The extent to which organisational performance is related to the Human Resource policies and practices adopted has been a question debated by both academics and practitioners for the past two decades. This book takes the debate into the international field by drawing upon the well respected Cranet data set, which provides longitudinal and comparative data drawn from 40 countries across the world. International Human Resource Management highlights the dominant institutional factors embedded in the societal contexts of different cultures which impact on corporate HR policies and practices, and illustrates how these variables influence Human Resource Management and performance. It examines how the HR function can impact upon HR policies and influence organisational performance. It also discusses the role of the HR department; specifically, how the distribution of responsibilities between HR managers and line managers moderates the relationship between HR strategic integration and organizational performance. Finally, it investigates the impact of societal factors on the strategic integration of female HR directors. These contributions show the complexity of the relationship between HRM and organisational performance, and modify the current prevailing models of this relationship, where scant attention has been paid to institutional forces and the cultural, economic and social contexts in which organisations are located.

This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Resource Management.

Mila B. Lazarova is an Associate Professor of International Management at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her research interests include expatriate management, work/life balance issues related to assignments, global careers, and comparative human resource management. She has published numerous papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes and currently sits on four editorial boards. She is the Associate Director of the Centre for Global Workforce Strategy at SFU.

Michael J. Morley is Professor of Management at the Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Ireland, where he teaches international management. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Managerial Psychology, Regional Editor of the European Journal of International Management and is a member of the Editorial Board of several other international journals He is the current Chair of the Irish Academy of Management and is President Elect of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management.

Shaun Tyson is Emeritus Professor of Human Resource Management at Cranfield University, UK, where he taught and directed the Human Resource Research Centre for over 20 years. .He has been an academic for 30 years, following a career as an HR executive working in the private sector, as well as working in the Civil Service on labour market analysis and on Development. He has published 20 books in the field. His areas of interest are HR strategy, and rewards, as well as corporate governance and the application of social science to the study of HRM.