Why Might the Role of The Manager Differ, Depending on the Country in which they Operate - Assignment Example

Running Head: INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT International Management: To What Extent And Why Might The Role Of The Manager Differ, Depending On The Country In Which They Operate [Name Of The Student] [Name Of The Institute] International Management: To What Extent And Why Might The Role Of The Manager Differ, Depending On The Country In Which They Operate Offshoring or hiring staff or managers from different country or working as a manager in some other country is increasingly common practice among U.S. and European companies. They migrate business processes overseas to India, the Philippines, Ireland, China and elsewhere, and are often seen as a negative phenomenon that suppresses domestic job markets. On the contrary, says the Gary and Derr (1998), offshoring is a critical component of next-generation business design, a dynamic process of continually identifying how to deliver superior value to customers and shareholders. Companies such as General Electric, Intel, J.P. Morgan Chase, Allstate, Prudential, Dell, Cisco, Microsoft and Motorola have all adopted it in some form as they shift their managerial frames of reference toward the requirements of the global-network era. Companies would do well, the Oddou (1999) advises, to think rationally - not emotionally - about off shoring's relevant issues: What are their core competencies What form of governance is optimal How will work will be distributed and integrated to the new staff and how well they can get settles with the new environment Since outsourcing contracts often last for five or more years, corporate officers responsible for selecting the manager with whom they wind up going down the legal path often compare the pact to that of a marriage. The reason is that trust is as important to an outsourcing manager as it is to a spouse. But before an outsourcing relationship reaches that point, many outsourcing managers note that they wind up going through a systematic process of gathering intelligence about their possible partners, and often about themselves. Manager or staff selection first involves self-assessment. Before even undertaking the manager's selection, a corporation should determine whether it needs to outsource in the first place. A company must assess the raw economics of a project, says Howard Rubin, executive vice president with the Meta Group Inc., which advises corporations on outsourcing. It also must weigh the fixed costs of moving production or a task to an outsourcing vendor, as well as the variable ones, he notes. Once that's done, a strategic accounting must be completed. "If your business is building bridges, you don't want to worry about maintaining and painting the ones you've already built," Rubin says. Those are things you outsource if it takes away from your core business focus. It's not unusual for a company to decide not to outsource. One outsourcing officer of a major industrial company based in the Midwest says half the time his company examines an outsourcing request from a business unit, no outsourcing assignment winds up being made. There are numerous reasons for that, including fear about intellectual assets losing their protection once outside the corporate cocoon. "With IP (intellectual property), once you move outside, you're at risk of losing it," says one outsourcing manager in the Midwest. That's why trust becomes so important when selecting a Manager. It must be someone who can respect proprietary information. Trust, of course, must be earned. It's somewhat intangible, and generally doesn't emerge until hard fact-finding is completed. The Midwestern outsourcing manager says when an entire assignment is considered, and staffs needs to be selected, as many as 25 people can be working on a prospective mandate at his company. In hiring managers from another country or culture there are three aspects to be considered, what codifiability, standardizability and modularizability. Codifiability refers to the extent to which the activities in an occupation can be described completely in a set of written instructions. Occupations with a high proportion of explicit knowledge are more codifiable than occupations that use tacit knowledge. Standardizability is the extent to which the activities in an occupation can be performed successfully using a set of consistent and repeatable processes. The consistency of processes applies across different workers and across different cases. Fast-food cashier is more standardizable than the occupation of lawyer. Fast-food cashiers can be trained to follow the same process with every customer (greet customer, ask for order, enter order, etc.), while a lawyer may need to follow a different process for each trial depending on the issues involved; or two different lawyers may follow different processes even for the same trial. Finally, modularizability is the extent to which the activities in an occupation can be separated into components so that the components can be performed independently by separate people and then integrated later. For example, the occupation of technical writer is highly modularizable. Two different writers can each write one chapter of a user manual, and the two chapters can both be placed in the manual. Taken together, the three occupational aspects can lead to a better understanding of which professional service jobs are good candidates for global desegregation. Although the authors Kate Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce (2004) do not provide a direct link between ease of desegregation and offshoring, they do provide evidence that occupational attributes such as information intensity and need for physical presence can help an organization understand the potential impact of offshoring on service occupations. These results have two major managerial implications. First, the authors (Bronfenbrenner & Luce, 2004) suggest that occupations with high information intensity and low need for physical presence are the primary candidates for offshoring. Managers should make suitable investments in platforms and consider decoupling information-intensive activities from activities that require physical presence. This will enable companies to optimize their portfolios of business processes and to locate the processes where they can be performed with greater effectiveness at lower cost. Second, the authors (Bronfenbrenner & Luce, 2004) stress the need for enterprises to develop process expertise so they can evaluate the interdependencies among service activities, modularize those activities and then disaggregate the activities to take advantage of global resources. Both recommendations, the authors suggest, should lead to more efficient and profitable organizations without any loss to core capabilities. The definition of outsourcing is really paying another company to provide you with service that you would otherwise have your own employees conducting on your behalf. Often times it also includes the transfer of employees. Nothing can take the place of experience in a relationship. The more companies work with certain outsourcing managers, the more comfortable and knowledgeable they'll be with not just the manager's strengths and weaknesses, but their own. Especially since an outsourcing company knows what the product should look like but not necessarily the process the manager has to use to make it a reality. Manager Types Many studies conducted consider three distinct groups to illustrate what competencies are needed in leading successful teams: Experienced project-based managers Experienced global project managers High performing global managers The following graphs illustrate the preliminary findings of this ongoing study and highlight both similarities and differences between managers in the three categories. When the work style characteristics of the three groups are considered (Figure 1), top or high performing global project managers exhibit more spontaneity, flexibility and focus than the other two manager groups. Interestingly, these managers also show less self-reliance than other project managers. One way to interpret this is that top global project managers are more likely to create and depend upon competent team members rather than their own efforts. Figure 1: Work style characteristics for three groups of managers: US-based project managers,global project managers and high-performing global managers The findings that highlight personal adjustment characteristics (Figure 2) also illustrate some interesting differences among the three study groups. While experienced project-based managers and experienced global managers have about the same emotional intensity, high performing global managers demonstrate a significantly higher level of passion. We found that these managers were able to build and maintain relationships over long distances through virtual environments. Figure 2: Personal adjustment characteristics The other significant difference among the three groups is in the area of personal adjustment. High performing global managers have higher self-expectations, expecting much more of themselves than their counterparts. Our findings also show higher emotional intensity and a slight decrease in the amount of objectivity between top global managers and the other two groups. Figure 3: Interpersonal and leadership styles In considering interpersonal and leadership styles, the strongest style among all three groups is competitiveness, followed by assertiveness. This may illustrate a "knee-jerk" response to the need for achieving results over the need to build relationships. We predict that the sociability rankings will increase as it becomes more evident that social skills are needed for long-term success as a global manager. Manager Personality and Work Style Many researchers on Human Resources Management have also identified 10 personality and work style competencies that were evident in all types of project managers, but particularly so in global managers: 1. Relationship management 2. Business acumen 3. Adaptability 4. Cultural agility 5. Customer service orientation 6. Strategic thinking 7. Team leadership 8. Decision making 9. Organizational awareness 10. Influence Sunil Mithas and Jonathan Whitaker (2006) found many of these same personality and work style characteristics in a 2005 study. Mithas and Whitaker (2006) used the "Big Five" personality dimensions (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience) along with locus of control to describe successful global leaders. Conscientiousness is described as dependability, responsibility, achievement orientation and persistence. This personality characteristic corresponds well with the personal adjustment characteristics of emotional intensity and self-expectations found in our study. People exhibiting an internal center of control feel they have greater control over events than do those with an external locus of control. This characteristic is complementary to the competitive leadership style found in our research. Mithas and Whitaker (2006)developed taxonomy of global leadership competencies and meta-competencies based on interviews and discussions with over 50,000 leaders of organizations in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Table 1 represents the seven meta-competencies and their related 50 sub-competencies that were found in studies. Table 1: A taxonomy of competencies in global leadership Meta-Competencies Leadership Competencies Understanding the Big Picture Displaying information of the whole organization Using systems theory efficiently employing technology Displaying worldwide kindliness Utilizing effective compensation Displaying moral performance Attitudes are Everything Exhibiting a vision Showing extensiveness and admiration for assortment Conquering difficulty Demonstrating suitable buoyancy in self and others Leadership, The Driving Force Stimulating others Going against obsolete or unproductive practices Building faith Varying leadership to the demands of the circumstances Delegate Assessing others Mentoring others Displaying kindliness and understanding Seeing degrees of options, not just either/or limits Providing as a suitable role model Communication, The Leader's Voice Exhibiting suitable emotional intelligence Using active listening Exhibit non-defensiveness Competently using language Dexterously using body language Efficient interviewing Efficient cooperation Efficiently giving verbal presentations Innovation and Creativity Developing an inventive organizational environment Humanizing innovative decision-making Using strange ideas that work Avoiding indecisiveness based on old paradigms Knowledge reframing Persuading people to use and build up their creative skills Leading Change Generating transformational modification Developing an incessant learning customs Constructing support mechanisms to produce and maintain alteration efforts Administering the transformation process Building up change agents Promoting individual change Promoting structural change Teamwork and Followership Becoming skillful at focusing Employing no-fault problem solving Developing a team oriented culture Developing team-based incentive and reward systems Coping with your boss Steer organizational affairs Sustaining others on the team Utilizing empowerment Developing self-directed work teams Cultural Differences New leaders in India need to be aware of the fact that it's almost anti-cultural for Indian employees to challenge their managers. Oliner and Espin Stern (2003) found similar cultural differences when studying global leadership qualities valued in Mexican firms. In a random sample of executives in Mexico City, Oliner and Espin Stern (2003) found that the Mexican culture valued the ability to make hard decisions and administrative skills more highly than any other. This finding was in contrast to US executives, who valued leadership ability and top management potential. These findings beg the question of what additional criteria must be considered in making global leader selections. Moore sees some interesting correlations between competent global leaders and their home environment. He states that there are an isolated number of countries that have two or more distinct cultures present simultaneously (Belgium, Singapore, Canada in Quebec, Switzerland and Holland). Evidence suggests that individuals living in these areas have an increased ability to be successful global managers because of their experiences living in bicultural environments. Oliner (2003) says that there's a "richer pool of candidates from these countries," than from any other. Figure 4: Identification with host culture One advantage that these bicultural leaders have over others is their ability to handle the various cultural differences. Figure 4 illustrates how these individuals are able to maintain low stress levels because of their abilities to identify with both their own parent culture and the host culture. As this figure shows, individuals become highly stressed when they are unable to identify with the host culture. Managers have moderate stress levels when they're able to highly identify with their host culture but not with their own. The optimum state is when an individual is able to identify with both their parent and host cultures. We can't overemphasize the differences between cultures. While Espin Stern (2003) has found that bicultural environments create more competent global managers, Oliner's (2003) experience in India found that attitude is the most important characteristic of effective leaders. Oliner (2003) believes that what is most important for future global managers is the ability to have a feel for the subtleties and nuances of the host culture. For example, Oliner (2003) stated that when he worked in India, he had a difficult time holding two distinct cultures in his head at the same time. What became important for him was to acknowledge that there were two different realities and perceptions that he needed to respond to. Why should an employer from another country hire you There are six essential grounds why beginners or global managers can augment a company's achievement. Professionals who would prefer to reposition frequently ask why an employer from another country should appoint them. The reasons for employing newcomers stalk from global hiring strategies which are based on existing market needs. There are six motives why an employer should hire newcomers: 1) At a large-scale level, governments persuade newcomers to immigrate if there aren't sufficient employees (skilled and unskilled) to fill up the job market needs and sustain their economy. Employers are concerned in hiring newcomers when there aren't enough (good) local talents for definite positions or industries. A scarcity of talents can be caused by low birth rates, students who aren't studying certain educational areas and other national factors. For example, in the US there is a dearth of engineers because not enough students have chosen to study engineering in the last few years. Another example is that companies need bi- lingual professionals who talk English and Spanish in order to meet the needs of growing numbers of Spanish clients. 2) Due to globalization tendencies companies have infiltrated new regions in the world. In order to attain their tactical goals efficiently they require cross cultural (diverse) talents who can comprehend their clients and other cross cultural stakeholders. For example, professionals from China can better understand Chinese clients' needs and preferences and correspond with them successfully. The detail that you distribute the same culture with clients is an important asset which will improve your capability to accomplish top business fallout and career success. 3) In the modern global market when most strategies aren't functioning any longer, modernization is the only policy which will uphold a company's competitiveness. Newcomers have differing business knowledge, divergent opinions and novel strategies for performing business which can donate to develop a company's modernism. 4) In order to promote a company's innovation employing managers are probing for "purple cow" talents. By being a pioneering specialized you can boost your probability of being hired. 5) Hiring strategies have distorted as the business realism has become more multifaceted, random and vague. In the current business setting a candidate's individual character can better forecast career achievement than his explicit expert surroundings. If you don't have local career knowledge in a certain market it isn't a flaw and in many cases it can be a gain because it hastens company innovation. At Dell they are hiring managers from all industries and with divergent business experiences. In the hiring procedure they give precedence to personal traits rather than to definite industry experience. This tactic initiated because Dell couldn't find sufficient talents. Though, it has become a nucleus hiring strategy for speed up a company's innovation. 6) Companies are coming across professionals who have global minds and abilities in order to handle business circumstances which engage cross cultural stakeholders. Transfer experiences improve the development of personal traits and the capability to acclimatize to different business situations. Conclusion Companies in the globalization age are looking for professionals and global managers who have diverse business experience, speak foreign languages, and divide the same cultures as their clients and stakeholders .These abilities will augment a company's aptitude to infiltrate new markets, attain strategic goals, fasten innovation and amplify economic achievement. For all of these reasons employers should appoint you a person from different world!!! The job of finding and choosing managers for global leadership spots isn't simple. There are three points to keep in mind as we board on this challenge: Hiring managers must have some individual experience in order to recognize what qualities to look for. Possible candidates must have key competencies and show definite behavioral tendencies in order to be victorious. Organizations must generate lively development opportunities for their global managers to guarantee an elevated accomplishment rate. Given the moment, attempt and duty invested in making effectual global management teams, a 50% achievement rate must be enhanced upon in order for organization's to stay aggressive. The competition for effectual global managers will only add to over time. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard University states: "In the future, success will come to those companies, large and small, that can congregate global standards and tap into global networks." As the world "flattens," individuals possessing global leadership proficiency will be in towering demand. Oddou (1999) believes that flourishing multinational businesses will take the approach of drawing these key individuals by ascertaining a standing for being an "employer of choice" and by creating organizational cultures that are striking to these characteristic leaders. Whatsoever the assortment principle used by multinational employers, it's obvious that a tactical and holistic approach to global manager attainment is desirable. The research findings concerning managerial competencies can be obliging to businesses in increasing their global management recruitment efforts. If nothing moreover, it's tremendously significant that organizations recognize the truth that the ability sets necessary in usual local managerial positions are rather different from those obligatory in global administration situations. Bibliography Joyce Oliner, Elizabeth Espin Stern; (19-Mar-2003). Managing Internationally Diverse Company Staffing In Today's Economy. Society for Human Resource Management. Gary R. Oddou C. Brooklyn Derr; (1998). Managing Internationally: A Personal Journey. Frugal Media Corporation, (Austin, TX, U.S.A.). Publisher: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. ISBN: 0030068525. Oddou; Managing Internationally. (1999). Publisher: DRYDEN 1999, (Columbia, MO, U.S.A.). ISBN: 9780030068522. Sunil Mithas and Jonathan Whitaker; (2006). Success Factors in Outsourcing Service Jobs: Theory and Empirical Evidence. International Business. Vol. 48, No. 1, p. 7. Kate Bronfenbrenner and Stephanie Luce; December 2004. Offshoring: The Evolving Profile of Corporate Global Restructuring. Multinational Monitor. Online: Read More