Posts Tagged: "International HRM"

Managing an International Workforce

Posted by admin on December 12, 2012 in International Business / No Comments

Whenever an organization expands its operations to other countries, it tends to become multicultural and will then face the challenge of blending various cultures together. The managerial personnel entering another nation need to adjust their leadership styles, communication patterns and other practices to fit their host country. Their role is to provide fusion of cultures in which employees from both countries adjust to the new situation seeking a greater productivity for the benefit of both the organization and the people of the country in which it operates.

Managers and other employees who come into a host country tend to exhibit different behaviors and somewhat, see situation around them from their own perspectives. They may fail to recognize the key differences between their own and other cultures. These people are called, ‘parochial’.
Another category of managers called ‘individualistic’ place greatest emphasis on their personal needs and welfare.

…

Evolution of Performance Management

Posted by admin on November 27, 2012 in Human Resource Management / No Comments

Traditionally, performance appraisal has been used as the guide for employee performance. Performance appraisal also known as ‘performance evaluation’, ‘merit rating’, and ‘performance assessment’ is a process of recording assessment of employees’ performance, potential and development needs. According to Wayne F Cascio (1995) performance appraisal is defined as “the systematic description of job related strengths and weaknesses of an individual or a group”. Performance appraisal is a system of review and evaluation of an individual’s (or team’s) performance. Lately it has been supplanted in more and more companies with performance management (PM), a more comprehensive human resource management process.

Within the recent past there has been a shift from traditional annual performance appraisal to continuous performance management . The obvious reasons behind this have been the inadequacy of Performance appraisal in serving as a performance enhancement tool. Performance appraisal is known to be a contentious and unpopular activity of Human Resource Management. It is contentious because employees do not readily accept their manager’s assessment about their performance, and managers feel uncomfortable when they have to defend their judgment.…

Managing Workforce Diversity

Posted by admin on November 27, 2012 in Human Resource Management / No Comments

How administrators manage workforce diversity greatly depends on the needs of the organization. For example, some companies may want a diversified work force in order to make them more competitive in the global market. Diversity helps them to better understand international markets. While other organizations consider diversity as a means to bring about greater harmony in the workplace and an opportunity to prepare employees and volunteers to deal with the nation’s changing demographics. Regardless of the reasons, managing diversity is here to stay. So, it’s no longer an issue whether to implement diversity training, but how diversity training will be implemented.

“Managing for Diversity” pertains to a philosophy that is purely motivated by business purpose and market advantage. It is seen as a strategy for improving organizational competitiveness and efficiency. It is distinctly different from policies grounded in social purposes such as equal employment opportunity or affirmative action. It focuses on managing the mix of individuals assigned to a task, involved in the subordinate-supervisor relationship, or employed in the organization.…

Developing a Global Management Cadre

Posted by admin on December 12, 2011 in International Business / No Comments

Global management of business is increasingly important to almost all business firms today as they extent their business operations globally. As the international business of a firm increases, the firms must be managed globally. This confronts managers with many new challenges, including coordinating production, sales, and financial operations on a worldwide basis. As a result, companies today have pressing international HR needs with respect to selecting, training, paying and repatriating global employees. Inter-country differences affect a company’s HR management processes. Cultural factors suggest differences in values, attitudes, and therefore behaviors and reactions of people from country to country also change. Differences in economic and labor cost among countries are also important and will help to determine whether human resources emphasis should be on efficiency, commitment, or some other factors. Industrial relations between the worker, the union, and the employer influence the nature of a company’s specific HR policies from country to country.

A global manager must learn how to design and implement global strategies to conduct effective cross-national interactions and to manage daily operations in foreign subsidiaries.…

Staffing for Global Operations

Posted by admin on December 12, 2011 in International Business / No Comments

Global staffing is quite a complex affair. It involves activities on a global basis, including candidate selection, assignment terms and documentation, relocation processing and vendor management, immigration processing, cultural and language orientation and training, compensation administration and payroll processing, tax administration, career planning and development, and handling of spouse and dependent matters. Multinational companies (MNCs) employ several types of international managers. Locals are citizens of the countries where they are working. Expatriates are non-citizens of the countries in which they are working. Home-country national are citizens of the country in which the multinational company has its headquarters. Third-country nationals are citizens of a country other than the parent or the host country.

Expatriates still represent a minority of multinationals’ managers. Yet there are also reasons for using expatriates-either home-country or third country nationals- for staffing subsidiaries. The major reason is usually technical competence. Multinational also view a successful stint abroad as a required step in developing top managers.

An international human resource manager must proceed with the job of hiring the right number of people of the right type.…

Selecting International Managers

Posted by admin on December 12, 2011 in Human Resource Management / No Comments

International assignments are the heart of international HR, and it is therefore disconcerting to see how often such assignments fail. U.S. expatriates assignments that end early (the failure rate) range from 16% to 50%, and the direct costs of each failure can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. The exact number of failure is hard to quantify, in part because “failure” means different things to different people. An early return rate is perhaps the most obvious indicator. However, some expatriates may fail less conspicuously, quietly running up the hidden costs of reduced productivity and poisoned customer and staff relations.

The processes firms use to select managers for their foreign assignments and domestic operations obviously have many similarities. For either assignment, the candidate should have the technical knowledge and skills to do the job, and the intelligence and skills to be a successful manager. However, it is seen that foreign assignments are different. There is the need to cope with colleagues whose culture may be drastically different from one’s own, and the stress that being alone in a foreign land can put on the single manager.…

Posts Tagged: "International HRM"

Barriers to Cultural Adaptation