Furthermore, reasons suggested to explain this late awakening to the importance of international business in US firms and its impact on human resources (Clause, 1998, 1999) include such issues as the lack of professionalization of IHR; the deep fragmentation into functional areas within HR practice, so that what limited international responsibilities there might be are not “seen” or evaluated as important by other HR practitioners; the lack of awareness and understanding among domestic HR practitioners of cross-cultural and international HR issues; the preoccupation with domestic legal and other practice issues; and the tremendous gap between the academic international HR body of knowledge and the international HR practitioner’s expertise and concerns (Briscoe & Schuler, 2004, p.28).