Globalization and HRM Strategies - Research Paper Example

Size A typical Wal-Mart store covers almost 108,000 square feet of space. The size of Wal-Mart supercentre can be almost 185,000 square feet, and a usual neighborhood market of Wal-Mart can be almost 42,000 square feet. The size of Wal-Mart express stores is average 15,000 square feet. In the year 2011, the total selling area of Wal-Mart was more than 617 million square feet and has continued to increase (Wal-Mart Stores, 2011; Wal-Mart Stores, 2011). Location Wal-Mart had established retail stores in several locations of the world by diverse styles and setups, which can fulfill the requirement of customers.

Presently, the company is regarded as one of the fastest growing multinational corporations (MNCs) with 5366 stores across 27 countries outside the USA (Wal-Mart Stores, 2011). Number of Employees Wal-Mart is considered as one of the largest private establishments in terms of employment in the USA, Canada and Mexico. In global perspective, Wal-Mart employs almost 2.1 million people and the USA alone comprised 1.4 million in the year 2011 (Wal-Mart Stores, 2011). 2.0 Impact of Globalization on Human Resource Management (HRM) Globalization has huge impact on the performance of Wal-Mart.

Due to globalization Wal-Mart had lowered their products pricing in order to compete with other retail companies. The major competitors of Wal-Mart in the international market are Carrefour, Metro Group and Tesco Plc among others which led Wal-Mart to reduce the operational cost of business. Aggressive cost cuts in the products is a significant impact of globalization for Wal-Mart which had also raised several human resource management concerns against the company such as low wages of employees and lack of health benefits among others (Masters, 2004).

Cultural Impact on HRM Globalization has provided MNCs the opportunity to expand the market and business operations in order to increase their financial strengths, but it has also resulted in developing corporate culture to protect the human resources. In the global market, the major problem for Wal-Mart was inapplicability to the local culture. Low wages, power of unions and discrimination among employees have impacted the human resource management of Wal-Mart in the international market. For instance, Wal-Mart was strictly alleged for discriminating Chinese employees by remunerating them below minimum wage (Mesa Community College, 2009).

Impact of Labor Market on HRM strategies Labor market can certainly form the HRM strategies and it is one of the major aspects in defining the ‘degree of freedom’ in an organization. The HRM strategy of Wal-Mart is determined by availability of labor in the market with particular ability, knowledge and proficiency. The pressure of global competition has led Wal-Mart to implement flexible labor strategies with more hazardous work provisions. In recent years, development in financial, political and industrial domains had expressively transformed the arrangement of labor supply and type of labor essential by the organizations.

One of the most powerful aspects which formed the international labor market is enhanced process of globalization. The development of international financial system, manufacture structure, market structure and complex forms of international immigration had generated substantial interconnectedness among domestic and local labor markets. Consequently, it is significant for Wal-Mart to recognize the labor marketplace to