During an extended period of economic recession for most of the 1990s, broad and striking changes have been made to the Japanese employment system. How fundamental or reversible they are is harder to evaluate. If the economic recovery prevails, a considerable stabilization of Japanese human...

HRM and decision‐making patterns can affect the overall effectiveness of joint ventures. Discusses the results of case studies of Chinese‐Japanese and wholly Japanese ventures in China. Proposes that the Japanese managerial strategies may be more suited to building the ew management norms in...

Examines how Toyota′s worldwide HRM practice has been developed to sustain the Toyota Production System. Explains how, in setting up the European assembly plant in the UK, Toyota has been faced with both strong forces for international consistency in HRM practices and strong local cultural...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic integration of HRM practices with business/corporate strategy in the context of its applications and processes in two Japanese multinational companies in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – The research used...

The growing interest in total quality management programmes is well‐known, although there is some concern that such programmes have, in practice, paid only limited attention to human resource management issues. Uses the findings of a primary case study and two secondary case studies to examine...

Purpose – Some scholars state that multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developing markets manage their subsidiaries in a different way than MNEs from developed markets because the former have to overcome the liability of their country of origin. To analyze this question through the lens of...

Purpose Questions have often been asked of the ethicality of multinational enterprises (MNEs) with the conducts of many being classified as exploitative. This is particularly so the internal context, where MNEs are often reluctant to employ host country nationals at important positions and treat...

Despite the extremely diversified cultural context in which Brazilian enterprises operate, the issue of cultural diversity is new in their agenda. The emergence of this theme is much more related to the need of creating competitive advantages by developing diversified competences, usually...

Purpose – The case study aims to illustrate the application of Lean Six Sigma into the human resource (HR) function of a service industry corporation. Design/methodology/approach – The study draws on process information and primary data from a real project. Findings – The study describes...

Purpose – Identify the criteria/KPIs to support managers during human resource allocation based on knowledge demand, which serves as a decision support tool to help maintain organizational competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach – Human resource allocation in a project management model,...