To retain and attract nurses by reducing work-to-family conflict, hospitals should not (only) rely on work-family policies but should also invest in organisational support and adapted job dimensions.

MNCs exercise control across borders by transferring employment practices to their subsidiaries. By drawing from "national business system" some studies indicate home-and host-country effects as mediating the transfer. Accordingly, institutional variance is national specific. However, sub-national institutions as well as local actors' strategies are equally important. In the paper we originally use the concept of "institutional entrepreneurship" to illustrate how coordination mechanisms to mediate the transfer can be created beyond the national borders. Based on the Belgian case, we individuate three levels at which these coordination mechanisms operate: the region, the firm and the inter-firm.

Purpose -Restructuring has assumed a significant importance across Europe due to the growing pressures of internationalisation affecting transnational capital. By drawing from two case-studies in the public health service and the manufacturing sector in Belgium, this paper aims to present evidence of the local unions' capacity to strategically use the industrial relations institutional framework, which foresees the rights of employee representatives to make a proposal for an alternative plan to restructuring, in order to fight redundancy at the workplace. Design/methodology/approach -The study uses a new institutionalist approach in social science and political economy which emphasises social agency and actor capacity to influence and shape their institutional context. The research design was based on two case studies. The methodology was qualitative and comparative. Findings -There is diversity in the process of collective resistance to company restructuring, highlighting different combinations of external and internal union capabilities at the core of such diversity. However, the study also illustrates commonality regarding union strategy to manipulate the national legal framework in order to combat collective redundancy. Practical implications -The research results inform unions' practices and policy making with regard to the social process and the outcomes of company restructuring. Social implications -The paper has important social implications with regard to unions' strategies of resistance and bargaining processes in situations of company restructuring. Originality/value -The paper provides support for neo-institutionalism as an insightful way of understanding local unions' responses to collective redundancy in Belgium.

This paper adapts a cross-comparative case study analysis to investigate how complementary sub-national levels affect subsidiary discretion on vocational training policies in multinationals' subsidiaries in Belgium. The paper addresses three levels: the regional government, the sector, and the web of inter-firm relations. Using case studies of four multinationals with three subsidiaries operating in Belgium, the paper concludes that a high level of subsidiary discretion is found when several sub-national policies are supportive of companies' intended training policies. In other words, if only one level instigates training initiatives or if these initiatives do not fit with the multinationals' training aims, no subsidiary discretion is observed. Furthermore, the paper shows that national surveys on employment practices in multinational companies would benefit from integrating these sub-national levels. Based on the effects of the sub-national levels on discretion, as found in our paper, we expect the sub-national levels to mediate or reinforce the home and host country effect.

There is an ongoing debate in business and industrial relations literature regarding the role of social actors in shaping employment policies in multinational companies. However, less attention has been given to how sub-national employment levels are shaped by social actors within multinational companies. This article contributes to that question by investigating the conditions under which social actors engage in the development of regional employment policies, inter-firm employment policies and company-specific policies. Based on four case studies of multinational companies with different subsidiaries in Belgium, the study reveals that social actors shape these employment policies in line with their employment aims where they have access to sub-national resources. Furthermore, high levels of entrepreneurship were found if sub-national resources were available at multiple complementary sub-national levels. The availability of these resources is dependent on the specific historical development of each of these sub-national levels.