The sources to engage originate from the way the relationship between social actors and sub-national policies has evolved over time. Specifically, the results have shown that social actors, unions, managers and employers' federations at the level of the subsidiary only engage in sub-national policies when multiple sources are available and if a competitive policy is the result.
Moreover, the way in which sub-national initiatives meet the objective of social actors is explanatory. Based on the analysis of the interviews and secondary sources, the presence of more than one sub-national policyshows to be one of the crucial factors in explaining how these initiatives are formed and how the transfer of employment policies and practicestakes place. To get a comprehensive picture the study did also rely on secondary sources like collective agreements, policy documents, newspaper articles and company presentations. Managers at higher organisational levels (regional or global headquarters) and sector representatives were also questioned. Within those subsidiaries (HR) managers and trade union delegates were interviewed. To gain an insight into the various dimensions, 4 multinationals with several subsidiaries in Belgium were studied. Not only the subsidiaries specific policies were of interest, butalso policies at sub-national levels through which training and pay policies were shaped, like collective agreements or employment services provided by regional governments. For this, the thesis has focused on training and pay policies and practices in MNCs subsidiaries. In doing so the thesis integrated the growing demand within studies on the transfer in MNCs to integrate within country variation and the role of social actors.
Rather, social actors were considered as "co-constructors' of sub-national levels. Policies at sub-national level were not seen separately from social actors (employers, employees and their representatives) within multinationals. Based on the literature on the topic, different dimensionsof the transfer were distinguished: degree of control, centralisation, discretion and different configurations between subsidiaries and headquarters. It was hereby assumed that these sub-national levels influence the decision-making roles of headquarters and subsidiaries with regard to employment policies and practices. The study has hereby focused on initiatives of regional governments, sectors andnbsp webs of inter-firm relations like continuous vocational training or pension funds. The thesis has studied the role of employment policies at sub-national levels as possible explanations for different ways in which multinational companies produce and disseminate their employment policies and practices to their subsidiaries.
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