perspective (Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991). A further critique suggested that the
IHRM literature suffered from the conceptual and normative limitations
characteristic of much domestic personnel management research, and was not
very useful in identifying the actual HR practices of MNCs (Kochan et al., 1992).
Pucik (1992) argued that the rapid pace of globalization has led to a more strate-
gic role for HRM as well as leading to changes in the content of HRM, and sug-
gested that the need for a systematic approach to studying international HRM is
increasingly being recognized. There has been a rapid development of the field of
international HRM over the past decade (Black et al., 1999; Dowling et al., 1999),
including the development of more sophisticated theoretical work in the area.
One significant indicator of the growing importance of IHRM is the rapidly grow-
ing body of research on the IHRM strategies and practices of MNCs taking place
outside North America (Brewster and Harris, 1999).
The main reasons for the growth of interest in international HRM over the
last decade have been outlined by Scullion (2001):
1 The rapid growth of internationalization and global competition has
increased the number and significance of MNCs in recent years
(D’Aveni, 1995; Segal-Horn and Faulkner, 1999) and resulted in the
increased mobility of human resources (Brewster and Scullion, 1997).
2 The effective management of human resources is increasingly being rec-
ognized as a major determinant of success or failure in international
business (Black et al., 1999) and it has been argued that the success of
global business depends most importantly on the quality of manage-
ment in the MNC (Stroh and Caligiuri, 1998).
3 Underperformance or failure in international assignments continues to
be costly, both in human and financial terms, and research suggests that
the indirect costs of poor performance in international assignments
such as damage to foreign customer relations may be particularly costly
(Dowling et al., 1999).
4 The implementation of global strategies is frequently constrained by
shortages of international management talent (Caligiuri and Cascio,
1998), which constrain corporate efforts to expand abroad (Scullion,
1992).
5 International HRM issues are becoming increasingly important in a
wider range of organizations partly due to the rapid growth of small and
medium sized enterprise (SME) internationalization in recent years
(Mulhern, 1995; Scullion, 1999). Research suggests that theories of
internationalization that have been developed from research in larger
MNCs do not adequately explain the approaches used in smaller firms
(Forster, 1999; Monks and Scullion, 2001).
6 The movement away from more traditional hierarchical organizational
structures towards the network MNC organization has been facilitated
66 International Human Resource Management