Les sources d'influence des pratiques d'emploi instaurées par les entreprises multinationales originaires des pays européens dans leurs filiales québécoises

Our research aims to answer the following question: What are the sources of influence of employment practices established by MNC which come from European countries in their subsidiaries from Quebec?  Because MNC are our research object, we started by describing their main characteristics.  It should be noted that MNC have different characteristics in comparison to enterprises which are not multinational.  Because Quebec is the place where our research took place, we also explained the societal and economic characteristics of the Quebec market.  We noticed that the Quebec market is different in comparison to other Canadian provinces because of its hybridity, which comes from a mixing of coordinated and liberal characteristics.  Because the MNC we studied come from Europe, we also explained the characteristics of European countries which have coordinated and liberal economies.  It should be noted that countries which have coordinated and liberal economies have different, or even contrasting, characteristics.  Secondly, we compiled the studies which tried to answer our research question.  According to the literature, four main theories explain the type of employment practices which MNC establish in their foreign subsidiaries: the sources of influence which come from host countries, the sources of influence which come from countries of origin, the hybrid sources of influence, and the global sources of influence.  The sources of influence which come from host countries determine the employment practices of foreign subsidiaries by enhancing isomorphism, calculative and collaborative principles, and the capacity of subsidiaries to modify the markets in which they work.  The sources of influence which come from countries of origin determine employment practices by enhancing cultural isomorphism, country of origin effect, and country of management effect.  The hybrid sources of influence combine factors which come from host countries, countries of origin, and global market to determine the employment practices in foreign subsidiaries.  Finally, the global sources of influence enhance integrative pressures of the global market to explain the convergence of employment practices in foreign subsidiaries to a universal anglo-saxon model.    To answer to our research question, we identified the coordination levels of countries of origin as our independent variable, and coordination levels of employment practices as our dependent variable.  We also identified seven hypothesis with their respective indicators to explain the relationships between our independent and dependent variables.  We prepared a research questionnaire, and interviewed human resource staff of ten European MNC which have at least one subsidiary in Quebec.         The subsidiaries included in our sample belong to MNC which come from diverse coordinated and liberal European countries.  We described in detail the characteristics of each MNC, and their Quebec subsidiaries.  We also identified some explaining factors (Hall and Gingerich coordination index, activity domain, size of subsidiaries, and level of MNC globalization) which could have played an important role in determining the nature of subsidiaries’ employment practices.         As part of our results, we found a link between the type of market of the countries of origin, and the level of coordination of employment practices only for salary practices.  This founding confirmed our first hypothesis.  The practices of employment stability, training and labour relationships are related to the field of the subsidiaries, the field of manufacturing of goods and the field of services.  Therefore, the subsidiaries which belong to the field of manufacturing manage these three employment practices in a more coordinated way as opposed to subsidiaries which belong to the field of services.  Finally, employment practices such as career development and information sharing and consultation are managed in a coordinated way in all subsidiaries, but none explanation factor takes into account this finding.  Because the Quebec market is a common host environment to all subsidiaries, it may explain the strong coordination degree for these two employment practices.  Besides the host market, the multinational nature of the MNC may also explain these findings.      Our research has strengths and weaknesses.  Regarding our strengths, our research method allowed us to collect data from a direct source, because we interviewed people who were directly concerned by employment practices.  This insured to our research a certain degree of validity.  Regarding our weaknesses, the fact our sample was too small prevented us to generalize the findings.  It would be necessary to do more research in order to improve the reliability of our findings.  Moreover, the countries of origin of the subsidiaries are ambiguous for some of them, because their owners have changed several times.  Other subsidiaries have at least two owners from different countries.

Keyphrases: Formation, Liberal economy, Coordinated economy, Source of influence, Hybridity, Salary, Employment stability, Training, Career development, Information sharing, Labour relationship, Case study