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The institutionalization of work rules into employment systems arises by their incorporation into job classification systems. The ‘atomistic’ view by which simple tasks are aggregated into job categories is rejected in favour of a ‘holistic’ view, whereby the logic of a classification system shapes the elementary tasks. Job classifications reduce job idiosyncrasy and establish a language by which workers and managers can compare jobs and performance. Job classifications play a key role in enterprise management and in collective agreements.

This chapter analyses the management of pay and performance in the case study companies, against the background of the embedded systems of the USA and the host countries. Both wage classifications and the issue of performance management are examined. Patterns of decision-making on both dimensions are found to be generally more centralized than is the case for other areas of HR policy. On the issue of wage classifications, patterns of broadbanding are examined, as well as the means by which US multinationals challenge sectorally-based pay determination in Germany. It then explores the issue of forms of individual and collective performance pay, looking at recent changes in the nature of merit pay, particularly the increasingly competitive nature of its allocation through mechanisms, such as forced distributions. It also reviews the extent to which performance management is used as a tool to ‘cull’ weaker performers, and suggests that the origins of such policies can be related to the societally-specific norm of ‘employment at will’.

The Belgian senior civil service is in transition, with external pressures clearly pushing the government firmly towards a reform agenda and improving public confidence in the administrative system, in terms of democracy and accountability and of economy and efficiency. In addition, budgetary pressures have combined with political will to ensure that the operation of the administration complies with the new managerialist paradigm. This chapter gives an overview of the position of senior civil servants in the Belgian federal ministries (the federal civil service). It consists of three main sections: the first describes the coexistence of two opposing civil service models, a formal bureaucratic one and an informal politicized one, and assesses the implications of the clash between these models for the position (job definition, classification, and security; the career ladder; salaries; political appointments; and ministerial cabinets) and role conceptions of top civil servants; the second addresses the issue of representativeness of the senior civil service in terms of education, language, and gender; the third deals with the two major challenges to the Belgian senior civil service (external pressure and internal constraints) and the resulting structural reform agenda.

This chapter examines the career promotion of civil servants in India. The civil service in India falls into four classes and the highest category of functionaries include the all-India services and the higher central services. India observes the rank-in-man method of job classification and civil servants always start their career at the bottom level and move upward with the passage of time. The prospects for promotion are determined by the rules, regulations, and operating practices governing of the employee’s service career.