Factors affecting the transferability of HR policies and practices in Iranian IJVs.

This study draws on the disciplines of human resource management (HRM), cross-cultural management and international business to examine how and why human resource (HR) policies and practices are transferred to international joint ventures (IJVs) in which a multinational corporation (MNC) based abroad finds a local partner or partners to set up a new organisation in the host country.
The research sets out to identify the degree of influence environmental factors have on the transferability of HR policies and practices to IJVs in a developing country and their effect on HRM. Although the study is based on IJVs in Iran, its scope is wider in that it provides a generic model—ranking the importance of environmental factors on the transferability of HR policies and practices—that can be applied by companies for setting up IJVs in other developing countries.
Iran is used as the transitional country for research partly because the author is an Iranian HR consultant based in Iran, but also because Iran is an emerging economy with potential to increase international business and attract foreign direct investment. Iran is just setting out on the path of HRM, thus providing a significant background for observing transferability.
The research took the form of a qualitative study conducted through a series of semi-structured interviews carried out in two stages. The material gathered from the first stage helped shape the interviews for the second stage. The responses were content analysed to arrive at the results.
The findings from this study show that the role of the MNC and the microenvironment of the IJV are the two most important factors affecting HRM transferability. The macro-environment, comprising national factors and local-partner inputs, ranks third in importance.
As this study is the first to examine a broad host of factors in HRM transferability, it provides a contribution to knowledge about HRM transferability in IJVs in developing countries. The model ranking the degree of influence of the different factors on the transferability of HR policies and practices in IJVs will assist MNCs and local companies to better plan for IJV relationships and their strategy of HRM transferability in various countries and IJV relationships. The generic model now needs to be tested further in different countries to see if the same factors are seen in different environmental contexts.

A thesis submitted for the fulfilment of the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in International Human Resource Management.