The interplay between cultural and institutional/structural contingencies in human resource management practices Zeynep Aycan Abstract In the face of globalization, organizations are concerned with how to design and implement HRM practices to fit the global as well as the local context. Based on a thorough literature review, the paper presents a systematic review of literature on cultural as well as institutional/structural contingencies influencing HRM practices in six key areas: human resource planning and career management; job analysis and design; recruitment and selection; performance appraisal; compensation and reward management; and training and development. The framework presented in this paper will, it is hoped, guide future cross-cultural research as well as the practices of multinational corporations. Keywords HRM practices; culture; institutional/structural contingencies. In the face of globalization, organizations strive to find the balance between global and local in designing and implementing HRM practices. This is a critical issue for both multinational and domestic organizations. While multinational corporations feel the pressure to ensure the standardization of HRM practices, on the one hand, and localization, on the other, organizations with a multicultural workforce try to accommodate cultural differences in designing HRM activities to enhance the organizational bottom-line (cf. Kochan et al., 2003). Organizations in the non-Western part of the world try to create culturally appropriate HRM systems that enable them to compete globally (cf. Budhwar and Debrah, 2001). Although the tension between global integration and local differentiation has dominated the international HRM literature for more than twenty years, the research remains atheoretical. The majority of the studies compare HRM practices in different countries (e.g. Luthans et al., 1997; Von Glinow et al., 2002) without providing a priori explanations for the cultural bases of observed differences. Cross-cultural management, which is considered to be a sub-discipline of international management (cf. Holden, 2002), focuses specifically on how and to what extent culture influences HRM practices vis-a `-vis other institutional and structural forces (e.g. size, industry, ownership status, workforce characteristics, unionization, labour laws). This paper aims at presenting a literature review to identify the cultural and institutional/structural factors influencing HRM. This approach will make significant contributions to both research and practice. Cross-cultural researchers must test the ‘external validity’ of their findings by The International Journal of Human Resource Management ISSN 0958-5192 print/ISSN 1466-4399 online q 2005 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09585190500143956 Zeynep Aycan, Department of Psychology, Koc University, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey (tel: þ 90 212 338 1353; fax: 90 212 338 3760; e-mail: zaycan@ku.edu.tr) Int. J. of Human Resource Management 16:7 July 2005 1083–1119