useful when tackling more demanding problems of comparing and explaining
organizational and HRM practices between countries, as well as between
different subsidiaries of MNCs. The classic example of the approach can be found
in Maurice, Sellier and Silvestre (1982), which analysed a Franco-German com-
parison reported in greater detail by the same authors in 1977. This compari-
son focused on four dimensions of the wider social, economic and political
spheres of society:
- organization of work and of the enterprise;
- human resources, education, training and socialization;
- industrial and sectoral structures, and relations between such industries and
sectors; - labor markets, as the sum total of events and arrangements which constitute
the exchange of labor power for an equivalent, such as intrinsic satisfaction,
social affiliation or (last but not least) money.
As we can see, Whitley presented a different set of salient dimensions, which
is more detailed on aspects pertaining to coordination of economic activities
beyond and above firms, and the structure of interests within and behind this
coordination. But no set of dimensions should be taken as set in stone. The
main thing is to start with a refined set of functions which can be separated
analytically. The more comprehensive and detailed this set is, the better.
Central tenets of societal analysisThe intention is not to define a rigid decomposition of society and the econ-
omy into subsystems. The precise structure of the subdivision is not central; it
has been derived in a fairly pragmatic way. The important thing is to grasp the
relationships between arrangements across any classification scheme. This
means that it is important to explore the societal aspect of any social, economic
and political phenomenon we are concerned with. This definition of society
does not set society apart from the economy, or the polity, or what have you.
Societal analysis is concerned with lateral, reciprocal, relations between any of
the aforementioned dimensions. In a nutshell, this means that what happens
in a specific sphere, be it technology, social stratification, labor markets, enter-
prise organization etc., has to be explained with reference to a set of cross-
relations with as many other spheres or dimensions as possible. This is also
what Whitley proposed in his typology. In addition to such functional cross-
relations between different functional spheres of human life in society, there
are two other types of cross-relations: between actors and systems; and between
actor-systems’ constellations at different points in time. Let us look at each of
these three cross-relations in more detail.
132 International Human Resource Management