ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an overview of the relevant factors influencing global reward management and their impact on the complex balance between the global standardization and localization of reward practices across headquarters and subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. It summarizes major insights and theoretical explanations about the influence of the firm-external and firm-internal contexts on global rewards, before moving on to analyse and discuss the interplay between both elements by considering a broader set of reward practices and target groups at various hierarchical levels. We add further influencing factors and explanatory approaches that go beyond the discussion about the external and internal contexts that have dominated the discussion to date. Implications from this discussion for future research, pointing to multi-level approaches, including more psychological processes, power and decision-making perspectives, conclude this contribution.