Global Work in the Multinational Enterprise

As today’s business activities have largely transcended national boundaries, global forms of work become an increasingly common phenomenon in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Such global work arrangements are defined as situations in which employees who are collaborating with each other are not only culturally diverse but often also geographically distant from one another and thus embedded in different national cultures and contexts (Hinds, Liu, & Lyon, 2011). The presence of cultural, linguistic, spatial, and temporal distances involved in global work—as well as distinct political, economic, and societal institutions—make the coordination of work and the management of people within MNEs particularly challenging (Aycan, 2005; Brock, Shenkar, Shoham, & Siscovick, 2008; Edwards & Kuruvilla, 2005; Kostova & Roth, 2002; Raghuram, Garud, Wiesenfeld, & Gupta, 2001; Welch & Welch, in press). These firms hence face pressures to continually realign their human resource (HR) systems with strategies aiming at operating in a global context. Moreover, identifying, attracting, developing, managing, and retaining talent capable of effectively handling global complexity is of critical importance for MNEs and their HR management (HRM) systems (Farndale, Scullion, & Sparrow, 2010).

Within the fields of international business (IB) and HRM, global work, strategic HRM, and global talent management have thus far remained largely separate research streams. Existing IB research has mainly focused on the strategic design and local adaptation of HRM systems (e.g., Rosenzweig & Nohria, 1994; Schuler & Rogovsky, 1998), the role of HRM as an antecedent to MNE-level outcomes (e.g., Caligiuri, 2014), and the management of international assignments (e.g., Reiche, Kraimer, & Harzing, 2011; Wang, Tong, Chen, & Kim, 2009). Existing HR research has largely focused on potential cultural differences in responses to HR policies and practices as well as the appropriateness of global versus local HR strategies. While previous research has significantly contributed to the academic debate and progress of the field, topics on global work and strategic HRM continue to be underrepresented. In particular, what is missing is a more explicit integration of research on the various aspects of global work, strategic HRM, and global talent management.

Further, although scholars have started to study various global work arrangements in MNEs (see Shaffer, Kraimer, Chen, & Bolino, 2012); the design of global HR systems (Pudelko & Harzing, 2007); and the generation, sharing, and implementation of HR capabilities in MNEs (Mäkelä, Björkman, Ehrnrooth, Smale, & Sumelius, 2013; Morris, & Snell, 2011), many additional questions remain unanswered. For example, the tension between standardization versus localization continues to be debated (Rosenzweig, 2006). Recent research has started to suggest that cultural variation exists in how phenomena of person-environment fit are interpreted and played out at work (Lee & Antonakis, 2014; Lee & Ramaswami, 2013). Such variation may have serious implications for the design and implementation of HR policies and practices in a global workplace. In fact, the challenges of talent management for MNEs go beyond managing global elites and also concern developing effective HR policies and systems to make the best use of human resources on a global basis (Reiche, 2007). Hence, a key question for scholars to investigate is how MNEs establish a consistent HR system that is aligned with their global strategy while taking into account the variations of societal and institutional imperatives so as to ensure fit at multilocal levels. In sum, this special issue invites submissions that address issues of global work within MNEs, in either conceptual or empirical ways, so as to advance IB theory and research regarding HRM and talent management.