International and Comparative Human Resource Management

International Human Resource Management has been defined as HRM issues, functions, policies and practices that result from the strategic activities of MNEs. International Human Resource Management deals principally with issues and problems associated with the globalization of capitalism. It involves the same elements as domestic HRM but is more complex to manage, in terms of the diversity of national contexts and types of workers. The emphasis is on the MNCs’ ability to attract, develop and deploy talented employees in a multinational setting and to get them to work effectively despite differences in culture, language and locations. International HRM tends to mitigate the impact of national culture and national employment practice against corporate culture and practices. Comparative Human Resource Management, on the other hand, is a systematic method of investigation that seeks to explain the patterns and variations encountered in cross-national HRM rather than simply describe HRM institutions and practices inContinue reading

Career Development – Meaning, Definition and Stages

The concept of career development is of growing concern to organizations since it matches the needs of a business with the career goals of employees. Formulating a career development plan can help employees to do their jobs more efficiently. Additionally, these plans can be beneficial for employees who might want to move up in a company or look for other jobs in the future. Today, challenging organizations have developed new concerns for the career development of their employees. They put greater emphasis on ‘career’ with coherent induction, training and development, increased job security by the accrual of experience and qualifications valued in the labor market. Since a high majority of workers change their careers at midlife, it becomes evident that career development programs are needed throughout the life cycle. Other major reasons for this concern are: The growth and productivity of organizations depend on the effectiveness of employee performance. AContinue reading

Career Management – Definition and Meaning

Career is a general course of action, an individual chooses to pursue, all through his or her employment life. It may be represented as occupational positions a person has hold over so many years. Many people feel satisfied by achieving their career goals. At the same time, others have a strong feeling that, their careers, their lives and their potential has undergone unfulfilled. Employers too have a profound effect on employees’ careers. Some organisations have very formal career management processes, while others are very little concern about it. Career management is defined as the ongoing process of preparing, implementing and monitoring career plans. It can be undertaken either by the individual alone or can be a concerted activity along with the organisation’s career systems. Career management is a process that enables the employees to better understand their career skills, develop and give direction to it and to use those skillsContinue reading

The Concept of Career Planning – Definition, Objectives and Process

Career is viewed as a bunch or collection of jobs or positions. Generally, it describes an applicable career path within the structure of the organization. Basically, it shows the principal personnel development paths within the organization. The etymology of the term derived from the Latin word career, which means race. All the jobs, that are held together during one’s working life, constitute career. It is also viewed as the sequence of positions held by an individual during the course of his employment life. Edwin B. Flippo defined a career, as a sequence of separate but related work activities that provide continuity, order and meaning in a person’s life. A career may be viewed as amalgamation of the changes in values, attitudes and motivation an individual embrace, as he or she grows older. This constitute subjective element of the concept “career”. Greenhaus and Schein described several themes underlying different definition ofContinue reading

Motivating Employees with Stock Options

Employee stock options plan is a company wide incentives plan whereby the company contributes shares of its own stock or cash to be used to purchase such stock to a trust established to purchase shares of the firm’s stock for employees. The firm generally makes these contributions annually in proportion to total employee compensation, with a limit of 15% of compensation. The trust holds the stock in individual employee accounts, and distributes it to employees upon retirement, assuming the person has worked long enough to earn ownership of the stock. Many companies use employee stock options plans to retain and attract employees, the objective being to give employees an incentive to behave in ways that will boost the company’s stock price. By issuing employee stock options as compensation, organizations can preserve and generate cash flow. The cash flow comes when the organizations issues new shares and receives the exercise priceContinue reading

Managing Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

Cultural differences are usually created by race-ethnicity, gender, function, and tenure among the organization factors. Difference in culture may result to the rise of conflicts among team members. This usually results to disrupted communication within the organization and eventually negative outcomes. Therefore, it is the role of every organization and entire management to come up with various ways of managing and reducing negative effects of cultural differences. Management in various organizations should ensure that they are able to detect and avoid such cases from arising. Political backgrounds and experience are other major factors that contribute to cultural differences. Multicultural teams and differences in most occasions generate dilemmas in the organization management. Cultural differences usually create considerable obstacles to efficient teamwork. Recognizing various underlying cultural causes of conflicts is the main challenge in managing multicultural teams by organizations’ management. It is also a great challenge for management to get teams backContinue reading