Miners, politics and institutional caryatids: Accounting for the transfer of HRM practices in the Brazilian multinational enterprise

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Geary, John; Aguzzoli, Roberta
• 署名单位: University College Dublin; Durham University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/jibs.2016.24
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 968-996
• 关键词: INSTITUTIONAL THEORY; Emerging market multinationals; international human resource management; power and dependence; CRITICAL REALISM; MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS

摘要

This article contributes to the growing stream of research on power and micro politics in the MNE. It is situated in the critical realist epistemology. It adopts Burawoy's extended case study method together with a context-sensitive and an actor-centered mode of explanation. The case is intriguing: a MNE from Brazil expands into Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway and imposes a new pay and performance management system, contrasting with existing host norms. The article uses this to examine interrelated questions about the influence of an emerging-economy parent business system and how this interacts with the well-developed institutional regulation of the host countries. Hence we are forced into the interesting realm of multilevel analysis about MNEs, power relations and institutional change. We argue that the transfer of HRM practices within MNEs is best explained by a consideration of institutions, organizational structures, actors' postures within and beyond the MNE, and their relational interplay. Specifically, it requires an analysis of the macro-political context (home and host institutional influences; subsidiaries' size, mode of establishment, history, value chain location; and the host economies' dependence on foreign investment) on which actors' identities and interests are formed, and on which the ensuing micro-political relations are played out.