Multinational Companies and Global Human Resource Strategies

Book flyer
MS Word
International
MS Word

William N. Cooke

Book Code: Q583

ISBN: 1-56720-583-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-56720-583-1

DOI:

440 pages, figures, tables

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 2/28/2003

List Price: $91.95 (UK Sterling Price: £51.95)

Availability: Print on demand

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Subjects:

Business » Human Resources/Personnel Management
Business » International Business
Law » Labor Law

Description: In our increasingly competitive, uncertain, complex world marketplace, multinational companies, unions, and governments must rethink and adjust their human resource strategies and legislative policies again and again. Cooke and the contributors to this wide ranging volume provide case studies and original analyses of present and coming human resource issues and problems. Offering a balanced, objective understanding of what they are, they thus succeed in giving HR executives and public policymakers a way to devise more creative and workable coping strategies. Among the book's major points: MNCs usually underestimate the influence that differences in industrial relations systems, workplace cultures, and local resistance to certain HR policies can all have on their operations. Unions too often fail to develop effective transnational and inter-union strategies to better serve their memberships in other countries and cultures. And public policy makers are torn between policies meant to respond to a need for workplace efficiency, against other policies meant to promote worker equity. The book addresses these and other issues hitherto explored minimally or not at all and provides analytical, practical insights that have long-term generalizability and applicability. Unique in its depth of ideas representing a vast range of expertise, the book is a compelling addition to the literature on human resource management, and a necessary resource for executives at all levals in all types of global organizations. The contributors examine, first, the foreign direct investment configuration strategies of multinationals, then the transnational diffusion of human resource and labor relations strategies. Among the topics they cover are, how MNCs choose to diffuse the policies of the domestic parent company into their foreign subsidiaries, or how they decide to adopt policies and practices that originate in the host countries. They take up the issues of organized labor's generally diminishing relative power in a rapidly changing global workplace, then focus on transnational collective bargaining strategies and sociopolitical action. Finally, by recognizing recent multilateral agreements governing workplaces across borders, the contributors are able to assess the European Union Directive on transnational works councils and the labor aspects and agreements of NAFTA.

Table of Contents:

Global Human Resource Strategies: A Framework and Overview by William Cooke
Foreign Direct Investment Strategies and Industrial Relations Systems
Foreign Direct Investment and Its Employment Opportunities in Perspective: Meeting the Great Expectations of Developing Countries? by Gabriele Köhler
MNCs and Global Commodity Chains: Implications for Labor Strategies by Jennifer Bair and Harvie Ramsay
The Influence of Industrial Relations System Factors on Foreign Direct Investment by William Cooke
The Effect of Different Industrial Relations Systems in the U.S. and the European Union on Foreign Direct Investment Flows by Morris Kleiner and Hwikwon Ham
Multinational Company Human Resource Management and Labor Relations Strategies
A Process Model of Strategic HRM/LR Change in MNCs: The Case of AT&T and NCR in the U.K. by Graeme Martin, Phil Beaumont, and Judy Pate
Transferring the Learning Factory to America? The Japanese Television Assembly Transplants by Martin Kenney and Shoko Tanaka
Convergence or Divergence of Contingent Employment Practices?: Evidence of the Role of MNCs in Europe by Chris Brewster and Olga Tregaskis
MNCs as Diffusers of Best Practices in HRM/LR in Developing Countries by Sarosh Kuruvilla, Stephen Frenkel, and David Peetz
Transnational Union Strategies
Dual Sourcing at Ford in the U.S. and Mexico: Implications for Labor Relations and Union Strategies by Steve Babson
Local Union Responses to Continental Standardization of Production and Work in GM's North American Truck Assembly Plants by Christopher Huxley
Out of the Ashes: The Steelworkers' Global Campaign at Bridgestone/Firestone by Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner
Strategic International Laborism: MNCs and Labor in the Graphical Sector by John Gennard and Harvie Ramsay
Transnational Workplace Regulation
Sailing Beyond the Reach of Workplace Regulations: Worker Exploitation by MNCs on the High Seas by Clifford B. Donn
Carrot or Stick? How MNCs Have Reacted to the European Works Council Directive by Trevor Bain and Kim Hester
Early Days: Belgian and U.K. Experiences of European Works Councils by Thérèse Beaupain, Steve Jefferys, and Rachel Annand
Regulating Employee Interest Representation: The Case of McDonald's in the European Union by Tony Royle and Brian Towers
NAFTA's Labor Side Agreement: Withering as an Effective Labor Law Enforcement and MNC Compliance Strategy? by Mario F. Bognanno and Jiangfeng Lu
Summary and Conclusion
The Role of Power and Implications for Transnational Workplace Outcomes by William Cooke
Index

LC Card Number: 2002017768

LCC Class: HD62

Dewey Class: 331


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