REGULATORY FOCUS AND IMMIGRATION POLICY COMPLIANCE: A STUDY OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS' INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Abstract

The mobility of workforce across the globe has enhanced the dependence of multinational corporations (MNCs) on cross-border talent that has heightened the need to be adamant in enforcing the increasingly complicated immigration policies. Although there is much academic research on international human resource management (IHRM), the role of managerial motivational orientations on compliance behavior of MNCs is a less researched field. This paper fills this neglected gap by exploring the roles played by regulatory focus theory (RFT) in influencing the compliance of the immigration policy in international organizations. The issue is especially acute as the developed economies have enhanced the existing mechanisms of crossing borders, and the developing host countries are still facing problems with policy implementation and organization compliance. Such discrepancies are an indicator of a growing compliance gap that has to be more deeply known. The proposed research will seek to make a conceptual model and further empirically test the relationship between promotion and prevention regulatory orientations between HR and mobility managers with the compliance of immigration policies and how the digital mobility governance systems will enable or inhibit the compliance relationship. The proposed model is based on regulatory focus theory and presents the argument that vulnerability-preventive orientations can bring about greater compliance due to risk avoidance, but, possibly, promotion-targeting orientations can support procedural shortcuts, as they justified, in case of perceived organizational benefits, unless well-supported by way of strong digital governance. The theoretical implication of the study is that RFT has been applied to legal and institutional compliance behavior in IHRM, continuing the paucity of literature on the relationship between manager psychology and immigration risk governance. In practical terms, the results will guide policymakers and top HR leaders on the aspects of incentives and penalties behavior that can influence compliance rates, thus aiding the development of corporate controls on global mobility, ethical human resources, and organizational governance strategies. The future study ought to address differences in the regulatory climate across countries, employee-based compliance behavior, and how new technologies, including AI-driven mobility systems, may contribute to the formation of compliance choices. In sum, the present study takes into consideration a critical but not yet developed aspect of global mobility management and helps to conduct safer, more just, and more sustainable operations with the international workforce.