Multinational firms from emerging economies in Africa: implications for research and practice in human resource management

Abstract

Although Africa's return to growth in the 2000s, coterminous with significantly increasing foreign direct investment, has led to renewed interest in Human Resource Management (HRM) on the continent, much of the literature has tended to focus on cross-culturally imposed variations in HRM and employment practices and the impact of foreign investment from the developed world. Policy and strategy in managing human resources, most notably those from emerging market multinational enterprises (MNEs), has been neglected. Opening this special issue, this article highlights present trends and debates, and reviews more recent contributions to knowledge of this area. Our analysis critically evaluates the use of new categories of expatriate workers including semi-skilled and relatively unskilled home country expatriates deployed in emerging market MNEs in African countries, the uneven nature of regulation, structural changes in African economies, and the consequences of national institutional restraints for multinational HRM. We identify an agenda for further research.