Theorizing the Diffusion of International Human Resource Practices: Towards an Integrated Conceptual Approach

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

With the increasing globalization of the world economy and the rapid diffusion of international managementpractices, a vast literature has emerged on how and why some of these practices are adopted or rejected by firms.A central issue in this body of literature is whether firms’ adoption of management practices is triggered by aneed to improve corporate performance (rationalism) or necessitated by institutional factors and constraints(institutionalism). This review of rationalist and institutionalist conceptual approaches is particularly interestinggiven that in the (prescriptive) human resource management literature the rationalist presumption of strategicchoice and managerial autonomy is usually taken for granted, a view institutionalist approaches tend to criticizefor being overly rationalist and acontextual. In concluding, the paper agues that since organizations are facedwith both rationalist and institutionalist pressures in their choice of human resource practices, there is a need forrobust, integrated frameworks that incorporate this duality.