contextual paradigm.
Originating in the strategic HRM literature (Brewster, 1999), the universalist paradigm posits
one best way to conduct HRM in order to achieve strong organizational performance. If ‘best
practice’ is adopted, desired outcomes will be achieved. This argument lies at the heart of the
high-performance work systems literature. In contrast, the contextual paradigm argues that the
outcomes of HRM practices are dependent on the context in which they are implemented, i.e.
there is no single formula for best practice HRM. These paradigms lead to a second major
debate within the IHRM field around convergence and divergence (Kaufman, 2016): Is the
relevance of context diminishing with the advent of the globalization of business activities?
Some argue that globalization is leading to a transfer of standardized HRM practices across
borders, as increasing numbers of organizations have global operations, and as technology
develops to be able to facilitate this transfer. Others argue, on the contrary, that the
institutional and cultural contexts of nations (or market economies) are so tightly embedded in
the way in which organizations operate, and hence adoption of ‘best practices’ from other
parts of the world cannot easily be undertaken.
,Future research
By broadening our sampling horizons thus, we can start to explore fully the universalist vs.
contextual paradigms. Building theory from local contexts rather than relying on the testing of
existing theory from WEIRD countries can help us understand the factors that lead to
dominant local HRM practices to help us theorize the field further. Furthermore, focusing on
appropriate control variables or institutional/cultural factors across countries can help identify
what is causing the observed effects. Hence, we urge scholars to undertake research sampling
that allows us to uncover real issues in real research sites.
Methodologies
Comparative IHRM studies involve collecting data from two or more different national
contexts. As a first step, this requires the phenomenon and/ or variables to be explored in each
country to be comparable across contexts. The need for construct equivalence and for
accounting for cross-cultural response bias is emphasized in the publishing Editorial in this
volume. The HRM field has already acknowledged the challenge that HRM practices are
measured in many different ways, with a lack of agreement in terms of operationalization.
Nations are also known for their inclination to respond to surveys either by choosing extreme
or non-extreme responses to Likert-style self-report measures (Smith, 2004). A response style
is an individual’s proclivity towards responding systematically to items regardless of their
content (Harzing, 2006). Bias due to response styles is not dependent on the content of the
item, but rather on a combination of the cultural values and personality of the respondent, as
well as the item format. The process of co-creation of research would help to avoid some of
the potential blind spots identified here in our research. By this, we are emphasizing the
benefits of working together with local researchers from each nation being studied. By having
local research partners, interpretation of research terms as well as study findings takes place in
context, rather than applying an ethnocentric lens from a researcher or researchers who are
based in a single country that is different from the research site.
Societal impact
There is a drive for increasing emphasis to be placed on the societal impact of applied
sciences such as the IHRM field through increased academic-practitioner engagement
(Hughes, Bence, Grisoni, O’regan, & Wornham, 2011). This means considering not only the
rigour of our IHRM research and publications, but also its relevance to society (such as
practitioners and policy makers) and students. At one level, this is about presenting research
results in a format and language easily accessible by all (e.g. two-minute highlights through
social media; white-papers; publications in local language). At another level, this is about
ensuring that we are doing research that can contribute to theory but also relate to challenges
that organizations are facing today. From a practice perspective, there are numerous emergent
trends in leading-edge organizations that can be observed when reading IHRM practice or
consultancy-focused journals and web pages. These include: changes in the employment
relationship with workers becoming more like contractors than employees and being moved
around within the firm; making organizations more agile, including offshoring arrangements;
the importance of social media on a global scale affecting HRM processes such as
recruitment; advancing technologies changing the way that performance is managed with
more ‘just-in-time’ style apps for agile management, rather than attempting to use global
ranking systems; training and development being re-engineered to focus on firm-specific
materials applied globally through short interventions, again often using social media; and
analytics speeding up reaction times, producing data-driven global mobility and IHRM. Many
,of these trends on a global scale focus on speed and being smarter with less in IHRM, yet
many of the topics are scarcely covered through academic literature. Another important
societal issue that emerges from the intersections of global business and HRM practices is the
impact on the local employees especially in emerging economies. With HRM practices most
directly interfacing with the value systems of employees, there is a high likelihood that there
are higher levels of misalignment and stress.
Interdisciplinary research
Interdisciplinary research implies working with scholars from different fields that can allow
us to explore employment relationship research questions through different theoretical lenses.
The reality of (international) business is that organizational challenges are rarely solved by
only looking at the problem from one perspective. HRM is one piece of the puzzle, and in the
global arena, it makes sense that research can benefit from understanding broader phenomena.
Sources of inspiration might include disciplines such as economics (e.g. labour mobility),
political science (e.g. regime changes, uprisings and violence), economic geography (e.g.
migration, natural disasters) and sociology (e.g. culture, grounded theorizing, diversity)
perspectives. To date differences between countries in the antecedents or outcomes of HRM
practices are largely explained through dimensions of national culture or labour legislation.
Little attention is paid to factors such as religion, corruption or power, which might
potentially explain more variance than culture or institutions alone. examining the increasing
power of external stakeholders such as shareholders and creditors provides an alternative lens
to understand why some firms have a constrained capability in enacting strategic visions and
investing in HRM systems. Unless IHRM research can show cross-fertilization of theories and
thoughts, the field will be slow to develop and is in danger of stagnation.
Mayrhofer, W., Brewster, C., Morley, M. J., & Ledolter, J. (2011). Hearing a different
drummer? Convergence of human resource management in Europe—A longitudinal
analysis. Human Resource Management Review, 21(1), 50-67.
The convergence debate, focused on the issue of whether nation states, economies and
management practices are becoming more alike through globalization, has become a key
feature of much social science theorizing. Most recently, the collapse of communist regimes
in Central and Eastern Europe and the process of marketization in China have led to an
expanding literature on the triumph of capitalism. Taken together with the literature on
globalization and the debate about the role of the international financial institutions, it has
been argued that we can expect to see convergence in all political and economic systems. The
underlying argument for convergence is that if capitalism is the only major system left in the
world then, through a form of economic natural selection, practices and institutions that
contribute to the success of the system will diffuse and gradually replace all others. The
‘globalization thesis’ proposes that countries become increasingly similar with respect to their
tastes, behavioral patterns, cultural values and governance systems due to drivers such as
patterns of industrialization, trade barrier diminution, globalized media, homogeneous
consumer demand, digitization, financial markets, transparent accounting and information and
capital flows. This convergence argument is, however, not uncontested. Some institutional
and cultural theorists doubt the concept. Voices from disciplines such as economics, law,
political sciences and sociology draw attention to the manifest varieties of capitalism. From a
cultural perspective, national and regional cultures reflect substantial differences in norms,
values and belief systems that will make convergence at all levels highly unlikely. HRM in
Europe is a particularly useful proving-ground for this debate. On the one hand, Europe
reflects this peculiar tension between convergence and divergence in a unique way. The
, European Union (EU) is creating common institutional structures and regulations through the
institutionalization of supra-national rules governing the social, economic and political life of
member states. Parallel to that, securing Europe's future as a global economic player has led
to a lowering of various trade and finance barriers and subscription to the global ‘rules of the
economic game’ (Djelic & Quack, 2003). All of this supports convergence. On the other
hand, Europe's history and great number of countries relative to its size leads to a substantial
amount of cultural and institutional differences in terms of language, legal regulations,
cultural heritage and mutual stereotypes, making convergence less likely. To use our music
analogy from Thoreau, different drummers, types of music and rhythms abound in this highly
heterogeneous context.
Many studies rely on an implicit understanding of convergence. Some studies have claimed to
find convergence from a single- point-in-time analysis (e.g. Chen, Lawler, & Bae, 2005).
Clearly, what they have found may be similarities, but it cannot be convergence, which
requires a coming together over a period of time. It is also sometimes assumed that similar
trends will lead to convergence, but if such trends run in parallel, they may not lead to
anything that a dictionary would accept as convergence.
We identify distinct forms of convergence when discussing developments in HRM and we
adopt those here. Final convergence, i.e. convergence in the genuine sense of the word, exists
when the analyzed variable in different units of analysis over time develops in a way that
would, eventually, lead to a common end point: the differences between the units – countries
in our analysis – decrease. This is the meaning of convergence found in the dictionaries and
most commonly assumed in the literature, even if rarely stated explicitly. Friedman points
towards a classical article on convergence (Hotelling, 1933) suggesting that "the real test of a
tendency to convergence would be in showing a consistent diminution of variance ... among
individual [countries]” (Friedman, 1992: 2129). Sometimes final convergence is confused
with another form of joint development: directional similarity. It occurs when the
developments of variables in units of analysis over time are pointing in the same direction —
i.e. when similar trends are apparent. We use the term directional similarity when, regardless
of the initial starting level in each country, and whether or not these levels are closer together
or further apart at the end, over time a change of variables in the same direction in each
country occurs.
The globalization thesis implies the existence of significant supra-national drivers for
convergence of HRM in European firms. However, in line with comparative institutional
perspectives, variations between national institutional settings act to restrict final convergence
at the level of nation states. Two very different theoretical perspectives support the
importance of global drivers toward convergence in European HRM. From a rational choice
perspective, similar organizational structures and forms should emerge in response to such
environmental forces. From the perspective of the world-polity approach, organizations
respond to global myths such as rationalization or profitability in order to enhance their
legitimacy. The global competitiveness discussion in Europe, with the continent struggling to
maintain its position as a premier business region, and the shift of production as well as
services into lower labor cost countries within Europe, e.g. Romania or the Ukraine, and Asia,
e.g. India or China, has stirred a wide debate about the effects of globalization.
In relation to HRM specifically, significant counter-arguments to universalistic best-practice
HRM suggestions have evolved (Sparrow & Hiltrop, 1997). Empirically, a number of studies
show continuing national differences between HRM in European countries. From an
institutionalist perspective, these differences are hardly surprising. The neo-institutionalist
