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The aim of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of the field of international human resource management (IHRM) research by tracing its evolutionary development over a 24-year period. The study seeks to understand how the field has progressed by considering historical research themes and their subsequent integration into more recent scholarly work, thereby identifying current and emerging research trends.

This paper employs bibliometric analysis to examine the evolutionary path of IHRM research from 1995 to 2019. A dataset of 1,507 articles from journals specializing in IHRM, international business and general management was created. Analysis at the keyword, thematic and network levels was conducted to identify trends, historical context and the interrelatedness of research themes.

The analysis reveals that IHRM research has gone through several phases of thematic focus, from initial emphasis on cultural differences and expatriate management to more recent topics like global talent management and digital transformation. Earlier research themes continue to be incorporated and re-contextualized in modern scholarship, highlighting the field’s dynamic nature.

This paper is one of the first to use a bibliometric approach to systematically examine the evolution of IHRM research. It not only provides a historical perspective but also outlines future research trends, incorporating the institutional logic perspective. The findings offer deep insights that are valuable for researchers, practitioners and policymakers interested in the development of IHRM research and its practical implications.

This study evaluated the practical relevance of the academic literature on international human-resources management (IHRM). To this end, 304 IHRM articles published in nine academic and eight practitioner journals during 1991–2000 were examined. Results suggested that academics and practitioners varied in their focus on HR topics, geographical regions, and cultural vs. institutional variables. In addition, academics were interested in individual level outcomes as opposed to practitioners, who were primarily concerned with organizational performance. Finally, citation patterns revealed little interaction between academics and practitioners, and academics appeared to be unconcerned with discussing the practical implications of their work.

This study extends the understanding of the context of IHRM headquarters as one of the top management groups (TMGs) through the application of both upper echelons theory and contextual theory.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior Israeli HR managers from international advanced-technology companies.

This study expands on theory by explaining how contexts act as constraints or opportunities for IHRM headquarter professionals as TMGs. The organizational context in which the IHRM headquarters take part is based on two themes: organizational structure and shared values. This is followed by the context of IHRM headquarters that includes two foundations for integration: strategic IHRM and trust. Finally, integration is derived from two themes: collaborative behaviors and electronic HRM.

This research has yielded a theoretical framework, which makes progress toward developing an integrative paradigm between IHRM headquarters' behavioral integration and organizational features. The paper presents a valuable “toolkit” for facilitating internal integration in IHRM headquarters.

After a thorough literature review on multinational learning, it is apparent organizations “learn” when they capitalize on expatriate management, a “learning strategy” (international work teams, employee involvement and other human resource policies), technology transfer and political environment and cross‐cultural adaptation. This suggests learning is possible when control mechanisms are relaxed or reduced, resulting in an ambiguous relationship between multinational learning and control. There has been no research on the relationship between learning and control largely due to this assumption of ambiguity and this paper attempts to overcome this gap by presenting a holistic approach to multinational learning and control. This paper posits that focusing on optimizing learning and control through flexible IHRM policies is a globally sustainable approach to MNE management. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework designed to address two major issues in international management: organizational learning and managerial control.

Multinational organizations are often faced with a perceived ambiguous choice of promoting learning throughout the organization in a way that facilitates local adaptation of corporate knowledge, while maintaining control over subsidiary corporate culture (control). This paper presents a new model designed to facilitate a balanced approach to learning and control in the multinational enterprise.

The proposed model is one of sustainable management focusing on dynamic IHRM learning and control. The pillars of the proposed model thus include: National Culture, HRM policies and practices and IHRM strategies of the parent MNE; National Culture, locally developed HRM policies and practices, and transferred IHRM policies and practices in the affiliate unit; sharing of learning oriented IHRM policies and/or among MNE affiliates only; and global IHRM control and learning IHRM policies and practices (uniform across MNE units).

While the literature in this realm addresses these issues separately, managers are faced with a delicate balancing act of promoting learning among multinational units while maintaining corporate control over key aspects of the company's core competencies.

Researchers and practitioners are interested in developing frameworks that can improve the understanding of the emerging field of global talent management (GTM) within and across the subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs). A few studies have proposed such frameworks but only implicitly include constructs at different levels of analysis. This paper is a step toward bridging the gap. Grounded in multi-level theory, international human resources management (IHRM) frameworks, and the ability-motivation-opportunity model, the purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-level framework that describes the processes through which antecedents at four levels of analysis affect a subsidiary’s GTM system, which in turn directly affects outcomes at three levels of analysis.

This paper develops a multi-level framework that describes the processes through which antecedents at four levels of analysis affect a subsidiary’s GTM system. Along with including four levels of analysis and highlighting cross-level interactions in our proposed multi-level framework, several testable propositions are offered.

The framework developed in this paper depicts the causal relationship between the subsidiary IHRM strategy (subsidiary level) and subsidiary GTM system (subsidiary level), and the several moderating variables that specify conditions under which the subsidiary IHRM Strategy affects a subsidiary GTM system. The moderator variables include national culture distance (country level), MNE headquarters (HQ) orientation (MNE HQ level), and the required dynamic cross-cultural competencies (expatriate level). In addition, the framework shows the outcomes of a subsidiary’s GTM system across three levels: knowledge transfer (MNE HQ level), localization (subsidiary level), and cross-cultural learning (expatriate level). In the context of multi-level analyses (the authors discuss this next), the framework shows several top-down processes (e.g. P2, P4 and P5) and several bottom-up processes (e.g. P3 and P7).

The proposed multi-level framework describes important antecedents and outcomes of a subsidiary’s GTM system, and proposes several propositions for future empirical and theoretical research that could be the focus of a systematic research program and agenda on GTM in subsidiaries. In addition, the proposed framework enables us to advance the GTM literature by improving the understanding of and offering insights about the GTM system of a subsidiary, and specifically contribute to research in IHRM and GTM in a number of ways.

Existing scholarly GTM frameworks used by practitioners do not take into account the multi-level complexities that exist when a subsidiary IHRM strategy may not align with the subsidiary GTM system. As such, both practitioners and researchers would benefit by adopting a multi-level framework that accounts for these complexities and how they interact with one another to influence the way subsidiaries manage their expatriate talent.

By using multi-level theory to examine subsidiary GTM systems, the authors advance both the GTM literature and the IHRM literature. Overall, this paper attempts to shift the focus of each subsidiary’s GTM system to a broader, multi-level perspective and contribute to new theory building in GTM research, specifically in subsidiary GTM-MNE research and provide some thoughtful suggestions for HR practitioners wanting to enhance the effectiveness of their MNEs.

International human resource management (IHRM) is becoming increasingly fundamental to organisational success, as globalisation forces demand organisations to design and implement a global strategy. One of the most critical choices faced by IHRM practitioners is whether and when an organisation should adapt its human resource policies and practices to the local context (localisation). A typology of International Human Resource Management Orientations (IHRMO) that clarifies what IHRMO’s are and what they entail is developed from a review of the literature on localisation and globalisation, convergence and divergence and Perlmutter’s management typology. Additionally, two theoretical models are developed that predict which IHRM orientation identified in the typology should be adopted. The article takes a step towards elucidating effective IHRM strategy and practice decision‐making by showing that culture and institutional pressures, amongst other tings, do make a difference.

This paper aims to propose an expatriate psychological adjustment model that postulates expatriate mental health as an antecedent to psychological adjustment. It presents novel predeparture and post-arrival international human resource management (IHRM) expatriate management mental health supportive interventions.

This paper critically reviews theoretical frameworks in the IHRM domain around expatriate psychological adjustments such as the U-Curve Adjustment Theory (Lysgaard, 1995), the Framework of International Adjustment (Black et al., 1991), the Dimensions of Expatriate Adjustment (Haslberger et al., 2013) and the Stress Outcome Model (Bader and Berg, 2014), in a quest to develop a new conceptual framework. This study presents a new conceptual framework along with propositions to take into consideration the relationship between mental health and expatriates' psychological adjustment.

The findings suggest that mental health is an antecedent paramount to psychological adjustment. The paper proposes mental health-supportive IHRM expatriate management interventions to address the potential failure of expatriates' psychological adjustment. The authors elaborate on the IHRM expatriate management policies and practices at the home and host country to ensure the mental health of company-assigned expatriates sent on international assignments.

The novel conceptual framework underpins mental health as the antecedent paramount to expatriate adjustment, taking into consid eration the elevated stress of situational events such as COVID-19, which had previously not received substantive formal consideration by research scholars in the IHRM domain. The conceptual framework encourages the inclusion of mental health as an antecedent in future research.

Despite over 20 years of academic hype, international human resource management (IHRM) literature has been only partly successful in its original claim to offer a universal panacea for complexities of managing people that can transcend national, cultural and economic divides. This paper provides evidence from earlier studies on limited nature of geographic coverage of the mainstream IHRM writing and surveys the editorial membership, policies and guidelines of a select number of journals with a view to contribute to our understanding of North American and Western European domination in this field. Exploring the major constraints in geographical and cultural reach of the IHRM journals and the geographic homogeneity in the membership profiles of their editorial boards, the paper offers strategies for change towards a more inclusive approach to research and writing in the field of IHRM.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the evolution of the intellectual structure of international human resource management (IHRM) studies and to propose a theory of an invisible network of knowledge (INK).

Researchers can also use this methodology to explore the knowledge network of their own fields so as to gain a vantage position with respect to their field and conduct seminal research.

The results help to profile the INK production in IHRM and provide important insights with implications for current and future research directions of IHRM studies for management scholars and practitioners.

This study examines the status of contemporary IHRM research over the last decade. This study examines the status of contemporary IHRM research over the last decade. With Social Sciences Citation Index citation data from the top IHRM journal, International Journal of Human Resource Management, this study used citation and co-citation analysis to identify the most important publications, scholars, and research themes in the IHRM area, and then mapped the intellectual structure of IHRM studies.

The information technology (IT) sector has gained prominence since 1990. However, studies on the human resource management (HRM) policies and practices of multinational corporations (MNCs) have been few and far between. In this paper we study the Indian IT sector using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. For the quantitative research design, we used structured measurement tools developed by the Global HRM Project. Data were collected from 36 IT MNCs of Indian and foreign origin (U.S. and European) located in Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. We tested four hypotheses that were verified using the Mann–Whitney test of mean rank. We assessed the flow of HRM practices and the differences in HR practices between Indian and foreign MNCs. For the qualitative design we used an unstructured approach to gather secondary data sources and used anecdotal data gathered over a decade through our interactions with the Indian IT industry. We used the narrative style to show past and current Indian business culture, level of technology, and implications for foreign direct investment in the Indian IT sector. We state two qualitative hypotheses for this part of the research study. We find the current business culture and level of technology of Indian IT MNCs moderately similar to those of foreign MNCs, and more so U.S. MNCs. We find no differences between Indian and foreign MNCs in HRM practices. We assume that the unexpected similarity in international human resource management (IHRM) practices is probably due to: (1) the nature of information technology, (2) closing levels of R&D between Indian and foreign MNCs, and (3) similar business cultures of Indian and foreign MNCs. IT-intensive global organizations are likely get a step closer to global IHRM standardization.