Psychological Contract – Meaning and Importance

The psychological contract is certainly an important aspect of the employment relationship as it invisibly binds the employer and the employee through a set of expectations. For the individual in an organisation, the psychological contract is mostly relevant as it directly affects the level of motivation, commitment and morale of that person. Moreover, a positive psychological contract helps to boost the productivity and performance of an employee.

Thus, to gain the commitment and loyalty of individual employees, it becomes essential that organisations put in place appropriate systems to foster the identification of employee expectations and ways to fulfill them. However, expectations are not easily identified, both on the employers and employees side.… Read the rest

Talent Retention Best Practices

Talent retention is not a new problem, but it seems to be ever more critical. The question of attracting the brightest and best talents is a key issue for successful companies. Today with large signing bonuses and very attractive salaries and benefits, the more perplexing question is how to best build the loyalty of the talented people. The more talents organizations retain, the more talents they’ll attract.

Organizations should focus on designing a sustainable career package that supports a graduate’s continuous professional and personal development. It is important that an organization keeps track of each individual’s changing needs and priorities. This will be down to the job of a coach or a mentor who should carry the long-term and important responsibility of coaching and mentoring the graduates.… Read the rest

Understanding Cross-Cultural Communication in International Business

Cross-cultural communication exists when people from differing cultures have reached a certain degree of understanding regarding their differences. For understanding to take place, both people must have some form of knowledge or awareness regarding the norms or customs that exist in each other’s culture. Verbal and nonverbal communications can contain implied meanings, as well as certain degrees of symbolism. For successful communication to take place, background knowledge concerning values, norms and perceptions is necessary in order for clear, effective communication to take place.

The key to effective cross-cultural communication is knowledge. It is essential that people understand the potential problems of cross-cultural communication, and make a conscious effort to overcome these problems and important to assume that one’s efforts will not always be successful, and adjust one’s behavior appropriately.… Read the rest

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.… Read the rest

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.… Read the rest

Diversity Management

The world’s increasing globalization trend demands more interaction between people from a vast diverse of cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds than the past. Today, people no longer live and work in an insulated marketplace. The reality is they are now part of a worldwide (or commonly mentioned as flatten) economy with competition coming from nearly every angle of the globe. For this reason, businesses need to be open to change and accept the concept of diversity to become more creative.

In daily conversation, the word of “diversity” has the meaning of differences or variety. However, in the business world and in the business textbook, diversity often refers to the many differences present among people today in workplace as well as marketplace that were not aware of by most people in the past.… Read the rest