1. ¹Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, Waco, USA
2. ²Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
3. ³College of Business and Technology, Western Illinois University, MacComb, USA

Correspondence: C Wu, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, One Bear Place 98006, Waco, TX 76798, USA. Tel: +1 254 710 7672; Fax: +1 254 710 1093; E-mail: Cindy_Wu@baylor.edu

Received 22 May 2002; Revised 7 June 2007; Accepted 24 September 2007; Published online 27 March 2008.

Abstract

Using job announcements posted by MNC subsidiaries in Taiwan and Thailand, we investigated the effects of MNC home-country cultural and institutional forces on the use of employment gender and age discriminatory criteria in host countries where anti-discrimination legislation was absent. We examined the cultural effects with composite measures taken from the work of Hofstede and Schwartz. The effects of the existence of anti-age and anti-gender discrimination employment legislation in an MNC home country were also assessed to control for institutional factors. Logit analysis shows that MNC home-country culture and institutional environment can have a strong impact on the use of discriminatory criteria by MNCs in host countries, at least those lacking protective legislation. Specifically, MNCs based in countries that have existing and effective age and gender discrimination laws, and have more individualist and less masculine cultures, are less likely to engage in at least overt gender-based and age-based discrimination.