HRM Practices in the Video Game Industry: Industry or Country Contingent? LOI ¨ C CADIN, ESCP-EAP, European School of Management, Paris FRANCIS GUE ´ RIN, Rouen National Institute of Applied Sciences ROBERT DEFILLIPPI, Suffolk University, Boston The following piece of work looks at the HRM pol- icies of companies operating in the video game sec- tor but forms part of a wider body of work studying employment relationships in this industry. By studying ‘‘employment relationships’’, we aim to clarify the interaction between HRM practice, the career path of individuals involved in this industry and the procedures and institutions of the employ- ment market in question. Our intention over time is to use this programme framework to explore how these interactions affect the performance of companies: does the organization of HRM practices, the career paths of those involved and the employ- ment market institutions encourage the creation and accumulation of skills? Do they enable this industry to confront the multitude of instabilities it faces? However, the present article will mainly start out by trying to ascertain whether leaders in the video games sector feature employment relation- ships that owe more to the national origins of the firms involved than to their sectorial embeddedness. Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Video games, HRM, Employment rela- tionships, Flexibility, Clusters, Hollywood model National Context and Global Industries: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives Our project is based on two choices: the level of anal- ysis (industry) and international comparison. First of all, the coherence between company strategy, organ- isational choices and HRM policies is dependent on the choice of the level of industry. Admittedly com- peting companies have different situations but do share, on the other hand, the destiny of a sector. The level of industry also makes it possible to take differences in performance later into account. As for international comparison, it allows us to con- trast the influence of different institutional environ- ments on employment relationships. The different employment market institutions are more often defined on a national level and therefore we may presume that this is a differentiating factor. We intend to put this hypothesis to the test. Taking into account the amplitude of our collection of data, this article will examine HRM policies in relation to the following questions: do French and American video game companies HRM policies differ? Which geo- graphic level best explains HRM policies: the global, national or local level? But before presenting the data we have collected, let us begin with the debate: is the national framework relevant or obsolete in a study of global industries? Classic Structural Elements of National Employment Models Rather than risk a rushed explanation of how the characteristics of French firms are due to the exis- tence of a French model or to a sector idiosyncrasy, we have deliberately chosen to compare their prac- tices with those in North American firms. This choice 288 European Management Journal Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 288–298, August 2006 doi:10.1016/j.emj.2006.05.002 European Management Journal Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 288–298, 2006 Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 0263-2373 $32.00