Miners, politics and institutional caryatids: Accounting for the transfer of HRM practices in the Brazilian multinational enterprise

Abstract This article contributes to the growing stream of research on power and micro-politics in the MNE. It is situated in the critical realist epistemology. It adopts Burawoy’s extended case study method together with a context-sensitive and an actor-centered mode of explanation. The case is intriguing: a MNE from Brazil expands into Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway and imposes a new pay and performance management system, contrasting with existing host norms. The article uses this to examine interrelated questions about the influence of an emerging-economy parent business system and how this interacts with the well-developed institutional regulation of the host countries. Hence we are forced into the interesting realm of multilevel analysis about MNEs, power relations and institutional change. We argue that the transfer of HRM practices within MNEs is best explained by a consideration of institutions, organizational structures, actors’ postures within and beyond the MNE, and their relational interplay. Specifically, it requires an analysis of the macro-political context (home and host institutional influences; subsidiaries’ size, mode of establishment, history, value chain location; and the host economies’ dependence on foreign investment) on which actors’ identities and interests are formed, and on which the ensuing micro-political relations are played out.