one or many language groups, and be more or less economically developed. More
immediately we know that they may have different labour markets and education
systems, different employment laws and trade unions, and the different cultural
expectations that we have already noted. It should be no surprise, therefore,
to find that employment systems differ noticeably between countries and that
managing human resources has to vary from country to country.
As should already be clear, ‘HRM’ is a term with widely disputed definitions:
many books and articles have attempted to pinpoint its meaning. One less often
explored source of variation arises from national differences. The concept of
HRM itself originates in and builds on a particular view of the world, a view
initially from the USA. As Legge (1995; pxiv) put it in her typically trenchant
way: