International Human Resource Management-MJ Version

in one part of the firm able to be implemented in another, and combine this
strategy with establishing competitive relations between different units, actors
at plant level may be reluctant to share their expertise with their counterparts
for fear of undermining their performance within the group. Instead of letting
other plants with whom they are in competition use the practices developed in
their own plant, some may prefer to keep those practices which they perceive
as assisting their performance to themselves. In doing so, they may draw on
the peculiarities of the national business system concerned to obfuscate the
nature of employment practice in their plant.
Thus since the transfer of practices entails the crossing of ‘institutional
divides’ (Morgan et al., 2001), the process of transfer is evidently a highly polit-
ical one. Actors at the centre of MNCs may find that the distinctiveness of host
country systems of employment relations present constraints to the transfer of
practices, although these will sometimes be malleable. Actors at subsidiary level,
on the other hand, may be able to use this distinctiveness to block either the
implementation of practices or the initial search for them. The way in which
these features of host countries complicate the pressure to achieve international
integration is clearly demonstrated in the case of General Motors in Spain.

Case study: General Motors in Spain

During the 1980s many large American firms experimented with the

practices that appeared to lie at the heart of the strong performance of their

Japanese counterparts. In the case of General Motors, a principal way in

which the firm learned about these practices was through the collaboration

with Toyota which began in the early 1980s. The joint venture between the

two firms, termed NUMMI, was significant because it was seen by manage-

ment at GM as a way in which it could learn about Japanese management

practices, and use the joint venture to move away from those practices which

had characterised the company’s North American plants. One important

aspect of this was the emphasis on teamwork, involving groups of operators

working flexibly within teams and taking on shared responsibility for the

quality of their work (see O’Sullivan, 2000). Apparently persuaded that team-

work had potential benefits across its operations, senior managers sought to

transfer it to other locations across the world as part of a standardised pro-

duction system within the company.

In its Spanish subsidiary, as in many others, GM was faced with over-

coming the potential resistance of its trade unions. There are two main union

confederations in Spain: the UGT, which has enjoyed close links with the

Socialist Party (PSOE) and is considered to be moderate; and the communist-

oriented CCOO which has its roots in workplace resistance to Franco’s dicta-

torship (Martinez Lucio, 1998). In addition to union representation, there

exists another channel of worker representation known as the comité de

empresas, or works committees. While formally separate from unions, in

many cases the delegates elected by workers to these committees are also

404 International Human Resource Management