to look outside looking for markets. ... I think that they are
influenced by German practices. The Belgians may also be influ-
enced by French practices, while the Dutch are also influenced
by British practices.Figure 7.1 merely serves to introduce some of the enormous differences
between European countries. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore
in detail the diversity inherent in the very different UK, Italian and Norwegian
ways of managing HRM or the more subtle but very real differences between
the German, Austrian and Dutch systems. The opportunity to go into depth on
the differences within countries has also been eschewed: differences exist
between the Walloon (French-speaking) and Flemish (Dutch-speaking) parts of
Belgium (Dewettinck et al., forthcoming). Differences also exist between the
Italian, French and German cantons in Switzerland. Differences exist between
the north and south of Ireland or the north and south of Italy. It would take
another book to encompass these national differences in HRM, but some simple
examples below will serve to illustrate our point.
Country specificitiesWe examine these national differences in HRM using, for reasons of space, just
the five major countries that have been involved in the Cranet network of
researchers:^2 France (F), Spain (E), Germany (D), Sweden (S) and the United
Kingdom (UK). Also, for space constraints, we confine ourselves to four topics:
the status of HR; flexible working practices; training and development and the
influence of trade unions.
One simple measure of the status of the HRM function concerns whether
its head is represented on the Board of the company (or the equivalent main
decision-making body of the organisation). It is true that there are numerous
CEOs who may not have come from the personnel function but exhibit a parti-
cular interest in HRM. However, these are still exceptions. In practice an
informed HR input to top-level debates is most likely only where the head of
the HR functions is a member of the key policy-making forum. According to
Purcell (1995: 78):
There is clear, unambiguous evidence ... that the presence of a
personnel director on the main board makes a considerable dif-
ference to the role played in corporate strategy.However, as Figure 7.2 shows, this varies by country. In Germany and the UK
there are noticeably fewer organisations with the head of HR represented on
the Board than there are in the Scandinavian country, Sweden, or the two Latin
countries. The reasons may be different. In Germany, HR issues are brought
into top-level discussions through the role of the employee director or the
HRM in Europe 183