This paper focuses on the debates about globalisation - its nature and impact - and the significance of multinational companies in the global economy. Introduces the special issue of the International journal of Manpower, based on selected papers presented at the 7th Conference on International Human Resource Management hosted by the University of Limerick in June 2003, which focused on the issue of HRM and its transferability in such corporations. The MNC is viewed as the vehicle by which dominant HR policies and practices are transported across national boundaries and the papers shed fight on the likelihood of and limits, to this transfer. In order to contextualise the debate, the paper begins by outlining the extent to which human resource management remains a key issue for multinational corporations and, in advance of introducing the five papers in this special issue, summarily charts some of the key research trends emerging in the literature on international human resource management (IHRM).