Strategic factors influencing international human resource management practices: an empirical study of Australian multinational corporations

Abstract

A theory-driven conceptual model is used to identify factors that shape the international human resource management (IHRM) activities of Australian multinational corporations (MNCs) in their overseas subsidiaries. The findings show that their IHRM activities appear to be shaped, to varying degrees, by strategic factors. The most important explanatory variables are subsidiary role and national cultural distance between home and host countries, although the results of national culture may change through adopting a more sophisticated framing and measurement of the variable. Interestingly enough, the parent HR managers were found to stress the role of subsidiary company factors in determining HR policies and practices in the subsidiaries. However, these findings should be interpreted with caution because the cross-sectional nature of the study is limited in explaining very complicated HRM phenomena that evolve over time.

Keywords:

• International human resource management
• Australian multinational corporations (MNCs)
• overseas subsidiaries
• international strategy

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Professor Denice Welch for her insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1 The results of this univariate analysis can be obtained from the authors upon request.