| Abstract: | This paper reports the findings of a case study into human resource management (HRM) policies and practices of the Scottish subsidiary of an American multinational firm. The study is discussed within the debate on transfer of HRM practices between nations, and on subsidiary - parent company relationships. The paper makes a distinction between HRM policy on the one hand, and HRM practice on the other. It will be argued that whereas companies might find it feasible to have company-wide policies , they might find it unavoidable to be responsive to local conditions when it comes to HRM practices . Further, it will be argued that some practices can be transferred across nations almost without any change from one country to another. Some must be modified to become workable in another setting. And some are more deeply culture-specific and may not always be transferable. The findings of the study support the argument that multinational companies' management practices are more prone to local cultural influences than are their overall policies and strategies. Moreover, some of the practices which the company had imported from abroad had to be modified to make them workable, given its local cultural and non-cultural contexts. These local contexts had at the same time affected the relationship between the Scottish subsidiary and its parent company. The study found four clusters of factors which intervened in this relationship. A dynamic model of subsidiary-parent company is proposed to elaborate such an intervention. On the basis of the study it is argued that HRM in a foreign subsidiary is a complicated matter. The choice between one of three major options, polycentric, ethnocentric, and global, advocated by many scholars, is found to be too simplistic a model for understanding what actually goes on in a subsidiary and between it and its parent organization. |
