| Do foreign-owned affiliates adopt the host country's labor practices or do they introduce home-based, or other, practices? If practices are different, can this be explained by the nationality of the parent company?; Answers to these questions were investigated within the context of foreign-owned establishments operating in the metal manufacturing sector in Australia. Activities of establishments of United States, British and European ownership were compared to a group of Australian firms operating in the same sector.; Data used in the analysis were derived from responses to two surveys conducted in Australia in 1984, supplemented by other data and over 25 personal interviews. Statistical analysis was T-tests and analysis of variance for continuous data, and Chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis and Median tests for discrete and other non-normally distributed responses. The independent variable was ownership nationality, expressed as either foreign and domestic, or Australian, United States, British or other European.; Of the sixty-five variables tested, only 9 were significant when comparing all foreign affiliates to domestic firms. Three related to the structure of the industrial relations function, with foreign affiliates providing more resources. They also paid a higher average compensation to their non-tradesmen, and more were users of quality circles. More domestic firms, on the other hand, provided industrial relations training for supervisors and had firm-specific policies relating to over award payments. They also tended to dismiss a larger proportion of their labor force.; More United States affiliates employed industrial relations specialists at two or more managerial levels, and were more satisfied with the effort expanded by their manual employees. Other European establishments tended to use their employer's association earlier to resolve labor disputes, and also tended to use more methods of communicating with their employees.; Based on the evidence, it would appear that foreign firms do conform to the Australian environment, with specific nationality explaining very little. |
