As still more and bigger multinational corporations (MNCs) are spreading in still more different business systems, new challenges arises as companies will have to operate in very different business systems.
With the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) as a starting point, this presentation discusses what happens when a MNC from one market economy overtake enterprises in another market economy. When a MNC originated from a Liberal Market Economy (LME - e.g. UK) operates in LME’s institutional structure (e.g. South Africa) we have a situation with relatively limited potential for conflicts (see Table 1). The MNC operates in a situation where there is a limited tradition for listening to employees as a collective. However, employees’ expectations are often adjusted to that; hence clashes are few and limited. In a way, the same applies for the meeting of a MNC from a Coordinated Market Economy (CME - e.g. Norway) meeting CME institutional structure (e.g. Denmark). Actors inscribed in North European Industrial Relations system with a high union density expect a relatively high level of employee involvement and empowerment. In both cases, the degrees of convergence in terms of a common understanding of management/employee relations are quite high, and hence conflicts are limited