Human Resource Management Processes and Practices

The Influence of Culture on Human Resource Management Processes and Practices. Dianna Stone and Eugene Stone-Romero, eds. New York: Psychology Press, 2008. 340 pp. $38.25, paper. Although national and international workforces have become increasingly culturally diverse, human resource systems and processes often lag in adapting to multiculturalism in ways that will reduce the cultural bias of existing human resource systems and enhance organizational effectiveness. Nearly 15 years ago Sharon Lobel and I developed a framework for our edited book, Managing Diversity, on the human resource implications of managing the growing diversity of the workforce (Kossek and Lobel, 1996). Although some changes have been made to account flexibly for growing labor market heterogeneity, most employment systems are still largely designed to maximize the homogeneity of selection, development, and promotion and reward systems that would reproduce the attitudes and behaviors of employees who have been successful in the past. Such approaches may not necessarily enable firms to adapt to increasingly diverse and complex changing external global environments. It is clear that new paradigms are needed that balance the need for both homogeneity and heterogeneity in human resource management principles. Thankfully, Dianna Stone and Eugene Stone-Romero have focused on the need to further advance knowledge of the linkages between cultural values and human resource management scholarship and practice. In The Influence of Culture on Human Resource Management Processes and Practices, Stone and Stone-Romero have brought together a group of well-known industrial-organizational psychology scholars to examine cultural influences across three human resource management activity phases—from pre-selection to selection to post hire. The book begins with a very strong opening chapter by Triandis and Wasti, which is a wonderful review of different perspectives on culture and how these perspectives shape the