HRM in International Context - Essay Example

Contents Introduction 2 The human resource department is of colossal importance with regards to sustaining the competitive advantage in any company. This paper will look at the best possible hiring method and selection in regards to the deployment procedures of international expansion of a company where a HR manager has to be hired. The best policy will be analyzed so that the optimal results can be experienced. The international HR manager will have a diverse range of activities from hiring to interacting with people at larger levels. Any kind of loop holes in this domain can cost the company a lot of monetary damage thus different criteria will be discussed. Risks in this process and their solutions will also be discussed. 2 Staffing policy 2 Benefits of the chosen staffing policy 3 Criteria for Selection 5 Risk factors to look for while hiring 6 Development Program 7 HRM policy for the case study 8 Risks, Threats and Solutions 10 European HRM and long term goals 11 Conclusion 12 Recommendations 13 References 14 Introduction The human resource department is of colossal importance with regards to sustaining the competitive advantage in any company. This paper will look at the best possible hiring method and selection in regards to the deployment procedures of international expansion of a company where a HR manager has to be hired. The best policy will be analyzed so that the optimal results can be experienced. The international HR manager will have a diverse range of activities from hiring to interacting with people at larger levels. Any kind of loop holes in this domain can cost the company a lot of monetary damage thus different criteria will be discussed. Risks in this process and their solutions will also be discussed. Staffing policy International staffing is of immense importance in the modern corporate world of today because of multifarious challenges related to business expansions and exposure of industry throughout the world (Weihrich et al, 2008). Ethnocentric staffing policy will be used in this case and the human resource manager will be hired from the company not from the remote targeted area because of the fact that ethnocentric policy intends to expand the core competencies of the company to the place where it is to be deployed. The key requirements of the job is to uphold the company work objectives and this requirement is perfectly in demand of the staffing policy which will make sure that the true potential of the company in terms of performance, results and services is deployed. Any business or company that is looking to expand globally cannot sustain growth rate without optimal staffing strategies in the international context. In the given scenario, there can be a lot of options for the staffing policy and it is dependent on different volatile variables but keeping in view the company demands and international canvas setups, ethnocentric staffing policy will be best to adopt while hiring international HR manager (Perkins et al, 2006). Ethnocentric staffing policy argues to hire the individuals from the company with the intention of transferring the core competencies beyond the borders. In this approach, the intent is to hire an individual from the parent country which is the base line of the company and headquarters. All the services, instructions and process of the HR related activates takes place from the parent oriented culture. Another staffing policy that can be best used in this case is geocentric in which there is an increased canvas of scope and the organizational hierarchy can hire best human resource irrespective of their location and nationality. This staffing policy promises the best results because this policy is feasible and prone to changes in terms of adaptability. In this policy, translational strategies must be inculcated because the need of both global integration and local responsiveness is very high. Any person who is hired for the position will need immediate assistance if he is not able to communicate optimally with the local bodies and there is a great need to enhance the hierarchical positioning in the company which will make sure the company’s core competencies are being applied optimally. Benefits of the chosen staffing policy Ethnocentric staffing is best for the international hiring because this policy will expatriate and expand the company’s core competencies and culture with the uniformity (Cherunliam, 2007). International expansion of companies can be a tedious job to experience many a time because of the lack of Lack of qualified host country nationals (HCNs). The company will become vulnerable to lose the competitive advantage if the key positions related to human resource management will experience the lack of communication and sound technical abilities. Ethnocentric staffing policy will be optimal in regards of performance and adherence to the corporate policies because the HR manger who is well aware of the companies working culture and organizational needs will be able to stick to the working dynamics in the most professional way within less time. “Need for local responsiveness” will also be depleted that will in turn augment the revenues because the local responsiveness if of paramount importance when the company is shifted to the global canvas. (Small Business, 2012) The potential gaps between the company’s top hierarchy and local productions outlets will also be minimized and the prolific performance will be depicted because of the fact that the HR manager will be totally aware of the psyche of the managers of the company and he will hire the best resources at the local markets that will ensure the elevated rate of profits in a very prolific way. The ethnocentric approach of staffing will also provide the company’s top notch employees with international exposure which is necessary to inculcate the fundamentals of the corporate culture today. Because the company wants to expand the local services at the international level, the personnel must be hired from the parent company because this will augment the understanding and requirements gathering phase as the person who is more aware of the company’s organizational hierarchy will be more comfortable in explaining the corporate goals to the local marketers. This approach of staffing is also prolific because it will compensate for the lack of technical and managerial abilities of the host country’s human resource. (Dhrm, 2009) The benefits of geocentric staffing polices are diverse and augmented. The company will get a chance to hire the best person available for this position irrespective of the nationality and location. This flexible policy will allow to adapt the requirements of the industry and if there is a need to hire a person who is excelling in a dedicated field. The company will have a capacity to easily judge the exact requirements of the business scenarios and then make a hiring decisions whereas the staffing policy discussed above can lead to closed ended decisions in which there is a very limited space of flexibility. Criteria for Selection Munro Fraser’s criterion is best to evaluate the potential candidate for the job post (Simpson, 2002). According to this criterion, there are five basic characteristics that must be looked while selecting any candidate. The first is Impact on others, which mean that the potential HR manger must be of strong and authoritative personality, his attitude and body language must be strong because of the fact that the managerial positions require a lot of human and cultural competence abilities instead of the technical abilities (Nickson, 2007). He must be able for make his point and influence others because influencing others through proper arguments and personality make up is the art which can elevate the smooth running process o the company. The potential candidate is going to be working in the alien environment in the host country so he must be able to foresee the threats and manage the problems that will come (Wilton, 2011). The second variable that is decisive in this criterion is acquired qualification, education, training and work experience. Because the individual is going to be performing at the top notch positions, he will be responsible for a lot of works that will be decisive in determining the future course of action in the company. The management should make sure that the hired person has the minimum degree in the management and human resource studies and some experience in running the startups because the company is in the expansion phase and there will be a great need to cope up with the unforeseen circumstances of the projects that are new. There is also an incumbent need to acquire working abilities of the potential candidate and for this purpose the staffing process must be transparent. The third criterion is the capacity to learn and understand, the candidate must be able to comprehend the basic requirements of the new workplace in order to generate the maximum profits for the new franchise of the company. (Hrcounci, 1999) Risk factors to look for while hiring There must be different situations in the host country and there are many barriers at start which must be depleted in order to increase the manufacturing of the complete index of the company. The learning capability must be strong enough in order to make sure that the candidate adjusts in the environment quickly with fewer efforts. The start up phase can be very tricky and because of the ethnocentric approach, the candidate will be new to the host country and that is the reason why a lot of effort must be put in the staffing phase in order to choose the best possible candidate. Motivation is another grave factor which is paramount importance because there may be hostile environments in the new place so the organizational goals must be met with a strong level of commitment and the potential candidate must be able to face the challenges from the front in order to ensure the sustaining rate of the initiative. Cultural competence, emotional stability and stress management is the most important factor that must be looked for in the potential candidate for this top notch position while staffing. Development Program Unitary theory is best suited in this scenario because the staffing policy is ethnocentric and the top hierarchical leadership will be willing to sustain the same thoughts and ideas in the host country. The HR manager will be required to cope up with multifarious challenges in the different societal context but the development must be carried out in a manner which can pave an easy way for him (Moitra, 1996). He must be given detailed insight on the dynamics of the European corporate culture and how different forms of investments can be managed in the environments in the European frame of reference. The development program is totally dependent upon how the top notch leadership communicates with the best practices with the potential HR manger. The development program must include cultural competence lectures and training programs. There must be regular visits from the central leadership so that the HR manager can have the insight about how his performance is going and how he will be able to meet the organizational goals. According to the principals of the voice of the employees, there must be regular hearing from the HR manager in order to facilitate him about different problems. There must be regular inputs from the employees working under him in order to have the complete grasp of the gravity of the situation and the managerial requirements must be fulfilled in order to understand the proper organizational requirements. There development program must be oriented and nurtured in such a way that the problematic features of the ongoing project gets solved as early as possible without any delays. Upward problem solving approach must be inculcated because the lowest level employees can really tell the nature of the problems occurring to the company. Without the inculcation of the ground level employees, the trickledown effect of the benefits will never be realized in its full sense. The Mutuality & Cooperation principal must be practiced which plays a key role in augmenting the loyalty of the manager with the company (Mazzarol, 2003). The development program must also focus to diminish the problems that the international HR manager will face in the upcoming phases of the expansion of the company. The potential HR manager must be trained about the local market orientation because apart from all the advantages of the ethnocentric policy of staffing the international HR manager, still there are a lot of drawbacks and there is a great chance that the new manger will be ignorant of the remote markets because he is from the parent country and mere knowledge of the company’s corporate culture and competitive dynamics will not suffice in order to excel in the alien environments (Holt, 2002). The development program must make sure that the hired HR manger visits the country where the company intends to open the expansion branch and he must try to get familiar with the new working dynamics. The hiring of the employees under him wills also need a lot of training and the development phase must be a continuo’s process until complete establishment. ( eCornell, 2013) HRM policy for the case study Franchising seems to be the best HRM policy in this case because the company’s infrastructure is centred and franchising gives the benefit of promoting the company’s brand without making a strong effort in terms of investment and export decisions. There is a strong need to inculcate the fact that franchising is the best strategy to expand where the chances of risk are augmented. In franchising the company will not have to invest a lot, buy infra structure, offices, human resources and other necessary deployments (Pardhan & Pardhan, 2009; Press, 2006). The risk factor is very much elevated if a business tries to expand in the alien environment with a very large investment because if the business does not grow, there is a chance of losses manifolds. Franchising focuses to outsource the company’s brand name by giving it to the best possible bid maker to the tender so that the potential client promises to augment the profits. The company will have to give the relevant share from the profits and thus there will be a regular source of revenue for the company. If this case study s taken into consideration, the ethnocentric approach is used in the staffing the international manager, the manager will be from the parent country so he will not be aware of the minute details of the local market trends. This is the paramount reason behind the selection of the franchising of the company’s expansion strategy because the company will just have to place the right person on the key position and the local level jobs such as manufacturing, service providence and other low level workings will be performed by the best possible human resource available at the local canvas. This will not only deplete the problems of the expansion phase, it will also make life of the HR manager easy because he will get periodic assistance from the people who are well aware of the tricky local markets. The costs of risks will also be decreased and popular solutions are best in order to expand the particular scenarios. Another choice can be “strategic alliance “in which the company will make a business contract with the remote partner in order to perform at the optimal level. The risks are increased in this strategy but with the increase of risks, the profits also tend to increase. The strategic alliance will give the company an edge to divide the workload and if the alliance is done with the local partner, there will be increased technical and human resource support Risks, Threats and Solutions The possible risks involved are the potential dangers that can be manifested because of the ethnocentric staffing approach. The hired international HR manager will be performing very crucial job where the company is expanding in a host country (Sims, 2007). As ethnocentric approach argues that the person will be hired from the parent country, there are many shortcoming like lack of awareness of the local markets and slow penetration in the market trends. The new HR manager can take time which can deplete the chances of is swift penetration in the markets. The brand loyalty is not an easy job to acquire in the expansion phases of the company therefore the increased risk is involved in this technique. Similarly, the hiring will be done from the local environments and if the HR manger will not be able to grasp the human resource trends of the new markets within less time then there will be increased chance of mismanagement and the profitability index will suffer. The hiring process takes a lot of time and it needs a great competitive approach to hire the best human resource (Ban et al, 2003). The HR manager will have to face a lot of challenges and elevates the risk more. Pressures of local responsiveness can also be a risk factor because the product must be tailored according to the local needs because there are different tastes around the world and brand name cannot be sold out less than one type of product. In order to cope up with this risk there is a great need to expand the proper maintenance of the performance related services and the HR manager must maintain a track of the people’s response. There should be periodic checks and other surveys in order to ensure that people at the host country are happy with the product otherwise the product dynamics must be changed and aligned in order to meet the organizational needs. There is another risk in the expansion strategy of HRM and that is the local barriers posed by the government (Condrey, 2010). There can be harsh policies and multifarious barriers related to procurement policies. The company must perform a good sophisticated homework in order to increase the services of profitability of the franchise. The local partners must be contacted in order to pave the way to smooth the unforeseen barriers. The whole policy of the company must be passed from the local legal officers so that the future of the company can be restored and people can invest without any fear. The host country’s dynamics can be a threat in promoting the product so cultural competence factor must be inculcated. It is not necessary that the trend which is loved by the people of one locality is also in aligned with the people of the other locality so the human resource manager must look out for such kind of threats and risks that can pose any kind of damage to the company’s profile. (Prossylink, 2012) European HRM and long term goals Currently there a lot of legal technicalities that are involved in the European HRM dynamics so the long term planning must be inculcated in order to make sure that the company remain aligned with the organizational as well as the host country requirements (International abstracts of human resources: A guide to the literature of management, human resources, and personnel, 2003). The European working councils are very rich in employee rights therefore the company will have to make the wages of the employees at a very good rate. The performance factor is also good in the European sectors compare o the other countries and if the country manages to get hold of the tip of the success and the stating phase of the expansion goes well then there will an increased chance of the augmentation of profitability. Conclusion There must be a proper planning phase before adapting the HR strategies and all the top hierarchal leadership must be taken on board. If the hiring decision is to be made then it must be made sure that the company’s requirements are being set as the main and primary goal to achieve. The objective survey of all the main points are very useful in this regard and if the managers of the top hierarchy can visit the targeted place of the intended growth, it will bring a great benefit in the hiring process because the leadership will have the relationship with the workforce. The human resource strategy must be aligned with the organizational goals and the expansion of the company must be a controlled process where all the variants that can be decisive in nature should be taken into consideration. The staffing approach will reveal its benefits if the consistent assistance to the international HR is given and he is updated with the intention of local responsiveness. There is also a need to keep the international HR manager updated about the company’s policies from time to time and then the results will be perfectly in accordance with the company’s goals. There is also a strong need to support the fact that the important variants for the success of the company are the penetrations strategy. The staffing approach once selected must be confirmed and all the risk factors must be depleted before taking any step. The host country must be visited by the potential HR manager before taking charge of the processing and he must take a lot of interest in developing familiarity of the local market trends. Having an insight of the company’s corporate culture is a good thing but the expansion strategy cannot be succeeded only with this factor. There are multifarious things which must be inculcated and the development program must ensure the professional approach to this expansion initiative. The success largely depends upon the serious attitude. Recommendations The company must spend a good amount of time in hiring and staffing phase and after the hiring of the right candidate, he must be passed through the training phase because the ethnocentric approach will be demanding that the hired candidates should at least know the minute details of the market trends of the host country otherwise there are increased chances of initial failure. The company should also use the franchising techniques and try to penetrate the local market as early as they can. The marketing mix which is basically a combination of four components must be inculcated if the success is to be achieved early in the company’ life. There is also an increased need of using the best possible promotional techniques of the products of services. The promotional campaign must be aligned with the local culture in order to avoid any kind of corporate problems. References Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Ban, C., Drahnak-Faller, A., & Towers, M. (2003). Human Resource Challenges in Human Service and Community Development Organizations Recruitment and Retention of Professional Staff. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 23(2), 133-153. Cherunilam, F. (2007). International business: Text and cases. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India. Condrey, S. E. (2010). Handbook of human resource management in government. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Dhrm.state.va.us (2009) HR Policies. [online] Available at: http://www.dhrm.state.va.us/hrpolicy/policy.html [Accessed: 11 Apr 2013]. eCornell Enterprise Learning Solutions (2000) Building a Management Development Program 8 Best Practices. [online] Available at: http://enterprise.ecornell.com/8best [Accessed: 11 Apr 2013]. Holt, K. (2002). Market oriented product innovation: A key to survival in the third millennium. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group. Hrcouncil.ca (1999) Selection & Hiring | Getting the Right People | HR Toolkit | hrcouncil.ca. [online] Available at: http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/right-people-selection.cfm [Accessed: 11 Apr 2013]. International abstracts of human resources: A guide to the literature of management, human resources, and personnel. (2003). Chelsea, Mich: International Abstracts of Human Resources. Mazzarol, T. (2003). A model of small business HR growth management.International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 9(1), 27-49. Moitra, M. K. (1996). ROLE OF AN ADMINISTRATOR AS A CITY MANAGER.Challenge And Change In Indian Administration, 5, 293. Nickson, D. (2007). Human resource management for the hospitality and tourism industries. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Perkins, S. J., Shortland, S. M., & Perkins, S. J. (2006). Strategic international human resource management: Choices and consequences in multinational people management. London: Kogan Page. Pradhan, S., & Pradhan, S. (2009). Retailing management: Text and cases. New Delhi, India: Tata Mcgraw-Hill Education Pvt. Ltd. Press, D. T. (2006). Franchising For Dummies®. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Prossylink (2012) Advantages and disadvantages of ethnocentrism. [online] Available at: http://prossylink.hubpages.com/hub/Advantages-and-disavantages-of-ethnocentrism [Accessed: 11 Apr 2013]. Simpson, S. (2002). Recruitment. Human Resources in Organisations, 52. Sims, R. R. (2007). Human resource management: Contemporary issues, challenges and opportunities. Greenwich, Conn: Information Age Publ. Small Business - Chron.com (2012) When Is It Appropriate to Use Ethnocentric Staffing?. [online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/appropriate-use-ethnocentric-staffing-10189.html [Accessed: 11 Apr 2013] Weihrich, H., Koontz, H., & Cannice, M. V. (2008). Management: A global and entrepreneurial perspective. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill. Wilton, N. (2011). An introduction to human resource management. Los Angeles: SAGE. Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Read More