Convergence & Divergence of International HR Policies

One situation which global corporations often face is the extent to which their policies should ‘converge’  i.e. be more or less the same in every location, or ‘diverge’ i.e. be different according to local requirements.

Usually it is easier for organizations to have convergent policies or a universalistic approach as it helps maintain uniformity & does away with the cost & effort of designing place specific policies. However, this is hardly ever possible incase of remuneration which differs universally.Divergences to respect cultural differences are more appropriate if the full potential of an overseas company has to be realized as adopting a convergent approach to Human Resource policies may mean taking insufficient account of local cultural diversity.

Example: In Europe, different Human Resource functions are carried out differently in different countries with different weightage. This may prove significantly problematic to a US corporation which uses a universalistic approach in the US and tries to use the same approach in Europe