More than eighty scholars and graduate students from twenty-three countries gathered at the Global Conference on International Human Resource Management (IHRM), held May 9–10, 2013 at University Park, to explore issues from the comparative HRM field and how multinational companies adopt HR practices to address region-specific opportunities and challenges.

The conference featured over sixty papers that covered the HRM field across the globe, including developed and emerging economies. Presentations and workshops covered topics from cross-cultural HRM, to expatriate management and global careers, and from ethics and corporate social responsibility to the globalization of work.  Along with these sessions, the conference’s headline events were keynote presentations by Chris Brewster, professor of IHRM at the University of Reading (United Kingdom), and Paula Caligiuri, professor of human resource management at Rutgers University. Being a highly productive academic as well as a long-term practitioner, Professor Brewster gave a stimulating discussion on the best fit versus the best practice approaches to IHRM.  Professor Caligiuri’s presentation convincingly illustrated that employer-sponsored international volunteerism can facilitate the development of global leaders’ cross-cultural competences, which in turn leads to sustained stakeholder value.

The conference was supported by the School of Labor and Employment Relations at Penn State, as well as three major HRM academic journals: Evidence-Based HRM, Human Resource Management Journal, and the Journal of Global Mobility. The Organizing Committee included Elaine Farndale, Sumita Raghuram, and Helen Liu, all in the School of Labor and Employment Relations.