عنوان

Comprehending HR policies and practices in the multinational firm within the hotel industry :

Number

TLets810153

Title Proper

Comprehending HR policies and practices in the multinational firm within the hotel industry :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Serafini, Giovanni Oscar

Title Proper by Another Author

explaining variety and commonality in countries of domicile : evidence from developed economies and the transitional periphery

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Wood, Geoffrey; Szamosi, Leslie T.

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Sheffield

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2016

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2016

Text of Note

This thesis is a study of similarity and diversity within a major US based hotel MNE encompassing transitional and peripheral countries. The study centres on the application of Human Resource (HR) policies and practices through evidence gathered from seven hotel properties representing the totality of fully owned subsidiaries within its European division, including developed economies (United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland) and the transitional periphery (Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan). As such, it includes the relatively unresearched transitional periphery countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia, while exploring the hotel industry, which has been rather neglected by mainstream studies in International Human Resource Management (IHRM). A comparative analysis highlights both variety and commonality across overseas national capitalist archetypes covering liberal market, coordinated market, and transitional periphery economies (LME, CME, and TPE, respectively). Information was collected from HR executives through quantitative questionnaire and in-depth interviews looking at similarity and diversity according to Whitley's (1999) defining national features of employment and work relations: employer-employee interdependence and employee delegation. Multiple research methods were employed in a process of triangulation, encompassing qualitative data analysis with small sample inferential statistics, document analysis, and participant observation. The key findings suggest considerable, but bounded, variety in the application of HR policies and practices reflecting conflicting pressures within subsidiaries, ranging from head office policies and directives, to those posed by differing institutional contexts and related enforcement capabilities. The latter compelled the MNE to devolve a certain degree of autonomy to overseas HR executives, which was especially evident in relation to compliance with local labour law. In the case of TPEs, this also reflected embedded clanism and clientelism. Despite the HR Manual centring on anticipatory visions and hopes of relentless advancement, this research indicates a persistent disconnect between corporate aspirations and subsidiary HR executive perceptions. Indeed, the firm's sophisticated HR system, in reality, only encompassed a minority of highly skilled core employees, and neglected the vast segment of blue collar workers. From a methodological perspective, the thesis also highlights how surveys and in-depth interviews can yield very different results; whilst the former may lack detail and nuance, they afford respondents a veil of anonymity to express potentially controversial views, especially as close-ended answers involve agreement or disagreement with statements, rather than the active articulation of viewpoints. The thesis concludes with theoretical implications, in three broad areas. Firstly, it locates the tensions between company aspirations and reality within the contemporary sociological literature on anticipation (Walsh, 2004); the latter suggests that expectations can serve as a powerful unifying narrative in the absence of corroborating material realities, even if promises of universal betterment remain elusive. Secondly, it highlights the centripetal forces within MNEs whilst rejecting the assumptions of universal country of origin and domicile effects; as such, it highlights the value of recent advances in business systems theory that see the MNE as a partially, and diversely, rooted actor that spans institutional domains in an uneven and contested fashion. Thirdly, the study sheds new light on institutional arrangements in the transitional periphery and deepens the emerging conceptualisation of the Transitional Periphery capitalist archetype.

University of Sheffield

Wood, Geoffrey; Szamosi, Leslie T.

University of Sheffield

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y