MHRM 6751 Week 1 Offer Letter Discussion Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Where Does Our Sense of Normal Come From?

Reading Our Offer Letter as a Foreigner Would: Which Clauses Carry American Arrangements, and Which Would Still Mean the Same Thing at Ostrander's New Overseas Design Office

Ostrander Engineering, the Pittsburgh civil and structural consultancy in our course case, sends every new engineer the same two-page offer letter. I read it this week as if I were an engineer at the firm's new design office overseas, and found that almost every clause rests on an American arrangement nobody at headquarters thinks of as American.

Clause by Clause

The first paragraph states that employment is at will and may be ended by either party at any time. That sentence depends on a legal default found in almost no other country; in most of Europe, contracts set notice periods and dismissals require a stated reason. The salary clause gives an annual figure and says the position is exempt from overtime, a classification that exists because of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The benefits clause promises health insurance after thirty days, which matters in the United States because employers are the main source of coverage; in a country with public health insurance, it would read as an odd extra. The retirement clause offers a 401(k) match, an account defined by the American tax code. The time-off clause offers flexible time off with no accrual, which assumes no legal minimum. Even the closing request to bring documents proving eligibility to work refers to a US federal form.

What Would Still Mean the Same

Very little would carry over unchanged. The job title, the reporting line and the start date would mean the same thing in the host country. The salary figure would mean roughly the same, though it would probably be expressed monthly and might be expected in more than twelve payments. Everything else would either be meaningless, illegal or misleading. An engineer there reading "at will" would likely take it as a threat rather than a formality, and "flexible time off" without a stated number of days could read as no entitlement at all in a country where the law guarantees a minimum. The letter's friendly tone would not survive translation, because its meaning depends on assumptions the reader does not share.

Why This Matters for HR

Rosenzweig and Nohria (1994) found that the HR practices of foreign subsidiaries tend to resemble local practices more than the parent's, especially for practices tied to local law and custom such as time off and benefits. Pudelko and Harzing (2007) add that subsidiaries are also pulled toward practices seen as global best practice, often American ones, which may explain why headquarters assumes its letter is simply normal. Kostova and Roth (2002) showed that even when subsidiaries adopt a parent's practice on paper, employees may not internalize it if it conflicts with local institutions. A translated version of our letter could be signed and still not believed.

Question for the Class

Which document in your organization would you test this way? I suspect most of us would find our handbook's "standard" policies are standard only within one country's laws.

References

Kostova, T., & Roth, K. (2002). Adoption of an organizational practice by subsidiaries of multinational corporations: Institutional and relational effects. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069293

Pudelko, M., & Harzing, A.-W. (2007). Country-of-origin, localization, or dominance effect? An empirical investigation of HRM practices in foreign subsidiaries. Human Resource Management, 46(4), 535-559. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20181

Rosenzweig, P. M., & Nohria, N. (1994). Influences on human resource management practices in multinational corporations. Journal of International Business Studies, 25(2), 229-251. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8490199