Abstract/Summary

This article argues that awareness of institutional context has been singularly lacking in the most influential areas of HRM. This lack of attention to external context has resulted in findings that fail to reflect reality. We offer a layered contextual framework embedded in economic institutional theory. We propose that it forms the basis of a comparative research agenda for HRM. We validate the framework using extant publications on institutionally based comparative HRM, drawing on findings from the Cranet research network published in the decade 2007–2017.