Studies have supported the importance of long-term based human resource management such as commitment management or high performance work practices. The management practices have been found to trigger positive impacts on firm performance and employee motivation world- widely. However, in some situations, firms must select option practices in managing human resources even though these practices violate the resource-based or commitment HR views. Applying the real options theory, the present research identified individual pay-for-performance as an HR option for firms, and examined the effects of exogenous uncertainties on firms' use of the option with multi-source data. Firms' HRM and other firm variables were collected by using a survey completed by 171 managers, and industry uncertainty information was obtained from diverse secondary sources. Results support the premise of liability of foreignness, showing that foreign MNCs utilized more pay-for-performance, and also that the use was reduced as they accumulated years of operation in the Korean market. However, the effect of cultural distance between headquarters and Korea was not found for foreign-based MNCs. Regarding industry- level uncertainty, on the other hand, the effect of stock market volatility was not found to be significant in influencing the level of pay-for-performance as an HR option. The results in general partially support the theoretical validity of using a real options view to understand HRM practices in the global market. The results support the usefulness of an HR option in some cases, but the results should be taken seriously in applying to management at the workplace. That is, firms should be cautious in utilizing HR options because of the possible side effects such as reduced commitment or satisfaction that may occur in managing people as options. The theoretical and practical contributions of these results are provided.