Professor of School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University

For MNCs, in order to continue the operations in a foreign country for a long period under a specific idea or strategy, it is necessary to manage in a way that responds accurately to the local socioeconomic environment and adapt to it. Simultaneously, the management needs to maintain the competitive advantage by accumulating the technology, skills, knowledge and know-how as a whole group, while centering around the global HQ, but at the same time preserving the autonomy of subsidiaries or regional HQ and making them cooperate with one another.

The present challenge for HRM is to　succeed in securing and nurturing the most talented people of different nationalities from home country, host country or third countries in Global HQ and subsidiaries. Furthermore, the final objective of the MNCs can be achieved only after these activities and systems produce management results while keeping the high moral of staff. At what stage and what challenges are facing Japanese firms now?

As Japanese corporations firms progress toward the "Transnational type enterprise", with close collaboration of Industry-Government-Academia, the proposition of our institute is to comprehensively examine what challenges are there for MNCs and what HRM practices and conditions are needed, as well to find and propose the appropriate countermeasures.

I sincerely hope for your cooperation and support.