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Schwerpunkt
_Interview
personalquarterly 04 / 13
PERSONALquarterly:
From your point of view, what are the core con-
cepts of International Human Resource Management (IHRM)?
Chris Brewster:
The world is becoming more international and so
is our research. As it does so, we realize that not only human
resource management (HRM) is different in different countries
but that there are good reasons why that should be. That raises a
major challenge to the one-best-way school of HRM – you know,
the people who come along and tell us „this is the correct way
to recruit and select people”, „this is the best way to manage a
performance appraisal system” etc.. We begin to understand
that when HRM is conducted differently in different countries
that this may be because those countries are „backward”; but
it also may be a very sensible response to the fact that their
circumstances vary – and it does not make sense to do the same
thing in different contexts and expect to get the same results.
HRMwas identified as a separate topic and then explored in the
United States of America. Much of what we know about it comes
from there. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the way they
manage people over there is appropriate elsewhere. There are
many other successful countries, and many successful organi-
zations in other countries, that manage people very differently.
We need to be much clearer about what is being done in our
country and what works in our country. Comparative HRM fo-
cuses on these differences.
International HRM focuses on the effect on organizations ope-
rating across national borders. For good reasons these organi-
zations want to have the same policies across their operations:
it is cheaper and easier, it allows learning from one country to
another and it is fairer – why should people be treated different-
ly by the same organization just because they live on the one
side or the other of a political border? The problem is that it is
not always effective to do that. All internationally operating or-
ganizations have to balance their desire to standardize practice
(usually to the headquarter’s pattern) with the knowledge that
local situations mean that to do so may be unlawful, may lose
them credibility or may just be plain ineffective.
PERSONALquarterly:
Why is it important for international
organizations to reinforce IHRM steadily?
Brewster:
Well, this standardization versus localization tension
The world is too dynamic for long-term,
once-and-for-all solutions
Das Interview mit
Prof. Chris Brewster
führte Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Kabst (Universität Paderborn)
is one that such organizations deal with on a daily basis. I am
a great believer in incrementalism: we are often too ready I
think to try to find dramatic solutions. In HRM there are no
„answers”, only arrangements that will work for the present
and, hopefully, the near future. The world is too dynamic for
long-term, once-and-for-all solutions. In some countries there
has been a considerable turnover in Directors of HRM, nearly
always brought in from outside. The dilemma they have then
is either to make changes without really fully understanding
the situation, or appearing to do very little whilst they make
sure they learn their way into the job. Many take the first route.
These HRM-Directors thenmove on or get replaced within three
or four years and a new person comes in to do the same thing.
There are real pressures on these peripatetic leaders of HRM
to prove that they are worth the cost and trouble of bringing
them in and are able to do things that the people already in the
function would not have thought of. So they tend to reach for
the nearest “new idea” or the latest consultancy fads and start
something – even if it is irrelevant or worse for the organization.
Maybe they think that they will have moved on in three years’
time before the results become obvious ...
Gradually and continually improving things seems to me to
be a much more effective way to operate. Not necessarily so
exciting, but much more likely to work.
PERSONALquarterly:
What do you like most when thinking about
research on IHRM and why? What is the most interesting part of
research on IHRM?
Brewster:
I am a biased observer, of course, but I love working
in this area. It is not just the fact that HRM is important – it is
the largest single operating cost of nearly all organizations, and
people who work in the organization create the competitive dif-
ference; so if you want to run the business more cost-effectively,
you have to focus on HRM. It is also the fact that HRM – and
particularly international and comparative HRM – is intrinsi-
cally fascinating. There is nothing as interesting as people, and
nothing that challenges our assumptions like working across
national boundaries. It is not a world of secrets, people have
known about how best to relate to other people in order to get
things done for thousands of years. Despite the efforts of some