International Staffing in the Vogelhaus - Case Study Example

TASK 1: INTERNATIONAL STAFFING IN THE VOGELHAUS CASE Staffing is a big challenge especially to firms that are in the international market. For instance, finding the right person for the job is very hectic and requires a lot of consideration especially in the international offices and branches. Ethnic background and nationalities come to play when hiring new employees or looking for people to do some certain work (Daniels, Radebaugh & Villarreal, 2007). There are different staffing methods that are available for internationally based firms that can work best with their selected strategies and organizational structures. The three main staffing strategies available include ethnocentric approach, polycentric and geocentric approach. In the Vogelhaus case study, PPV Company has opted for the ethnocentric approach. PPV Company is taking on the ethnocentric approach because they know that they have very good brand recognition and that they have very strong organizational standards. They want to ensure that the new acquisition becomes part of their success by using the same strategies. They are taking their current employees from PPV to head operations in the foreign land, Germany. They have supported James North, who is a manager from the American PPV office to head the HR office in Germany. They are also trying to bring in some of their employees by encouraging the elderly ones to retire early by giving them a very attractive retirement package. There are benefits and some disadvantages of this type of approach to staffing in international companies. The first advantage is that there is unity and better alignment of the interests and culture of the parent company in its subsidiaries (Luthans & Doh, 2015). By letting existing parent country staff to head foreign branches, they will go with the taught principles and cultures to that branch. There is also the advantage of better communication as there are barriers in language differences. The company also enjoys the certainty in the performance capabilities of the employees rather than pick someone from a foreign country without well-known capabilities to head their offices (Cole, 2011). One disadvantage of ethnocentric staffing approach is that it is a costly process as compared to the hiring of local employees which might create resistances (Perlmutter, 1969). It sometimes does not portray a good image to the locals as their own cannot be employed in the stores or offices. There is also an instance of poor innovation since there is no variety in employees. They also lack flexibility and local market responsiveness (Barlett et al., 2008). TASK 2: a. CULTURAL COMPARISON OF USA AND GERMANY USA and Germany have some major differences in their national cultures. For instance, Germany’s emphasizes on saving as a means to private consumption while USA advocates for credit driven spending. In terms of the social welfare, Germany has a higher expectation of the state provision services while in the USA, there is a shift from state provision services and has greatly lowered. The Americans are more social and friendly to other people as compared to the Germans who are somewhat cold and unfriendly to strangers. In Germany, there are much longer holidays that are celebrated while the working hours are shorter as compared to the USA. I would attribute this to the high income levels and development in the USA as compared to the German counterparts as they work less. b. HRM in the USA and in Germany There are some common aspects of the human resource management approach that are common in both USA and Germany. For instance, both countries believe that employees should not be discriminated or unfairly dismissed without proper channels (Milliman et. Al. 2002). They also provide avenues for petition in case of dismissal to ensure that the process was fair and just. In the Germany sector of business units, there are longer holidays as compared to the USA while there is shorter working hours which are less than twelve hours a day. In the United States there are more working hours which cause the high income levels and economic development. In Germany, there employees are less friendly to strangers than in the United States. According to Nosan, 2005, there is a very big difference in the subsidiary businesses of companies in Germany which have their host companies in the USA. For instance, subsidiaries in Germany follow the USA business practices and cultures and not Germany’s. In the same context, the subsidiaries in the USA soil follow the USA rules. c. How the Vogelhaus take over can lead to a culture clash From the case study we can deduce that when the PPV Company takes over the Vogelhaus Company that is based in Germany, they are planning on changing the whole management and employee team. They plan on introducing their USA based management to run things in Germany. This will surely cause some issues on the workplace given that the German people are less friendly and social to strangers. They will be more receptive to their own leading the marketing team. The same may be witnessed as the company is looking to retire the old employees with a good retirement package in order to employ new members from the USA. TASK 3: RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION Any growing business is tasked with the duty of finding the best employees to help it grow in both profits and size (Tung 1982). This means that the human resource management should be very proactive in their duties. They should be well equipped to deal with all the staffing and recruitment issues. They should be able to look and analyse the current employee situation and where there are deficiencies in the working aspects and find appropriate ways of finding the best candidate to carry out the work. They also need to know how best to prepare the new employees through training. International companies have a bigger task of finding the most suitable employees to work in different countries of their operations taking into consideration the cultures and host country business units development. The very first step in any employment contract is the recruitment and selection process. This recruitment and selection process involves the human resource expert in the organization identifying the most appropriate strategy of attracting the best employees in the industry who qualify with the desired skills and expertise to the firm (Christensen & Harzing 2004). The success of the process will depend on the ability of the human resource manager to identify and bring in the candidates with the most appropriate skills to fill a vacancy. Individuals can be selected according to their self-oriented dimensions which includes their ability to bring about adaptability in the work place, others-oriented dimension which is the ability of an expatriate to abide with the host nations desire to interact; cultural-toughness dimensions and the perceptual dimensions of the expatriate. Some of the factors to consider in those areas of international assignments include their technical abilities, cultural requirements, language adaptability, family requirements and cross-cultural sustainability (Price Waterhouse 1997). As above discussed, the ability of the expatriate to adopt to the cultures of the host country is very important, I would recommend that PPV considers this factor while sending someone to Germany to be the head of such a delicate department as human resource. If they cannot find someone who can comfortably interact with the host country, they better look for a suitable candidate who is German and who can very well interact with the locals effectively to bring about more sales revenues to the company (Harzing 2005) TASK 4: TRAINING In most cases, international firms always want to maintain their successful business cultures or their current organizational influence to the markets. According to Collins, 1996, the major reason that leads to international assignment failures is the lack of adjustments to the host culture. This leads to premature return of the expatriates before finishing the desired work. In most cases, the assignees experience a cultural shock brought about by the change of environment from a familiar cultural environment to a less familiar environment. It is usually a challenge when it comes to identifying and adjusting effectively to the new cultural environment which primarily determines the success of an expatriate. It is for this reasons that the international organization should take time to educate and train their new international assignees on the prevailing culture and other factors that are in the host country. One of the major area that need orientation when preparing an expatriate to conduct international assignment is the social or the interpersonal skills (Forster 2000). A research was conducted and found that interpersonal skills were the basic means of communication between the host nation’s people and the expatriate (Tung 1987). The ability of the expatriate to communicate effectively with the hosts will give him a way of task completion and friendly environment for the workers to work on. Language barriers should also be addressed when looking at cultural integration. Being able to communicate with the workers and subordinates is very key in determining the achievement of the goals and objectives as well as the accomplishment of the main jobs and tasks (Verma, Kochan & Lansbury 1995). Another challenge that faces employees on international assignments includes parochialism and the simplification aspects (Jackson 1995). Parochialism refers to the situation whereby a person views the world through their own eyes rather than a neutral person’s view. Simplification is when a person is unable to view people as equals and therefore unable to consider all cultural groups the same. An effective employee should be able to interact with all people regardless of their colour or race. Another issue is the culinary adaptability in which one should be able to observe their foods that they will eat while in the host nation (Weech 2001). TASK 5: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT 1. Managing the performance of international assignees In evaluating the performance of international assignments, some challenges are experienced by the parent company. One of the major challenges arises when there are inappropriate appraisal or performance evaluation criteria (Bonache 2001). The parent company should put in place technical, intercultural, developmental and organizational criteria for evaluation which should match with the set goals and objectives. Another challenge arises as a result if inadequate training to the personnel hired. When there is a rating bias by the parent company, there will be some problems in effectively gauging the performance. Cultural adjustments will also be a key factor to consider when evaluating the performance (Black & Gregersen 1997). This means that they need to measure the progress of the foreign company as well. The host environment will affect the performance criteria and should as well be considered (Black 1992). 2. Benefits and challenges of standardising performance management Companies that have branches or subsidiaries in a given region or country tend to compare the performance of these subsidiaries against some specific criteria. It is however a very crucial task to consider several factors that differs in the internal and external environment of each company. For this reason, we find that there are different criteria set for each company for their performance evaluation. Some companies however use standard criteria for all their companies and subsidiaries regardless of where they are located (Boyacigiller 1991). This system of evaluation faces some challenges but still enjoys some benefits. One of the major advantages is that there is a uniform platform for rewarding individual efforts. This means that there is a uniform criteria for measuring the success of the company subsidiaries such that they don’t feel that one of them is being favoured. Another advantage is that well-constructed evaluation criteria, will bring about competition among the firms which is healthy for the firm (Black & Gregersen 1997). The disadvantage in this case is that this method ignores the different internal and external environmental factors that affect the performance and profitability of the companies since they are not all located in same environment (DeNisi & Pritchard, 2006). For instance, there are issues with the political and economic trends in a host country. Another disadvantage is that the system is somehow discriminative as the sizes of the company subsidiaries are not the same and some companies may be very small and are expected to compete with the larger firms (Chapman 1996). TASK 6: A REPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE FUNCTION Relocating Vogelhaus to China China and japan have been the two counties that have been having the largest economy in the world (Downes & Thomas 2014). It was also the fastest growing economy by the year 2015 and has also a very huge purchasing power. Its major exports are machineries and other manufacturing products. This makes it the largest exporter of goods in the world (Cummings & Schwab 2012). With this said, china is one of the focal countries in the world’s trade whereby it has established several free trade movement of goods with several countries such as Australia and South Korea. The population of china is about 1.36 billion which is the largest population in the world (Callick 2013). This population has a very small number of youths with the largest number being of the elderly people. This has been caused by their one child policy of which was recently changed to a two child policy in order to fight the decreasing youth population. With this population, they are the largest consumer country and the largest importers of goods and services. Therefore, Vogelhaus relocation to china would be a very good decision which will be taking advantage of the large consumer market and the booming economy of China. However, the company needs to have a strategic plan to implement while taking their business to china as many foreign companies have collapsed in China due to the cultural background of China. In terms of determining the best personnel to send to undertake international assignments and in particular in China, they must carefully consider and evaluate the following issues. The first criterion is the technical competency (Fieldman & Thomas 1992). Technical competency involves the ability of a person to successfully tackle and implement the task at hand to completion. The assignees skills and qualifications will be considered here. Employees with past experience in international assignments will be most suitable. An individual should exhibit strong leadership skills and as well as high self-direction and motivation with low supervision requirements. The intercultural performance of an individual will be the next aspect to consider. This will include the ability of a person to integrate well with the cultural and social elements of the host country. This means that a successful assignee will have to see the world as a global market place with the same people and therefore, they should treat everyone equally (Forster 2000). In this section, the family situation comes to play. It is important to consider if the candidates family will have to relocate to the foreign country or not. The next criterion is the organizational performance aspect. The person who is being selected for an international assignment should have a good performance record from previous assignments. This will mean that he or she can tackle what is ahead. Apart from their individual performance, the individuals should be able to work according to the organizational rules and regulations set forth by the company management. For instance, they should be able to maintain a high ethical and integrity code of conduct, promoting and facilitating a positive image of the company. Lastly, the developmental performance criterion should be put into consideration (Fieldman &Thomas 1992). This includes the knowledge based traits of an employee such as their ability to acquire the new language, ability to learn how the host country runs different activities such as the meetings and negotiating with the customers and suppliers. Recommendations It is very important that the parent company international human resource management to be very equipped to handle and support the different international assignees requirements to facilitate effective administration and performance of foreign businesses. They should be able to identify the most effective employees who can fit in the foreign country and that the family will have a smooth time integrating with the hosts. They should also offer enough training to the selected candidates as well as set in place effective performance evaluation criteria for the international assignees (Early 1987). Read More