International Human Resource Management

Book Preface

According to the 2012 World Investment Report issued by the United Nations the foreign affiliates of MNEs employed an estimated 69 million workers, who generated $28 trillion in sales and $7 trillion in value-added, some 9% up from 2010. In 1990, when the first edition of this textbook was published, a total of 24 million workers were employed. This is merely one of many metrics that demonstrate the extent of the globalization of business. With this increase in scale, the role of human resource management in sustaining this increase in international business activity is a central theme of this Sixth Edition of our textbook. In writing this new edition we have responded to feedback from users of previous editions and reorganized the format for the Sixth Edition into 10 chapters instead of 12 chapters. In carefully revising and updating the chapter Endnotes for this new edition we have been very careful to avoid the common trap of multiple editions – simply piling on more and more endnotes and leaving the reader to wade through the growing lists. By carefully culling Endnotes and the Further Reading sections at the end of each chapter our intention is to provide a reader just being introduced to the fascinating topic of HRM in a multinational context with a reasonable set of critical references as a starting point for their studies. At the same time, our more advanced readers will be able to evaluate our assessment of the most recent significant citations along with what we consider ‘classic’ empirical or conceptual articles and books. The more significant changes to the Sixth Edition include the following:

• In response to feedback from teaching and professional colleagues, we have included a new chapter (Chapter 2) on The Cultural Context of IHRM. We decided to place this new chapter early in the book so that we now cover Culture in Chapter 2 and the Organizational Context in Chapter 3.
• Chapter 4 is now titled IHRM in Cross-Border Mergers & Acquisitions, International Alliances and SMEs to provide specific contextual information on these important developments in international management.
• Chapter 6 International Performance Management has been moved from later in the book to earlier to better reflect the importance of Performance Management in the IHRM process.
• Chapter 7 International Training, Development and Careers has been moved from later in the book to earlier to better fit with Chapter 6. The important issue of career planning has also been moved to this chapter to better fit with contemporary IHR practice to link career development more systematically with training and development.
• Chapter 9 International Industrial Relations and the Global Institutional Context has been extensively revised and updated and replaces two (Chapters 9 and 10) in the previous edition.

Several of the IHRM in Action cases embedded throughout the chapters have been replaced or significantly updated. These changes will help students grasp the principles and models in the chapter and better apply these ideas to a range of settings or contexts. The eight in-depth cases at the end of the text have been written by the co-authors or solicited from global experts to provide a range of in-depth applications for all of the major functional areas of IHRM. Extensive teaching notes are provided for adopters of the text. Long time users of the text will find a more systematic and extensive set of cases, but hopefully our loyal adopters will still find some of their favorite cases remain as well. Our feedback on these end-of-text cases was outstandingly positive in the fifth Edition and we feel this new edition builds on that strength.

As in previous editions, the challenge of this Sixth Edition has been to organize the complexities particular to HRM activities in MNEs in such a way that provides teachers (of both undergraduate and graduate students) real choice as to how they will present the material. We have tried to find a balance that is meaningful and appropriate to the varying cultures represented by potential adopters and readers, and across educational traditions, institutions and forms, while accurately capturing the compelling realities facing HRM professionals in MNEs. As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions for improvement in this task.

The author team remains an excellent example of collaborative work (across a significant number of time zones) in the 21st century with tri-continental representation from the Asia Pacific, Europe and North America.