policies on employment practice within many MNCs is a key factor in the
convergence of national systems. Cases such as the move by General Motors
towards establishing teamworking as the norm throughout their international
operations appears to lend some weight to this argument. Yet the logic of this
chapter has been that while transfer will lead to change, it will not necessarily
lead to convergence because transferred practices often go through a process of
transmutation, in that they operate differently in the recipient unit from the way
they had operated in the donor unit. While it may be possible to operate some
practices in a more or less identical way in different countries, many others will
be adapted by management to ‘fit’ the new environment or will be interpreted
in a different way by actors in the recipient country. Indeed, in this respect, the
effects of the transfer of practices within MNCs is similar to the more general
impact of the internationalisation of economic activity; national systems of
employment relations evolve in response to these pressures, but do not neces-
sarily converge. In the next chapter, Richard Hyman expands this analysis by
looking at the transnational challenges to national industrial relations systems.
5 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 Does the transfer of practices result in MNCs from various countries becoming
more like one another?
2 You have been hired as a consultant to three firms: a British retail bank setting up in
Spain; a German textiles firm relocating its production to Vietnam; and an American
high-tech electronics firm opening a new site in Britain. You have been asked by all
three firms to advise them on the desirability and feasibility of transferring practices
to their new locations. How would your advice differ in each situation?
3 You have been appointed as an adviser to an international federation of
national unions in the oil industry. The member unions are concerned at the
growing tendency on the part of the major companies in the sector to transfer
practices across their operations. You have been asked to advise them on how
they might seek to block or amend those practices they see as challenging their
interests. What would you tell them?
6 FURTHER READING
- • Edwards, T. and Ferner, A. (2002) ‘The Renewed “American Challenge”: A Review of
Employment Practice in US Multinationals’,Industrial Relations Journal, 33, 2, 94–111.
Transfer of Employment Practices Across Borders in MNCs 407