following the Continental convention of using the right lane is neither
sensible nor efficient. Dressing in black clothes to attend a funeral in
China, where people dress in white at this type of event, is not
going to be welcomed. Similarly, if the objective is to manage people
in different cultural contexts, the most effective one will be to adapt
to dominant, local ways of managing, since these adapt well to local
workforce preferences.
The local adaptation premise is implicit in many studies in the inter-
national management literature (e.g., Adler, 1986; Adler & Jelinek,
1986; Black & Porter, 1991; Cox & Cooper, 1985; Dowling, Schuler, &
Welch, 1994; Gómez Mejía & Welbourne, 1991; Luthans, Marsnik, &
Luthans, 1997; Mamman, Sulaiman, & Fadel, 1996; Newman & Nollen,
1996; Schneider, 1988), as well as in HR textbooks such as Gómez
Mejía, Balkin, and Cardy (1995), who build on Hofstede's cultural di-
mensions to conjecture what practices may be more suitable to differ-
ent countries depending on their cultural profiles. For example, in a
high power distance country like Venezuela, the local adaptation pre-
mise would recommend introducing a reward system that includes a
large pay differential between higher and lower level jobs, visible re-
wards that project status, and plenty of discretion to supervisors and
business units in pay allocations. If the target is a Scandinavian country
with low power distance, the practices should probably be the opposite.
The aforementioned premises serve as the basis for the first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1. Firms that implement idiosyncratic HR practices will be
more effective in attracting, retaining and motivating a local workforce
than those which do not implement such idiosyncratic HR practices.
2.2. Theoretical underpinnings of the universalist position
The universalist approach does not necessarily deny the diversity
thesis. In fact, this position affirms the existence of some general prin-
ciples that have universal validity, regardless of cultural differences.
For instance, according to the universalist position, and despite that
the level of gender egalitarianism differs across nations (e.g.,
Inglehart & Baker, 2000), following the principle of equal employ-
ment opportunity for women is a sound recipe for organizations
wishing to improve its HR performance. This recipe should hold
even in a culture that has a low level of gender egalitarianism. Univer-
salism rests on three major assumptions.
2.2.1. A core HR system that is universally effective exists
All organizations, regardless of their cultural context, face the
same basic problem: the need to attract, motivate, and retain talent
to attain the organizations' objectives. Many studies both in the Unit-
ed States (e.g., Arthur, 1994; Delaney & Huselid, 1996; Huselid, 1995;
Huselid et al., 1997; Lawler et al., 1995) and elsewhere (Bae & Lawler,
2000; Guthrie, 2001; Hartog & Verburg, 2004; Katou & Budhwar,
2007) support the existence of a core set of HR principles that im-
proves organizational performance.
2.2.2. Global convergence in HR systems
Authors often conceptualize the core HR system discussed in the
previous section as a High Performance Work System or HPWS (e.g.
Baron & Kreps, 1999; Pfeffer, 1998). Although the literature is not
clear on a single set of principles that best represents HPWS, such prin-
ciples usually include “careful and extensive systems of recruitment, se-
lection and training; formal systems for sharing information with the
individuals who work in the organization; clear job design; local level
participation procedures; monitoring of attitudes; performance ap-
praisals; properly functioning grievance procedures; and promotion
and compensation schemes that promote the recognition and financial
rewarding of high-performing members of the workforce”(United
States Department of Labor, 1993;quotedbyBrewster, 2007,p.777).
HPWS intends to promote the commitment of employees to their
organizations as well as the firms' ability to acquire, develop and
retain the best workforce (Bae & Lawler, 2000). Another often-
mentioned benefit of HPWS is flexibility. That is, the increased com-
plexity of contemporary business environments forces companies to
rely much more than before on the involvement and discretion of
their employees, which improves their ability to react to environmen-
tal changes rapidly and effectively. Overall, the idea underlying HPWS
is that employees, as human capital, can be a source of competitive ad-
vantage, and that HR practices should therefore facilitate the emergence
of their unique talent (Guthrie, 2001). In fact, the resource-based view
of the firm is the perspective that many of these authors (Becker &
Huselid, 1998; Huselid, 1995; Katou & Budhwar, 2007) refer to when
they establish a theoretical framework for their arguments.
Note that for this position, what gives firms a competitive advan-
tage is the implementation of all the principles underlying HPWS in
combination, rather than separately. While competitors can easily
replicate a single HR practice, the distinctiveness and inimitability
that comes from implementing an entire set of practices are the
ones providing the firm with a competitive advantage (Wright,
Dunford, & Snell, 2001). Therefore, the implementation of HPWS
practices can have synergic effects, as the joint effect of these prac-
tices is greater than the sum of the individual practices acting alone.
2.2.3. Focus on selection to manage cross-cultural differences
The existence of cultural differences among countries, as the di-
versity thesis points out, can create problems in the implementation
of the core HPWS principles, since some of these principles may
clash with the idiosyncratic cultural traits of a particular country.
The solution that universalism offers to this potential conflict is to ex-
ercise a tight control of the entrance gates to the organization by
recruiting those people in any given country who most closely fit
the HPWS principles (Arthur, 1994; Delaney & Huselid, 1996;
Huselid, 1995). This type of employee selection seems feasible, be-
cause even the authors that emphasize the existence of cross-
cultural differences (e.g., Hofstede, 1984; Trompenaars, 1993) ac-
knowledge that a nomothetic characterization of a country cannot
apply equally to every member of its population. Furthermore, despite
the proclaimed moral superiority of the culturalist view, which is pre-
sumably derived from its emphasis on tolerance for “alternate ways to
do things”and the resulting need to keep an open mind, employees in
multinational companies may prefer HPW systems. Employees may
value the fact that, once they have been selected, HPW systems bear
the implied promise of equal opportunity and merit-based rewards,
thus removing some of the subjectivity that can encourage employees
manipulate their bosses for what they want. Taken together, the argu-
ments expressed above suggest that firms that implement the core set
of HR principles will obtain the best results. Hence,
Hypothesis 2. Firms that implement a high-performance HR system will
be more effective in attracting, retaining and motivating a local workforce
than those which do not implement such high-performance HR system.
2.3. Theoretical underpinnings of the culturally-animated universalist
approach
As explained, universalism and culturalism share the diversity
thesis, but they also have important differences. While universalism
underscores universal principles, convergence towards those princi-
ples, and the need to carefully monitor the organizations' entrance
gate (i.e., rigorous selection), culturalism highlights the relative char-
acter and divergence of management practices, as well as the need to
adapt those to local contexts.
The third position, labeled as the culturally-animated approach, is
best described as a combination of the previous two positions. A weak
form of universalism informs the culturally-animated position. That
is, even though some generic HR principles (e.g., high performance
recognition and reward) enjoy universal effectiveness, the different
1775J. Bonache et al. / Journal of Business Research 65 (2012) 1773–1781