Guest editorial

Citation

Renwick, D. (2009), "Guest editorial", Employee Relations, Vol. 31 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2009.01931caa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Employee Relations, Volume 31, Issue 3

About the Guest Editor

Douglas Renwick is Lecturer in HRM at the Management School, University of Sheffield, UK. His research interests include line managers and HRM, green (environmental) HRM, HRM in Brazil, human capital, and research practice.

Welcome to this special issue of Employee Relations on contemporary developments in HRM in Latin America. The purpose of the special issue of this journal is to detail contributions by academics working in the field of Human Resource Management (HRM) on two themes: the role of left-leaning national governments vis-à-vis HRM in countries in the region (see articles by Durán-Palma and López, Rodriguez and Gomez, and Renwick), and on contemporary developments in HRM there too (see articles by Olivas-Luján et al., Morales and Marquina Rao, and Rodríguez and Ríos). Hence readers are directed to the group of papers on each theme of interest, whether policy or empirical in focus. Some of the articles are based on empirical research, and others are analytical in focus. The definition of Latin America used herein is a broad one so as to be inclusive, meaning those states in the geographic region appear, as do those that have Latin roots but are located more northwards (e.g. Mexico). The role of HRM in Latin America has now emerged as a relatively new focus for research in International HRM. Space constraints limit an ability to detail the full extent of these works, but readers are guided to recent special issues of the International Journal of HRM (2005), and the International Journal of Manpower (2007) for details, and textbooks by authors such as Elvira and Davila (2005), for an overview of debates in them and topics of interest. Nonetheless, these works engage with some leading existing developments in International HRM, such as convergence and divergence, the role of national culture, and more recently, the role of organisational context too. I now detail the contents of the papers below.

The first article by Olivas-Luján et al., details developments in attitudes towards women and values in four countries, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. They find that women hold more egalitarian attitudes to other women in such workforces than men do (especially Colombians, but not Mexicans), meaning that values and attitudes towards women in this region exhibit strong differences which need to be considered in HRM. The second paper by Durán-Palma and López explores the role of contract mobilisation in Chile, finding current employment relations institutions to be inadequate in protecting vulnerable workers, and that workers mobilise to exercise power to overcome this circumstance. As such, this means that worker mobilisation itself and not the shift left in government seems to explain such events there.

The third work by Morales and Marquina details the role of age in team performance in Peru and Spain, and finds that while age does not have a predictive value on perceptions of team performance when the latter is assessed using variables such as teamwork, perceived diversity moderates relationships between age and performance. The fourth article by Rodriguez and Gomez examines the impact of organisational culture in Chile, finding that employee relations are employer-centred there, but that discretionary elements are not included in the Labour Code. By doing so, this means the willingness and ability of the left government to intervene and shape the employment relations framework there is limited.

The fifth paper by Rao examines the role of national culture on staffing practices in Mexico, and conceptualises that some practices including internal recruitment, personal references, succession planning, psychometric tests, and sophisticated bio-data tools, are associated with such cultural dimensions, while e-recruitment and panel interviews are not. The sixth work by Renwick explores the historical origins of employee well-being in Brazil, and concludes that the recent shift left in governments may have a potential role to establish and advance it there. The seventh article by Rodríguez and Ríos details the role of paternalism in Chile, and finds and reflects on the enduring power that such aspects of national culture has in HRM today.

Conclusion

The articles detailed in this special issue detail some contemporary developments in HRM in Latin America. Future research opportunities in this field are opening up and significant to engage in, as the full extent of what HRM is and how it is applied in Latin America occurs. As such, we look forward to seeing what future shape it takes, and what other new developments in it are reported.

Douglas Renwick

Acknowledgements

The author gives thanks to Professor John Gennard, (Editor) for the opportunity given, to the authors who contributed papers and referees for their comments on them, and to Suzanne McCormack for her secretarial and administrative assistance.