The influence of environmental, organizational, and HRM factors on employee behaviors in subsidiaries: a Mexican case study of organizational learning

This article presents a case study of a Mexican subsidiary of a U.S. multinational corporation (MNC) that has successfully adopted characteristics of a learning organization. The case is of particular interest because much of the cross-cultural evidence would indicate that employee involvement, work teams, and other management practices associated with a learning strategy, might be incompatible with the Mexican culture. Therefore, the case is used to unravel diverse factors--within the environment and organization--that affect the implementation of different management strategies in foreign subsidiaries. In addition, the case points to the importance of the human resource management practices as a mechanism that facilitates the implementation of management strategies in subsidiaries. Interestingly, while some of the HR practices adopted were standard practices that would be implemented regardless of the country, others were culture-specific and yet other practices were translations of U.S. HR practices to be sensitive to the values of the country. A model is presented and the role of HR within a global context is discussed.