| Sumario: | In this paper, we examine the cross-national transfer and hybridization of collaborative human resource management (HRM) practices at Mondragon Assembly (MA), a Spanish multinational worker cooperative. Drawing on longitudinal data and in-depth interviews with 16 senior managers at MA’s parent company and its subsidiaries in France, Germany, China, Mexico and Brazil, the study shows how MA transferred its hallmark practices of employee ownership, profit sharing and employee voice to foreign sites in a way that substantially deviated from the original versions. The study illustrates how practice transfer was shaped over time by host-country institutional arrangements, vested interests of co-op member-owners about the extent to which the HRM practices should be transferred, and the agency of subsidiary managers in the adaptation and internalization of the transferred practices. The study also analyses the impact of transferred HRM practices on talent retention and employee commitment at subsidiaries. The paper responds to recent calls in the IHRM literature for fine-grained evidence on how organizational actors at the parent company and subsidiaries engage over time in the adjustment and adaptation of HRM practices to ensure their internal and external fit with a variety of interests, political agendas, market pressures and institutional factors.
|
|---|
