Worlds colliding: the translation of modern management practices within a UK based subsidiary of a Korean-owned MNC

Abstract

This paper explores the factors that served to dislodge an espoused strategy of quality management with ‘soft’ HRM within a British subsidiary of a Korean owned multinational company. Accounts from British and Korean managers revealed competing sets of tensions at three levels: external organizational, intra-organizational, and internal workplace. The case is important for a number of reasons. First, research on UK based subsidiaries tends to have focused upon American and Japanese owned companies, with less evidence from MNCs from later industrialized economies. Second, evidence suggests that MNCs from Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have been experimenting with Western influenced high-performance work systems – but there is less evidence about how these are actually translated into the workplace. Third, there is a growing literature that suggests that the transfer of management practices in MNCs can be partly understood as a ‘negotiated process’, and disagreements may emerge between organisational actors in respect of the meaning and function of such practices. This article offers further support for this contention and offers insights into how these processes affected day-to-day management of the workplace and undermined the espoused strategy.

Keywords:

• Multinationals
• HRM
• quality management
• management experiences
• translation of practices

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for the helpful and constructive comments on their article. Alan Ryan and Tina Thomas were involved in the data collection and feedback sessions to the company and the authors thank them for their contribution. The authors also thank Margaret Spence for her transcription work.