Transmission of workplace-level institutions in human resource management: A case study of US and Japan Auto's transmission to Mexico

The study examines the reasons for variation in human resource management practices through a comparative case study of engine manufacturing plants of U.S. and Japan Auto near headquarters and in Mexico. This design "maximized" variation of institutional environments--the US and Japan and Mexico--while "holding constant" other variables so that the effect of the institutional environment on human resource management could be more closely examined. The variables held "constant" are industry, markets, products, production lines and jobs and business subfunction of human resource management. Data was collected through interviews and surveys.;A main finding was that human resource management practices at all sites were best explained as an outcome of institutions expressed at the workplace level. At U.S. and Japan Auto near headquarters, these institutions were labeled as "talent" and "experience". These institutions were active in two senses, through ideologies encouraged by public education, referred to as "Ii"; and through reinforcements from the system of labor relations labeled as "Ic".;In the Mexican subsidiaries, HR practices changed depending on how they were linked with Ii and Ic. Both the U.S. and Japanese company remained the same in the same areas of HR linked to Ii and changed in the same areas of HR in those practices linked to Ic. This outcome makes sense since one would expect larger changes in practices associated with the political/"coercive" aspect of institutional influences from country to country, but at the same time expect some of the ideological influences to be transmitted.;The dissertation also found other patterns in transfer. For those practices that changed, associated with Ic, the direction of change (whether more or less flexible) depended on assessments of "relative institutional flexibility" between US and Mexico and Japan and Mexico. These patterns in transfer suggest a theory of institutional transmission based on flexibility that may hold true in other transmission contexts as an alternative for theories that "compatibility" and "distance" affect transfer.