literature is that HR specialists, senior or otherwise, are not typically key players
in the development of corporate strategy’.
In the mid-1980s one study, based on case study evidence, concluded that
the corporate personnel department was being downgraded largely due to the
trend towards decentralization (Purcell, 1985) whereas a larger study by Sisson
and Scullion (1985) indicated that the tendency for corporate personnel
departments to be downgraded was far from universal and demonstrated con-
siderable variation in the size and activities of corporate personnel depart-
ments. However, case study research by Paauwe (1996) on internationally
operating Dutch companies highlighted the fact that the corporate HR func-
tion was itself being downsized and some HR functions such as recruitment
were increasingly being outsourced. Purcell and Ahlstrand (1994) argued that
the overall shift to decentralization of activities has meant that corporate HR
managers were playing more of a monitoring and control function and the
raison d’ êtreof the corporate HR function was called into question.
Many studies of the corporate HR role largely ignored the links between
the growing internationalization of the companies and the new corporate HR
roles (e.g Purcell and Ahlstrand, 1994). In the UK context this is particularly
surprising for two main reasons: First, British capital is more globally oriented
than that of any other major advanced economy (Marginson, 1994). Second,
since the early 1990s there has been a significant increase in the pace of inter-
nationalization of UK companies (Dicken, 1998). However, a recent empirical
study examined the role of the corporate HR function specifically in the inter-
national firm and identified an emerging agenda for corporate HR, which
focuses on senior management development and developing a cadre of inter-
national managers. This was conceptualized as a strategic concern with develop-
ing the core competences of the organization (Scullion and Starkey, 2000).
They identified three distinctive groups of companies: centralized HR compa-
nies, decentralized HR companies and transition HR companies.
Centralized HR companiesThis group comprised ten centralized HR companies (six global companies and
four international financial service companies) all of which had large corporate
HR departments which exercised centralized control over the careers and
mobility of senior management positions world-wide. Group-wide appraisal
and job evaluation and rewards system for senior managers which increasingly
aligned rewards with longer term global business strategy (Tilghman, 1994;
Pennings, 1993; Bradley et al., 1998) further reinforced centralized control in
the global firms. International assignments were increasingly linked to the
organizational and career development process; the management development
function role of the corporate HR function became increasingly important
not just for parent country nationals (PCNs), but also for developing high
International HRM 75