Global configurations in multinational enterprises, duality, and the challenge of LGBT inclusivity in unsympathetic host countries within Africa

Abstract

MNEs’ HRM practices need to be mindful of the institutional differences between the local context of host countries and that of their home countries. Balancing the localization of HRM practices with the desire for global standardization and integration is a dilemma for MNEs. We examine this tension utilizing a unique perspective, namely by analyzing the HRM challenges that MNEs face with regard to LGBT employees in Africa. We find that MNEs experience difficulty in reconciling their global corporate values and HR policies with local institutions and legislative requirements. Several contributions result. First, by bringing issues of duality to the fore both at the organizational and individual level. Second, we contribute towards the global configuration literature in international HRM as regards global standardization and national differentiation, by focusing on developing countries, where the scale of the cultural or institutional distance between home and host countries are likely to be larger, which allows us to examine the difficulties of the transfer of HR practices to these sites. Third, we embed our analysis of localization within institutional theory, and finally, we integrate these contributions into an analysis of HRM challenges of LGBT employees in hostile contexts and make recommendations.