Phil Almond and Anthony Ferner (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199274635
- eISBN:
- 9780191706530
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199274635.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, HRM / IR
This book addresses some of the major contemporary issues in comparative business and employment relations. At its core are the findings of a four-year international exploration of the management of ...
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This book addresses some of the major contemporary issues in comparative business and employment relations. At its core are the findings of a four-year international exploration of the management of employment relations in American multinational companies in the UK, Germany, Ireland, and Spain. Data from detailed case studies are used to illuminate the tensions between the forces of globalization and the continuing distinctiveness of national business systems. It looks at what is distinctively American about US multinationals, asking how the US business system’s particular features influence their management of human resources across national borders. It shows that the transfer of ‘Americanness’ is not a technical, top-down, managerial process, but a highly political and ‘negotiated’ one in which groups and individuals at different levels within the company try to influence the terms of transfer. The book uses a wealth of empirical material to explore the ways in which US multinationals manage international employment relations in different host countries. Four areas of policy and practice are considered in detail: pay and performance; collective employee representation; the management of workforce ‘diversity’; and managerial careers. It shows how global HR policies are made; how they are diffused internationally; and how they are adopted, adapted, or resisted by overseas subsidiaries. It also explores some of the structures and processes that characterize US multinationals: the changing balance between centralization and subsidiary autonomy; the management of international learning; and the structure and role of the international human resource function.Less
This book addresses some of the major contemporary issues in comparative business and employment relations. At its core are the findings of a four-year international exploration of the management of employment relations in American multinational companies in the UK, Germany, Ireland, and Spain. Data from detailed case studies are used to illuminate the tensions between the forces of globalization and the continuing distinctiveness of national business systems. It looks at what is distinctively American about US multinationals, asking how the US business system’s particular features influence their management of human resources across national borders. It shows that the transfer of ‘Americanness’ is not a technical, top-down, managerial process, but a highly political and ‘negotiated’ one in which groups and individuals at different levels within the company try to influence the terms of transfer. The book uses a wealth of empirical material to explore the ways in which US multinationals manage international employment relations in different host countries. Four areas of policy and practice are considered in detail: pay and performance; collective employee representation; the management of workforce ‘diversity’; and managerial careers. It shows how global HR policies are made; how they are diffused internationally; and how they are adopted, adapted, or resisted by overseas subsidiaries. It also explores some of the structures and processes that characterize US multinationals: the changing balance between centralization and subsidiary autonomy; the management of international learning; and the structure and role of the international human resource function.
Leslie Hannah
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199226009
- eISBN:
- 9780191710315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226009.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History
The many errors and misjudgments in Alfred D. Chandler's Scale and Scope derive from its framing in an established Anglo-American Whig-Progressive misinterpretation of business and technological ...
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The many errors and misjudgments in Alfred D. Chandler's Scale and Scope derive from its framing in an established Anglo-American Whig-Progressive misinterpretation of business and technological history. Case studies of copper and tobacco show that his narratives of global oligopolistic competition in these industries require complete inversion: his alleged successes are more appropriately cast as failures and vice-versa. Such cases are not unique, but representative. His central propositions — that the British were rarely capable of building efficient managerial hierarchies, distinctively preferred family to professional management and headquartered proportionately fewer persistent global industrial oligopolists than both Germany and the United States — have all been comprehensively falsified. Further progress in internationally comparative business history requires a return to the higher standards of Chandler's earlier work and more disciplined quantification of comparisons conceived without the bias of hindsight.Less
The many errors and misjudgments in Alfred D. Chandler's Scale and Scope derive from its framing in an established Anglo-American Whig-Progressive misinterpretation of business and technological history. Case studies of copper and tobacco show that his narratives of global oligopolistic competition in these industries require complete inversion: his alleged successes are more appropriately cast as failures and vice-versa. Such cases are not unique, but representative. His central propositions — that the British were rarely capable of building efficient managerial hierarchies, distinctively preferred family to professional management and headquartered proportionately fewer persistent global industrial oligopolists than both Germany and the United States — have all been comprehensively falsified. Further progress in internationally comparative business history requires a return to the higher standards of Chandler's earlier work and more disciplined quantification of comparisons conceived without the bias of hindsight.
Carol M. Ashton and Nelda P. Wray
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199968565
- eISBN:
- 9780199346080
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199968565.003.0006
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
In the early 2000’s “comparative effectiveness research”—finding out what works best in medicine—took its place in the parade of legislative proposals aimed at controlling the nation’s unsustainable ...
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In the early 2000’s “comparative effectiveness research”—finding out what works best in medicine—took its place in the parade of legislative proposals aimed at controlling the nation’s unsustainable rise in health care costs. Though many policymakers believed that it was a new kind of research, all that was new was the label: comparative effectiveness research is simply a kind of clinical research. However, its intense appeal as a policy solution grew out of an idea that became a mantra during the 2000’s: that 30% of health care is wasted—wasted because it does not improve patients’ outcomes. If comparative effectiveness research could identify those ineffective or low-value health care items and services, the thinking went, then they could be eliminated without any harmful effects, objectionable alternatives like rationing could be avoided, and the value of the health care dollar would increase.Less
In the early 2000’s “comparative effectiveness research”—finding out what works best in medicine—took its place in the parade of legislative proposals aimed at controlling the nation’s unsustainable rise in health care costs. Though many policymakers believed that it was a new kind of research, all that was new was the label: comparative effectiveness research is simply a kind of clinical research. However, its intense appeal as a policy solution grew out of an idea that became a mantra during the 2000’s: that 30% of health care is wasted—wasted because it does not improve patients’ outcomes. If comparative effectiveness research could identify those ineffective or low-value health care items and services, the thinking went, then they could be eliminated without any harmful effects, objectionable alternatives like rationing could be avoided, and the value of the health care dollar would increase.
