Conrad, H. orcid.org/0000-0002-5667-6160 and Meyer-Ohle, H. (2017) Overcoming the ethnocentric firm? - foreign fresh university graduate employment in Japan as a new international human resource development method. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 30 (17). pp. 2525-2543. ISSN 0958-5192
Abstract
This article analyses a new and, by international comparison, distinct recruitment trend – the systematic hiring of foreign fresh university graduates (FFGs) into Japanese multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) operations in Japan. Our explorative research, which is based on interviews with HR managers and FFGs, offers three major findings related to international HR development methods. Firstly, the inpatriate literature has identified the roles of foreign (subsidiary) staff as knowledge conduits and boundary-spanners between headquarters and subsidiaries. While such objectives do not drive Japan’s FFG hiring trend, we find similar challenges in terms of the absorptive capacities of headquarters. Secondly, following a Varieties-of-Capitalism perspective, we argue that FFG hiring is an institutional answer to the particularities of Japan’s employment system. Aiming at internationalizing headquarters from within, it contributes to resolving the internationalization conundrum of Japanese MNEs, but rather than overcoming the existing ethnocentric HR model it accommodates this orientation. Thirdly, we advance the general HR literature by proposing a new framework that addresses the viability of international personnel development methods in dependence of the workforce diversity and distinctiveness of employment practices in headquarters. We locate FFG hiring, inpatriation and self-initiated assignments within this framework.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
Keywords: | Inpatriation; expatriation; self-initiated assignments; foreign fresh university graduates; third-country nationalsVarieties of Capitalism; Japan; human resource development methods; talent management; skilled migrants; headquarters employment system |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of East Asian Studies (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number JAPAN FOUNDATION ENDOWMENT COMMITTEE 584 1016 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 16 May 2017 13:51 |
Last Modified: | 04 Aug 2023 09:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09585192.2017.1330275 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:116218 |