In today’s intensely competitive and global marketplace, having a highly committed or competent workforce is one of the most critical factors in maintaining a competitive advantage (Millmore et al., 2007). Therefore, in a growing number of organizations, strategic human resources management (SHRM) is now viewed as a source of competitive advantage. Strategic human resource management is designed to help companies meet the needs of their employees while promoting company goals. As an important aspect of strategic human resource management is employee development, organisations have to consider employees may want or need and what the company can reasonably supply (Baker, 2009a; Tarique and Schuler, 2010). This research paper tries to discuss how organisations achieve this mission. We will discuss about two very important aspects of SHRM, strategic international HRM (SIHRM) and employment relationship. Although these two fields will be analysed separately, we can see the link between them when we apply them to the case McDonalds’ (Goldsmith et al., 2009). In each section, we will discuss about the theories and models relating to each of those aspects and how these theories showed up in McDonalds’.
II. McDonalds’ and Strategic International HRM
II.1. Literature review of SIHRM and its frameworks
The main trend of recent studies on changes in the business environment is the growth of internalisation, for example Ferenbach and Pinney (2012); Hitt et al. (2012); and Zain and Kassim (2012). As businesses become more and more global, SIHRM plays an important role in the development and success of multi-national corporations (MNCs) (Festing et al., 2012; Smale et al., 2012; and Stahl et al., 2012). According to Briscoe (2012) international human resource management (IHRM) can be defined as set of managerial tools for managing organizational human resources at international level to achieve organizational objectives and