Abstract:
As part of sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana has not missed the opportunity to attract
considerable investment from Western multinational enterprises (MNEs) due to its
rich natural resources and potential for growth, yet presents specific challenges to
these enterprises particularly when seeking to transfer their human resource
management (HRM) practices to their operations in Ghana. A review of the
International Business (IB) literature reveals a serious gap in the interplay of
standardisation and localisation of HRM practices in Western subsidiaries in Ghana
despite their growing presence. Using institutional theory as the theoretical
foundation for this research, I examine how the normative institutional distance
between Ghana and Western countries influence the standardisation and localisation
of HRM practices of western subsidiaries. This research employs a qualitative
multiple case study approach using semi-structured interviews with employees and
managers in purposefully selected Western subsidiaries in Ghana and triangulate
interview data with document analysis. This study contributes to the IB scholarly
conversation on whether standardisation and localisation of HRM practices can be
implementedconcurrently. It explains methodologically how and why this occurs. The
study also offers practical implications as to which practices to transfer and which
not.
