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Common and unique themes representing the social, economic, political, and legislative environment affecting the practice of human resources management in Europe in the next five years were compared and contrasted to those affecting the U.S. Members of the professional associations of industrial and organizational psychologists in the U.S. and in Europe were asked to scan their environment. Although trends such as the incorporation of e-tools into human resource management and an increasingly diverse workforce were expected by both European and American respondents, the specific impact of these and other factors was markedly different in these two areas. A primary factor accounting for these differences between the U.S. and Europe was the drastic change provoked by the integration of the current and future members of the European Community.
According to the emerging strategic role ascribed to the Human Resource (HR) function (Becker, Huselid, & Ulrich, 2001; Ulrich, 1987), HR management practices should leverage organizational capabilities in line with strategic objectives and environmental opportunities. One approach to identifying potential threats and opportunities is environmental scanning, which involves analyzing social, economic, political, regulatory, and technological trends that can help anticipate sources of threats and opportunities (Wright & Snell, 1991).
We describe herein a qualitative study of the environmental trends that would probably affect HR management in Europe and in the U.S. in the next few years. Several authors have written about the future trends that shall impact HRM (Cascio, 1995; Kraut & Korman, 1999; Pearlman & Barney, 2000; Sanchez, 1994). However, the extent to which such trends converge across the Atlantic Ocean remains virtually unexplored (Rubach & Sebora, 1998).
There has been a reciprocal influence between Europe and the U.S. in the field of HR management. For instance, corporate practices such as sensitivity training in the U.S. were highly influenced by Europeans scientists like Kurt Lewin; many U.S. corporations have patterned their ilex-time programs after the German model. The U.S. returned such influences to Europe when the boom of the U.S. economy in the aftermath of WW II caught the attention of Western Europe, who looked at the U.S. for innovative business practices.
Despite their mutual influences in their distant past, HR management in Europe appears to have taken a separate path from HR management in the...