America’s librarian, Nancy Pearl (www.nan-cypearl.com), once wrote: “What an arm-chair traveler most wants, it seems to me, isto vicariously accompany someone whowill do everything they wouldn’t have thenerve to do.” The books reviewed in thisissue of Human Resource Management givereaders the opportunity to vicariously expe-rience the challenges and opportunities ofhuman resource systems of 52 countriesscattered across Africa, Europe, the MiddleEast, and Latin America.

The impetus for this choice of books wasnothing more than serendipity. I had stum-bled across one of the books reviewed in thisissue and wondered if other books existed forother regions of the world. Routledge haspublished a series of books covering the entireglobe. Books in this series not covered in thisreview include Managing Human Resources inAsia-Pacific, Managing Human Resources in Cen-tral and Eastern Europe, and Managing HumanResources in North America.

As I edited these reviews, I was struck bythe very strong connection between na-tional culture, politics, and economics andthe systems used to manage human assets.Consider three examples: Saudi Arabia,Israel, and South Africa. The Kingdom ofSaudi Arabia is a monarchy with the Qur’anas the constitution. Forty-five percent of thecountry’s GDP comes from oil export sales.As one might expect, public- and private-sector management systems must be de-signed around these cultural and economiccontours. For instance, public-sector em-ployment is greatly supported by oil rev-

enues and provides significantly higher payand status. Private firms wanting to employSaudi citizens must offer employment pack-ages that compete with the monetary andnonmonetary perks of public employment.

As a contrast, Israel is a democracy witha diversified economy. The challenges facedby Israeli firms include managing sometimescontentious industrial relations, globaliza-tion, and the impact of high technology inthe work process. Firms’ primary challengesare to move beyond personnel managementand link human assets with firm strategies.

Finally, consider South Africa. Since1994, the Republic of South Africa has beena representative democracy and is rich withnatural and human resources. However, thehigh crime rate, political corruption, and thespread of HIV hold the country back fromfull development. Complicating matters forfirms, South Africa loses thousands oflocally-trained professionals to other Africannations, Asia, and Western countries. Intra-country competition for workers requiresfirms to improve relative to their peers, butthe net number of skilled workers remainsthe same or continues to grow. SouthAfrican firms must compete locally with adwindling supply of qualified workers.

The complexity and challenges faced byfirms in many of these countries covered inthese reviews may prevent you from practic-ing or studying these HRM systems yourself.This set of four reviews of international HRbooks gives the reader the opportunity forextended “armchair human resource man-agement.”

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR’S NOTE

T I M O T H Y G A R D N E R

Human Resource Management, Winter 2007, Vol. 46, No. 3, P. 683

© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.20188