With the increasing globalization of the world economy and the rapid diffusion of international management practices, a vast literature has emerged on how and why some of these practices are adopted or rejected by firms. A central issue in this body of literature is whether firms' adoption of management practices is triggered by a need to improve corporate performance (rationalism) or necessitated by institutional factors and constraints (institutionalism). This review of rationalist and

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... tionalist conceptual approaches is particularly interesting given that in the (prescriptive) human resource management literature the rationalist presumption of strategic choice and managerial autonomy is usually taken for granted, a view institutionalist approaches tend to criticize for being overly rationalist and acontextual. In concluding, the paper agues that since organizations are faced with both rationalist and institutionalist pressures in their choice of human resource practices, there is a need for robust, integrated frameworks that incorporate this duality.