were reluctant to engage in job rotation if this meant moving to less desirable
jobs, which could also result in a loss of status for these workers. More gen-
erally, the adversarial industrial relations traditions of the plant meant that
many workers were sceptical about management’s motives. While it is likely
that many workers in GM’s plants in other countries shared such concerns, the
Spanish system of employment law presented a distinctive constraint.
Ortiz concludes that many characteristics of national systems of indus-
trial relations shape the attitudes of unions and workers to teamwork, such
as the organisational strength of unions and the legal support that they
enjoy. He argues, for example, that the British unions were more opposed to
teamwork than their Spanish counterparts because it endangered the impor-
tant role of the shop steward. The peculiarities of these aspects of national
systems of industrial relations are key factors impacting on the nature of
transfer of practices across borders, particularly for those MNCs seeking to
use this as a way of developing internationally integrated operations.
For more detail, see Ortiz (1998)4 CONCLUSION
The framework set out in this chapter provides a mechanism with which to
analyse the transfer of employment practices across borders within MNCs. This
approach based on the framework of ‘four key influences’ has sought to integrate
elements of the three approaches outlined at the beginning of the chapter. It
recognises the strength of the competitive pressures on MNCs to engage in trans-
ferring practices across their operations. In particular, the notion of ‘dominance’
and the extent of the pressures for firms to achieve international integration capture
this dynamic. The ‘four influences’ framework also attaches great significance to
the institutional and cultural aspects of national business systems in shaping and
constraining the nature of transfer. The legacy of institutions shows up most
clearly in the concepts of country of origin and host country effects. Moreover,
the framework accords importance to the political nature of transfer by recognis-
ing the way in which organisational actors can use a range of resources – relating
for example to ‘dominant’ ideas in the international economy or to characteris-
tics of the particular systems in which they are located – to initiate, engage in or
obstruct the process of transfer. Thus this fourth, integrated approach has sought
to use elements of the rational, cultural and political approaches.
By way of conclusion, what do the arguments in this chapter tell us about
the consequences for national systems of employment relations? One clear
consequence is the way in which the transfer of practices within MNCs will
lead to change within national systems as the practices introduced are spread
throughout an economy. Some argue that the development of standardised
406 International Human Resource Management