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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2022/2023

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Business School : Common Courses (Management School)

Postgraduate Course: Multinational Enterprises & Comparative Employment Relations (CMSE11286)

Course Outline
SchoolBusiness School CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits15 ECTS Credits7.5
SummaryThis course aims to provide students with an integrated overview of the key challenges underpinning international HRM - that is, how the world of employment relations is becoming increasingly internationalised while differences in the employment systems of different countries continue to persist.
Course description This course unit has the objectives of enabling students to understand and explain:

1. The implications of the growing internationalisation of business and trade both for the human resource policies of companies and for the organisation of labour and employers;
2. The characteristic features of country systems of employment and industrial relations across a range of principally developed, and to an extent, less developed countries;
3. How country differences in employment systems shape and constrain human resource policies of multinational companies;
4. The various ways multinational companies manage labour to meet complex cross-national operations in the production and delivery of goods and services;
5. The challenges to labour posed by the increasing presence of multinational companies.

Syllabus:

- Globalization & MNCs: The impact on HRM and employment systems
- Methodological approaches to International & Comparative ER/HRM
- Multinationals & the transfer of HRM I - Isomorphism & home/host country effects
- The transfer of HRM II - Political processes, benchmarking & coercive comparisons
- Gender equality and diversity in MNCs
- Comparative systems of collective bargaining & pay negotiations
- Comparative analysis of production regimes & employment systems
- Comparative analysis of welfare state systems & employment patterns
- International & comparative employee voice mechanisms
- International comparison of training & education systems

Student Learning Experience:
The course is taught using more traditional content-based lectures, individual and small group flipped classroom activities, and more formal assessed groupwork (based on organisational case analysis) during tutorials.

Tutorial/seminar hours represent the minimum total live hours - online or in-person - a student can expect to receive on this course. These hours may be delivered in tutorial/seminar, lecture, workshop or other interactive whole class or small group format. These live hours may be supplemented by pre-recorded lecture material for students to engage with asynchronously.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Not being delivered
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Be able to discern and analyse critically the chief institutional and cultural premises underpinning managerial approaches to HR/employment relations;
  2. Identify the range of internal/micro-political and external/environmental factors impacting HRM in multinational firms;
  3. Demonstrate ability to understand and synthesise a wide range of complex issues in the field of international HRM and comparative employment relations;
  4. Demonstrate skills of comparative analysis of national employment/industrial relations systems;
  5. Display in written, and oral, work developing abilities to digest, synthesise and critically evaluate contrasting perspectives from the literature in reaching sustainable/practical conclusions.
Reading List
Lucio, M. M. (Ed.). (2013). International human resource management: An employment relations perspective. Sage.

Key journals:
International Journal of Human Resource Management
European Journal of Industrial Relations
Human Resource Management Journal
Journal of World Business

Resource List: https://eu01.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/public/44UOE_INST/lists/26181455710002466?auth=SAML
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Communication, ICT, and Numeracy Skills

After completing this course, students should be able to:
Critically evaluate and present digital and other sources, research methods, data and information; discern their limitations, accuracy, validity, reliability and suitability; and apply responsibly in a wide variety of organisational contexts.

Practice: Applied Knowledge, Skills and Understanding

After completing this course, students should be able to:
Apply creative, innovative, entrepreneurial, sustainable and responsible business solutions to address social, economic and environmental global challenges.

Cognitive Skills

After completing this course, students should be able to:
Be self-motivated; curious; show initiative; set, achieve and surpass goals; as well as demonstrating adaptability, capable of handling complexity and ambiguity, with a willingness to learn; as well as being able to demonstrate the use digital and other tools to carry out tasks effectively, productively, and with attention to quality.

Knowledge and Understanding

After completing this course, students should be able to:
Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of contemporary organisational disciplines; comprehend the role of business within the contemporary world; and critically evaluate and synthesise primary and secondary research and sources of evidence in order to make, and present, well informed and transparent organisation-related decisions, which have a positive global impact.

Identify, define and analyse theoretical and applied business and management problems, and develop approaches, informed by an understanding of appropriate quantitative and/or qualitative techniques, to explore and solve them responsibly.
KeywordsIHRM-MEC
Contacts
Course organiserDr Ji-Won Song
Tel:
Email: Ji-Won.Song@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Lauren Millson
Tel: (0131 6)51 3013
Email: Lauren.Millson@ed.ac.uk
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