An analysis of recruitment, training and retention practices in domestic and multinational enterprises in the country of Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

This paper studies the behavioural differences in the recruitment, training and retention practices of domestic enterprises (DEs) versus multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the country of Brunei Darussalam. Hypotheses from literature survey predict MNEs to be more stringent in their recruitment and training and rigourous with promotion practices. Results show this is to be largely true. MNEs are found to be more rigourous in recruitment and place more emphasis on such traits as candidates' ‘devotion to task’, ‘self-motivation’ and ‘independent judgement’. MNEs were found to rely more on internal appointments. MNEs place more emphasis on training; they also emphasise a stronger work culture by relying on ‘induction by socialisation’ and ‘buddy system for mentoring’. When analysed by age, older firms were found to place more importance on language and commitment. They also rely on training via the buddy system and on external appointments for senior posts. Large firms place emphasis on employees' willingness to travel and on work experience in other countries as the main recruitment criteria. Large firms also believe in external appointments for senior positions. The study, which is one of few of its kind conducted in non-Western environment, and the only one in the context of Brunei, adds to our understanding of human resource practices in the context of two different genres of enterprises and has implications for future research.

Keywords::

• domestic enterprises
• multinational enterprises
• recruitment
• retention
• training
• t-test

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to an anonymous referee and to the editor of this journal for providing valuable feedback on an earlier draft of the paper which led to several useful alterations. The authors also wish to record their gratitude to Mark Casson and Raymond Loveridge with whom work on similar lines was earlier conducted by one of the authors at the Department of Economics, University of Reading, UK. All shortcomings are ours.

Notes

^1. At the last count, there were 82,053 parent corporations with 807,363 foreign affiliates worldwide (440,482 in non-developed world); the value of their outward foreign direct investment stock stood at US $18.982 trillion ($2.58 trillion in non-developed world) (UNCTAD 2009).

^2. Based on the following formula we determine sample size: , where N is the population size and e represents the confidence level.