Offering a comprehensive cross-disciplinary perspective, the chapters discuss the economic, political and social factors that shaped HRM in each country, including the role of national labor movements and labor law regimes. The authors also provide an examination of HR practices and systems within firms, starting with rudimentary hiring and compensation a century ago, progressing to personnel and industrial relations programs in the last century, and culminating in modern human resource management practices today, including strategic high-performance systems. This book is the first to identify the commonalities and differences in HRM both across nations and over time.