ABSTRACT
This chapter theoretically challenges the ‘international’ in the discipline and practice of international human resource management (IHRM) by replacing ‘international’ with the term transnational. Through this new conceptualisation, the chapter argues to move the analysis of IHRM practices to include more organisations that manage health care provisions and nurse labour, either for private profit or publically funded. The management of human capital within the industry of nurse labour has become big business and competition for firms recruiting and placing health care professionals from one country to the next (Brush et al., 2004, but also involves other actors from various levels of management and organisation: local, regional, national, and transnational. These levels are both intertwined but also situated in terms of structures, economies, and societal and ideological histories. The taken-for-granted idea that the management of people across borders/levels can be generally prescribed marginalises voices and ignores the complexity of how various actors are situated within networks, structures, and discourses that socially construct how people are organised within their occupation and subsequent workplace. This chapter is divided into four sections: (1) an overview of critical approaches towards IHRM in management and organisation studies, (2) framing transnational feminism as a lens to analyse empirical data in situated human resource management practices, (3) conceptualising transnational human resource management (THRM), and (4) the use of producer-based care networks as an analytical focal point to situate the production of knowledge of the management of people within the transnational health care industry.
