本文是人力资源管理专业Essay范例，题目是“Features Of HRM In USA And Europe（欧美人力资源管理的特点）”，人力资源管理(HRM)的概念最早是在20世纪60、70年代在美国提出的。从那时起，美国的人力资源管理模式在理论和实践方面都在世界范围内广泛传播。然而，美国人力资源管理模式在其他国家的方法和实践方面的影响仍有待研究人员的研究(Brewster, C.， 2004)。总的来说，美国的人力资源管理模式更强调自由和灵活的工作实践;正规化程度高;强烈的管理“管理权”和契约意识;有较强的民营企业文化;低水平的国家参与和立法控制;以及对工会的对抗。
The concept of human resource management (HRM) had been first developed in the United States of America (USA) since 1960s and 1970s. Since then, the American model of HRM had been widely spread around the world both in the theoretical and practical aspects. However, the influences of American HRM model in other countries in term of its approaches and practices are still open for investigation by researchers (Brewster, C., 2004). In general, American HRM model is more emphasis on freedom and flexible working practices; high degree of formalisation; strong sense of managerial ‘right to manage’ and contractual; strong in private enterprise culture; low level of state involvement and legislative control; and antagonism to trade unions.
Apart from USA, other models of HRM were also being developed in other regions of the world especially in Asia and Europe. Researchers had then come out with the concept of comparative HRM to study the similarities and differences in HRM practices of different countries (Adler, 1983; Boxall, 1995; Brewster, 1995; Reading, 1994, cited by Brewster, 2004). In Europe, there are certain areas in the American concept of HRM had not been accepted by the communities. For example, HRM in Europe is practicing ‘Logic of honour’ instead of contractual, and at the same time resisting to formalisation. Besides that, private enterprises in Europe are constrained by national culture and legislation and the working communities are heavily unionized. In 2004, Communal, C. and Brewster, C. had identified and summarised the main differences of HRM between USA and Europe as shown in Table 1.
Dominant Features
HRM in the USA
HRM in Europe
Roots
Freedom and autonomy
Qualitative impact of cultural diversity
Organisational cultures
Private enterprise
Sense of organisational and managerial responsibility towards employees
Role of the state
Low interference from the state
Greater involvement of the states and European supranational agencies
Trade unions and representative
Traditional antagonism of management towards trade unions
Wider support towards trade union and other forms of employee representation
American HRM stresses on high degree of formalisation in the processes. It can be seen in the implementation of total quality management (TQM) by MPS in USA from the case study. MPS’s employees in USA works are basing on a systematic process and procedures that had been benchmarked according to a certain standards in the industry for quality control purpose. Moreover, TQM system in MPS will also facilitating the improvement of production efficiency and reducing operation cost in order to achieve competitive advantage. In Europe, the HRM practices are normally not as formal as compare to the American. There are also fewer organizational charts and lesser formal grading system. Therefore, MPS’s employees in Europe prefer to have a line management system in directing the workforce towards the work tasks instead of the organizational and reporting system that practiced by the US headquarter.
美国人力资源管理强调过程的高度正规化。从案例研究中可以看出美国MPS实施全面质量管理(TQM)的情况。MPS在美国的员工的工作是基于一个系统的过程和程序，该过程和程序是根据行业中特定的标准为质量控制目的而制定的。此外，MPS中的TQM体系也会促进生产效率的提高，降低运营成本，从而获得竞争优势。在欧洲，人力资源管理实践通常不像美国那样正式。组织图也较少，正式的评分制度也较少。因此，MPS在欧洲的员工更倾向于采用直线管理系统来指导员工完成工作任务，而不是采用美国总部实行的组织和报告系统。
Communication plays an important role in HRM to generate workforce commitment. To achieve this objective, MPS in USA had been conducting regular staff feedback sessions and annual staff opinion surveys to ensure employees’ needs are well taken care of. Through the staff surveys, MPS can also benchmarking the compensation and benefits against the competitors this will be useful in creating long-term staff retention effects. On the other hand, its Europe’s subsidiaries in UK, France and Sweden are facing problem with the same feedback mechanism. According to Brewster, et al. (1994), there are two common ways of communication between the employees and their employers in Europe: through line management, and through the trade union or work council. Therefore, the European workforce preferred to have a line manager as the channel of communication between them and their employers instead of direct feedback system. Due the above circumstances, work councils that normally not to the American’s favour had also been formed by MPS in accordance to the European law.
Pieper highlighted that the main difference between American HRM and the European is the influences and controls by the state regulations (Pieper, 1990, cited by Brewster, 2004). There is less protection for workers in USA as compare to Europe. Research data had shown that most of the workers in USA work more than 40 hours in a week. While in Europe, working hour in a week are restricted to only 35 hours and further control on the overtime works are limited to 130 hours a year (Brewster, 2004). In Europe, there are stringent controls by the legislative requirements on the employment policies. For example, minimum wages; hours of work, as well as public holidays had been regulated strictly in the form of employment contract by the authorities. Therefore, MPS’s subsidiaries in UK and France are having difficulties to get their workers to work extra hours or carry out weekend works even though MPS is willing to pay for the extra work hours.
Pieper强调，美国人力资源管理和欧洲人力资源管理的主要区别是国家法规的影响和控制(Pieper, 1990，引用Brewster, 2004)。与欧洲相比，美国对工人的保护更少。研究数据显示，美国大多数工人每周工作超过40个小时。而在欧洲，每周的工作时间被限制在35小时，并进一步控制加班工作被限制在130小时一年(Brewster, 2004)。在欧洲，立法要求对就业政策有严格的控制。例如，最低工资;工作时间和公共假期都由当局以雇佣合同的形式严格规定。因此，MPS在英国和法国的子公司很难让他们的员工加班或进行周末工作，即使MPS愿意支付额外的工作时间。
American is culturally more individualistic and autonomous as compared to the European. They are also very achievement-orientated in their works. For the performance management and rewards system (PMRS) in MPS, stringent criteria and target setting that linked to group and individual performance had been implemented traditionally. The HRM practices in USA will insist performance appraisal being conducted in a fair manner whereby the management will emphasis on the measurable aspects in the target setting and performance reviewing exercise. Therefore, employees in USA are always willing and motivated to walk the extra miles to achieve the targets. This will ensure the results be reflected in their performance appraisal for a better rewards and remuneration later. While for in Europe, they are normally less autonomous and lack of entrepreneurialism. Unlike the American, European communities are having wide support towards trade union and other forms of employee representation in their working places. However, the influence of trade union varies among countries. According to the Trade Union Density statistics in 2008, among all the four countries that MPS is operating, Sweden has the highest union density of 68.3%, while UK has 27.1% and France is only 7.7% as compare to USA which is 11.9% (OECD.StatExtracts, 2008).
As the European law requires the trade unions to be recognised for collective bargaining purpose, the unions’ representatives will play a vital role in the management’s decision especially those related to HR practices and policies. This conflict had clearly shown in the occasion where the unions and the employees in the UK and Sweden subsidiaries do not agree with the performance management system introduced by the American. They felt that the targets were too harsh and they had little control over them. In addition to that, work council is also a compulsory under the law of France and Sweden. The work council that consist of members from the union will normally have a certain degree of power in the managerial decision. It was not a common practice in USA whereby the American model of HRM actually emphasis on the theory of “management’s right to manage” (Brewster, 1995).
由于欧洲法律要求工会被认可为集体谈判的目的，工会的代表将在管理层的决定中发挥重要作用，特别是那些与人力资源实践和政策相关的决定。这种冲突在英国和瑞典子公司的工会和员工不同意美国引进的绩效管理制度的情况下得到了明显的体现。他们觉得目标太苛刻了，而且他们对目标几乎没有控制权。此外，根据法国和瑞典的法律，工作理事会也是强制性的。由工会成员组成的工作委员会通常在管理决策方面有一定的权力。这在美国并不常见，美国的人力资源管理模式实际上强调的是“管理者的管理权”理论(Brewster, 1995)。
Findings from researches had shown that there are clear differences and characteristics between the American HRM model and the HRM practices in Europe. Therefore, it is important for MPS to understand the national culture as well as the legal systems of the host countries in Europe before and during the expansion exercise. All these will information will facilitate the MPS’s management in their decisions making between adopting the local standards or maintain home country HRM practices in their international ventures.
ANSWER FOR QUESTION 1 (b):回答问题1
As HRM concept was founded and developed in the USA, most of the studies done on the HRM practices and the roles of HRM in organizational competitive advantage were also US based. In 1995, Brewster had acknowledged the needs of introducing the European models of HRM as the nature of business environment in Europe is different from the American (Brewster, 1995, cited by Stavrou, E. et al, 2004). Claus, L. in 2003 through his interviews conducted with the experts in Euro-HRM research, he had summarized that most of the HR experts are generally agreed that there is no European model of managing HR but there are various HRM practices within the Europe countries.
随着人力资源管理概念在美国的建立和发展，大部分关于人力资源管理实践和人力资源管理在组织竞争优势中的作用的研究也是基于美国。在1995年，布鲁斯特已经承认需要引入欧洲的人力资源管理模式，因为欧洲的商业环境的本质不同于美国(布鲁斯特，1995年，被Stavrou, E. et al .， 2004)。Claus, L.在2003年通过对欧洲人力资源管理研究专家的采访，总结出大多数人力资源专家普遍认为欧洲没有人力资源管理模式，但在欧洲国家有各种各样的人力资源管理实践。
A single currency (the Euro) and some other common regulations had been successfully implemented through the European Union (EU) within the European Union countries in 2002. These efforts had actually led to the growing of “Europeanization” concept not only from the economical perspective but also politically as well as their institutional and cultural influences. Therefore, the establishment of EU had extensively influenced the HRM practices among the European Union countries. However, HRM experts had been trying to determine the common HRM principles in Europe and to link it with the geographical, cultural, institutional and organizational aspects among the European countries as a force of convergence.
In European organizations, although there are some common HRM principles that had been practised, there are also differences in some of the aspects depending on the geographical conditions (Sparrow and Hiltrop, 1997, cited by Stavrou, E., et al, 2004). Ronen and Shenkar (1985, cited by Communal, C. and Brewster, C., 2004) had classified the European countries into four clusters according to their cultural and geographic aspects as shown in Table 2. Sparrow and Hiltrop, 1997 also stated that each European cluster would have its own unique HRM style as national cultures were the main determinant of HRM practices.
在欧洲的组织中，虽然有一些共同的人力资源管理原则已经被实践，但也有一些方面的差异，这取决于地理条件(Sparrow和Hiltrop, 1997，引用Stavrou, E.， et al .， 2004)。Ronen和Shenkar(1985年，Communal, C.和Brewster, C.， 2004年引用)根据其文化和地理方面，将欧洲国家分为四组，如表2所示。Sparrow和Hiltrop, 1997也指出，每个欧洲集群都有自己独特的人力资源管理风格，因为民族文化是人力资源管理实践的主要决定因素。
In Europe, the convergence and divergence of European HRM practices are still under development. For example, divergence will happen due to the different cultural, societal conditions as well as in legal systems. While the common management philosophies and similarity in organizational behaviour will lead to the convergence in the HRM practices in Europe (Mayrhofer and Brewster, 2005). Although there are some clear characteristics of HRM practices had been identified in Europe as compare to the American HRM Model. A lot more studies and coordination works are still needed for the identification and integration of common HRM practices in Europe. Nevertheless, many European organizations had already display some pan-European HRM characteristics although a clear model of European HRM still does not exist yet (Sparrow and Hiltrop, 1997, cited by Stavrou, E. et al, 2004). Therefore, it is still more appropriate to call it as an HRM in Europe rather than European Model of HRM. Furthermore, the European Union (EU) has not actually covered the whole of Europe (Communal, C. and Brewster, C., 2004).
ANSWER FOR QUESTION 3 (a):回答问题3
There are three popular models of national cultures in the international cultural studies: the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions; Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions; and value orientation-based cultural dimensions introduced by Lane, Distefano and Maznevski. In general, Hofstede addresses on the values as the core culture and Trompenaars stresses that meanings are the vital part of culture. While Lane, Distefano and Maznevski, argue that the importance of value orientations in understanding cultures (Romani, L., 2004). However, all the three models of national cultures did have link between values, meanings and value orientation with cultures.
国际文化研究中流行的民族文化模型有三种:Hofstede的文化维度模型;谈到的文化维度;以及Lane、Distefano和Maznevski提出的基于价值取向的文化维度。总的来说，Hofstede把价值观作为文化的核心，而Trompenaars强调意义是文化的重要组成部分。而Lane, Distefano和Maznevski则认为价值取向在理解文化中的重要性(Romani, L.， 2004)。然而，这三种民族文化模式都与文化存在着价值、意义和价值取向的联系。
Hofstede through his worldwide research in cross-cultural had identified the first four main cultural dimensions of work-related values at the national level. The four Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are: ‘power distance’; ‘individualism versus collectivism’; ‘masculinity versus femininity’ and ‘uncertainty avoidance’. The fifth dimension, ‘long-term versus short-term orientation’ was later been developed in his another research conducted with Michael Bond in 1987. Hofstede’s cultural-dimensions are mainly exploring on the cultural differences based on the thinking and social action of the people at the country level.
For Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions, there are seven dimensions that had been discussed by Trompenaars. The dimensions are: ‘Neutral versus Affective’; ‘individualism versus communitarianism’; ‘universalism versus particularism’; ‘achievement versus ascription’; ‘specificity versus diffuseness’; ‘sequential versus synchronic’; and ‘inner versus outer directedness’. Trompenaars’ theories had supplements Hofstede’s research in certain areas and further developed the concept of culture by assuming cultures are made of shared meanings which will influence the management practices.
Lane, Distefano and Maznevski adapted the value orientation theories that were first introduced by Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961) into their cross-cultural studies. In the cultural analysis by Lane, Distefano and Maznevski, the selection of items used to evaluate five out of the six orientations presents beliefs related with each variation. The six orientations with their variations of measurement are shown in Table 3 below.
Hofstede’s and Trompenaars’ cultural dimensions are having a common feature which both are bipolar-based. This feature will force the respondents to choose only between two alternatives which are mutually exclusive. However, Lane, Distefano and Maznevskis’ value orientations offering three options that provide a level of preferences for each orientation and can improve the bipolar-based cultural response for a better accuracy and anticipation.
The impact of culture in HRM can first be seen in individualism and collectivism (Uysal, G., 2009). Table 4 shows the position of 50 countries on the powers distance and individualism versus collectivism dimensions by using Hofstede’s cultural-dimensions. Brewster (2004) stated that the high individualistic culture in USA causes the American to be very performance orientated in their works. On the other hand, collective culture will lead to the trade union recognition that is generally happen in the Europe countries. However, by comparing all the four countries where MPS are operating, we noticed that USA, UK (Great Britain) and Sweden are within a same region whereby small power distance and individualism characteristics are significant. France had been identified to have a higher power distance and at the same time shows sign of individualistic culture. From the above observation, the management of MPS should have had a better understanding of how should they manage the HRM policies in their subsidiaries abroad.
ANSWER FOR QUESTION 3 (b):回答问题3 (b):
The studies in cultural theories rely on the assumption that implicit differences in national cultures are linked to diverging managerial beliefs and actions (Child, 2002, cited by Romani, L., 2004). Besides that, Hofstede through his research in 1980 has verified that national culture should plays a more important role in differentiating work value even within big MSCs which have strong organizational culture. Claus, L., 2003 stated that the national culture which has rooted in the value dimensions will affect the individual and social behaviour and at the same time influence the organization culture of companies.
文化理论的研究依赖于一个假设，即民族文化的内隐差异与管理信念和行为的分歧有关(Child, 2002年，由Romani, L.， 2004年引用)。除此之外，Hofstede在1980年的研究证实，即使是在拥有强大组织文化的大型msc内部，民族文化也应该在区分工作价值方面发挥更重要的作用。克劳斯(Claus, L.， 2003)指出，植根于价值维度的民族文化会影响个人和社会行为，同时也会影响企业的组织文化。
The three different models of cultural dimensions above had provided us the methods of evaluation and identification of the practices, beliefs and values shared by the communities of a country which aid to the understanding and management of people from various cultural backgrounds.
For MPS as a MNC, the transfer of the HRM practices and its strong organizational culture should strictly rely on the degree of acceptance and cultural compatibility by the host countries in Europe. Some of the organizational cultures which are traditionally embedded in the company may not be suitable to be implemented in its subsidiary in another country which is culturally different at the national level. For example, MPS in America is culturally strong in formalization of process and performance orientated. These organizational cultures is had not been accepted by the employees from the Europe subsidiaries as these Europe countries are culturally more collectivism as well as low in individualism as compare to the American.
Although most people will believe that excellent companies should have strong organizational culture, it is a requirement for MSCs to link their organization cultures with different national cultures of its subsidiaries and anticipate their resistance in implementing HRM practices and determining of HR policies. Therefore, MNCs should be cautious in the transfer of their organization cultures as well as HRM practices in other host countries and should treat national culture as the most important factors in determining the HRM practices and policies.
虽然大多数人会认为优秀的公司应该有强大的组织文化，但对于msc来说，将他们的组织文化与其子公司的不同民族文化联系起来，并预期他们在实施人力资源管理实践和确定人力资源政策时的阻力是一个要求。因此，跨国公司在转移其组织文化和人力资源管理实践到其他东道国时应该谨慎，应该把民族文化作为决定人力资源管理实践和政策的最重要的因素。
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