Multinational Management Strategy and Human Resource Decision Making In the Single European Market*

There has been considerable academic interest in the consequences of European integration for multinational companies and their subsidiaries, and the co-ordination and control of human resource decision making. Against the backdrop of this debate, this paper examines the impact of European integration on management organization and human resource decision making in 13 British multinational companies. Although there were partial moves towards the development of European managers, a European-wide approach to human resource matters was not yet a conspicuous feature of this sample of multinationals. the global preoccupations of the companies, as well as the persistence of national variations in consumer markets and modes of product regulation, were clearly major constraints on the emergence of European forms of corporate organization and underpinned the lack of enthusiasm for distinctively European approaches to employee management.     

发展中的欧盟高等教育国际化

伴随着欧洲经济一体化的不断深入,日益激烈的国际教育市场的驱使以及信息技术和互联网学习的发展,高等教育国际化越来越成为欧盟继经济联盟和统一货币之后的另一重要行动。欧盟的高等教育国际化进程从欧共体产生之日就开始了其进程,直至今日依然在发展。本文探求了从经济和文化因素分析欧盟国家高等教育的动因,接着从欧盟教育的一体化及其国际发展两个方面讲述了欧盟高等教育国际化的主要举措,企盼为我国高等教育国际化提供启示及借鉴。     

Open innovation and the evaluation of internet-enabled public services in smart cities

This article is focused on public service innovation from an innovation management perspective. It presents research experience gained from a European project for managing social and technological innovation in the production and evaluation of citizen-centred internet-enabled services in the public sector. It is based on six urban pilot initiatives, which sought to operationalise a new approach to co-producing and co-evaluating civic services in smart cities – commonly referred to as open innovation for smart city services. Research suggests that the evidence base underpinning this approach is not sufficiently robust to support claims being made about its effectiveness. Instead evaluation research of citizen-centred internet-enabled urban services is in its infancy and there are no tested methods or tools in the literature for supporting this approach. The paper reports on the development and trialing of a novel Co-evaluation Framework, indicators and reporting categories, used to support the co-production of smart city services in an EU-funded project. Our point of departure is that innovation of services is a sub-set of innovation management that requires effective integration of technological with social innovation, supported by the right skills and capacities. The main skills sets needed for effective co-evaluation of open innovation services are the integration of stakeholder management with evaluation capacities.     

Redefining the field of European human resource management: A battle between national mindsets and forces of business transition?

This article examines the conflict between cultural heritage and the current forces of global competition in Europe. The nature of management in European organizations is in a state of transition, influenced by competing forces of economic, social, and political integration or disintegration. A review of European research is used to question the idealistic picture of the Single European Market as a unifying force that will simplify international human resource management in multinationals. Taking a comparative rather than international human resource management perspective, the paper identifies the factors that have created national patterns of HRM within Europe. A dynamic and comparative ‘force field framework’ of HRM is developed in order to understand the managerial frames of reference that are currently guiding the field. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Eurobarometer and the process of European integration

For nearly 40 years, the European Commission has observed the development of the European Union as it is reflected in public opinion. The Eurobarometer measures the European population’s attitudes about various issues related to Europe. The informational value of the Eurobarometer is viewed as quite high, since the surveys, which are conducted twice a year, generate a large quantity of data. This article investigates the role of the Eurobarometer in the process of European integration by analysing the methodological foundations of the Eurobarometer and discussing its weaknesses. The final section addresses the issue of whether the European Commission, as the contracting entity, utilizes the Eurobarometer as a political instrument to promote support for the process of European integration. It is argued here that the Commission’s instrumentalisation of the Eurobarometer jeopardizes its informational value, whereas at the same time the political benefits of this shift remain debatable.     

European integration and the pay policies of British multinationals

European economic integration has generated intense interest in the prospect of a European labour market. This article brings new evidence to bear on the issue of employer responses to European integration and concludes that British owned multinational companies have, as yet, only made partial moves towards the Europeanisation of their pay determination arrangements.     

Anglo-American forms of management education: A practice-theoretical perspective

This article is based on a review of three Anglo-American journals of management education research, namely The Academy of Management Learning & Education, The Journal of Management Education, and Management Learning. In order to identify different forms of management education, articles in the journals were read from a practice-theoretical perspective. The main finding is that researchers have described or suggested five different conceptions of management education, which either revise the business-school tradition or provide alternatives to it. One implication of the finding is that it is not reasonable to speak for or against the US model of management education, since there are several. Management education research could thus aim at a more nuanced appreciation of what business-school teachers regard as good education.     

网上集成教育教学平台的设计

在职业教育集团化发展的背景下,如何将各种资源有效结合,高效管理,共享利用。本文以此为出发点,通过管理平台功能框架设计和技术架构,设计了网上集成教育教学平台。     

物流高职教育与人才市场适应性研究——以河南省为例

在全球经济一体化的今天,现代物流业已成为现代产业体系的重要组成部分。今后物流职业教育合格人才的输出,都将影响着河南食品冷链、医药、钢铁、汽车、家电、纺织服装、邮政、粮食、花卉、建材等行业的物流服务支持。文章研究将从河南职业教育教学与物流业发展适应性分析出发,进行研究分析河南物流职业教育跨越发展的现实基础,进而提出物流职业教育跨越发展的新模式思路与具体对策建议。     

European Monetary Union or competing currencies: which way for monetary integration in Europe?

In theAntibes in September, Mr. Laws on perplexed and irritated his fellow European finance ministers by proposing a scheme for allowing currencies to compete one against the other in Europe. It perplexed them because it was presented as a basis for proceeding towards monetary union within the European Community in accordance with the resolve of European Heads of State at the Madrid Summit, whereas it appeared as a recipe for monetary confusion, not fusion. It irritated them because it appeared to them to be yet another British manoeuvre to derail agreed progress towards greater economic and monetary integration in Europe. It especially annoyed the potential allies of the UK on this issue who regard the French and Commission attempts to push rapidly towards monetary union as ill-advised, and who saw the Chancellor's ill-thought out proposal as playing into their hands. Some political commentators have suggested that Mr. Lawson was seeking to play a clever hand. He is known to favour UK entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System, and on this is at odds with Mrs. Thatcher. Professor Alan Walters, adviser to the Prime Minister, is said to favour the idea of competing currencies in Europe. It may be that the Chancellor was not displeased to have this idea knocked down in the Antibes, leaving a strengthened EMS as the only realistic alternative to full monetary union in Europe. Whatever the truth of this, it seems inevitable that UK opposition to ambitious proposals for European Monetary Union will be met with less sympathy in future as a result of the Antibes meeting. This is a pity. For as we suggested in the June Economic Viewpoint, there is a serious case yet to be made in favour of the idea of competing currencies. This idea need not be in conflict with the objective of exchange rate stability, so that it is not incompatible with the EMS. Competition between currencies need not mean exchange rate instability. Rather it may mean competition over responsible monetary policies, encouraging their spread within Europe. An implication is that full monetary union may not be desirable. If the UK advanced this position in Europe, it may well carry the day. In this Viewpoint, we develop this argument about the direction for further monetary integration in Europe.     

Trade integration in the European Union: Openness,interconnectedness, and distance

This article presents a set of indicators to measure regional trade integration, focusing on the case of the European Union. We propose measures of openness, connectedness and integration which are tuned to evaluate not only how these components contribute to the advance of international integration, but also to control for the potential threat posed by the proliferation of regional trade agreements to trade globalization. Although this and related questions have been examined from several perspectives, the present article explicitly attempts to quantify how regional trade agreements either intensify or thwart trade globalization. Results show that the process of trade integration has intensified among European Union members, whereas integration with non-members is advancing slowly. Our indicators provide a more complete view of the differing speeds of integration, which depend on whether the component of integration considered is openness or connectedness.     

思想道德教育与生活方式教育一体化的新构想——新形势下大学生思想道德教育问题和对策设计研究

新形势下大学生的思想及其行为表现出的复杂特性为大学思想道德教育提出了很多新的问题。在功能上存在着重政治轻素质的现象,在形式上存在着重活动轻规划的现象,在内容上存在着重理论轻实践的现象,在研究上存在着重经验轻理论的现象,在队伍上存在着重使用轻培养的现象等,是当前高校思想政治教育中存在的几个突出问题。为了更好地促进我国高校思想道德教育工作的发展,本文结合国外大学生生活方式教育发展的理论与经验,认为我国高校思想道德教育应当充分与学生生活相结合开展全面的生活方式教育,并提出了思想道德教育与生活方式教育一体化的新构想。     

The European Learning Community: Towards A Political Economy of Management Learning

Stephen Fox is a Lecturer and Teaching Director in the Department of Management Learning at the University of Lancaster. He is also the Business Administration subject coordinator for the ERASMUS programme described in the article published here. Writing as an ‘insider’, he uses this particular programme to examine critically the prospects for the emergence of ‘European Management’.     

Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz—Statistician,Economist and a European Intellectual

Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz (1868–1931) was a European statistician. His scientific work covered theoretical economics, stochastics, mathematical statistics and radiology; today, we would call him a cross‐disciplinary scientist. With his clear views on mathematical principles with their applications in these fields, he stood in conflict with the mainstream economic schools in Germany at the dawn of the 20th century. He had many prominent students (Gumbel, Leontief and Freudenberg among them), and he carved out the path of modern statistical thinking. He was a true European intellectual with a career path from St. Petersburg via Göttingen to Straßburg and finally the Berliner Universität, now Humboldt‐Universität zu Berlin. He is known for the precise calibration of insurance claims applying the—at that time hardly known—Poisson distribution to Prussian horse kick and child suicide data. He proposed a simple solution to the Marxian transformation problem and wrote numerous articles and books on the mathematical treatment of statistical (including radiological physical) data. In this article, we sketch his life and work and point out the prominent role that he has in today's statistical thinking.     

独立学院经管类专业实践教学体系的重构

实践是创新的源泉,大力加强实践教学是当前高等教育改革的方向,强化校企合作是以市场和社会就业需求为导向的教育模式。本文着重探讨校企共建大学生实践基地,拓宽学生的实践渠道,培养学生社会适应能力和实际动手能力的思路;以及如何将独立学院经济管理类实验室建设和学术科研两者有机地结合起来,实现一体化运作,来应对现阶段摆在高校经管类专业面前的这一重要课题。     

Empirical analysis of the integration of environmental risks into the credit risk management process of European banks

About 15 years ago, banks started to integrate environmental risks into their credit risk management procedures. In this article, a survey of the European banking sector focusing on the analysis of the integration of environmental risks into all phases of the credit risk management, rating, costing, pricing, monitoring and work‐out, is presented. The integration of environmental risks into the whole credit risk management process is important because only then is an adequate risk management guaranteed. The results show that banks integrate environmental risks especially into the rating phase, but not in all phases of the credit management process, though this is recommendable because these risks influence all phases of the credit management process. Furthermore, significant differences in integrating environmental risks between banks that are signatories of the UNEP statement by banks on the environment and sustainable development and banks that had not signed this agreement so far could be found. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

French multinational companies’ strategies and co-ordination mechanisms: the role of human resource management in Europe and Nigeria

The everchanging European context may well lead to the evolution of MNCs’ strategies in Europe and to the evolution of the control mechanisms within their subsidiaries. The author analyses the issue from the angle of human resources management, considered as an informal control tool that is widely recognized by both scholars and managers. This research therefore aims at analysing whether or not and how HRM systems embody a possible integration process in the European economic space. The methodology is based on a case study from a French multinational company belonging to the automobile industry while the investigation, a comparative analysis of the headquarters-subsidiaries relationships in England, Spain and Nigeria, points out the specificity of the European context regarding corporate strategy orientations, subsidiary roles and personnel transfer policies. The major conclusions from such an analysis suggest a framework that gives prominence to the differentiation of the management process between Europe and Nigeria.

These results confirm previous literature on co-ordination mechanisms in complex business organizations.     

Toward Monetary Union of the European Community

A bstract . European Community monetary integration has received periodic attention often as a result of financial crises but has now evolved into its major aim. To achieve this goal the European Monetary System was established in 1979. It was designed to provide a tool, the Exchange Rate Mechanism , for exchange rate stabilization and convergence of economic and monetary policies. To give further impetus to monetary integration the Maastricht Treaty was approved in December 1991. Experiences with the operation of the European Monetary System show that there is no conclusive evidence that it has disciplined the monetary and fiscal policies of all its members. More recently, Germany's insistence on a tight monetary- policy, to fight the inflation that resulted from unification costs, has brought turmoil in European financial markets and has dealt a serious blow to the system. Furthermore, the ensuing recession and its impact on the European economies make improbable that the timetable of the Maastricht Treaty will be met.     

Free movement,equal treatment and workers' rights: can the European Union solve its trilemma of fundamental principles?

This article analyses the trilemma the EU is facing concerning three fundamental principles on which the Community rests: free movement of services and labour; non‐discrimination and equal treatment, and the rights of association and industrial action. With rising cross‐border flows of services and (posted) labour after the Eastward enlargement, the conflict between these rights has triggered industrial disputes and judicial strife. In the view of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), highlighted in the Laval Quartet, some principles are more fundamental than others. Tracing the ‘dual track’ along which European integration has evolved, whereby supranational market integration has been combined with national semi‐sovereignty in industrial relations and social policies, our claim is that the supremacy of free movement over basic social rights implied by the ECJ judgments is leading Europe in a politically and socially unsustainable direction. To prevent erosion of the European Social Models and of popular support for European integration, the politicians have to reinsert themselves into the governance of the European project. A pertinent start would be to ensure that the rising mass of cross‐border service workers in Europe become subject to the same rights and standards as their fellow workers in the emerging pan‐European labour market.     

European perspectives on human resource management

This paper argues that the concept of human resource management was created and has been developed in the United States of America. The relevance of that model in other parts of the world is open to exploration, conceptually and empirically. Looking at Europe, the paper examines successively the differences between the US and European HR management systems; the differences between regional groupings within Europe; and then the differences at national level. Finally, the article looks at some of the explanations for the differences identified and whether there are signs of convergence and outlines some of the implications for scholarship in the field.