Human Resource Management - Essay Example

First of all, an international human resource management system ensures that positions are filled by appropriately qualified persons if there are no local nationals available. Secondly, it enables management development across borders. Thirdly, human resource management in multinational companies allow the building of linkages between the parent company and the international subsidiaries. This paper examines the critical factors that shape managers' choice in transferring the parent company's human rights management (HRM) to overseas subsidiaries.

It identifies the influential forces that shape such choices and illustrates them with practical examples. To this end, the paper tries to fulfil the following objectives: 1. Identification of business strategy and structure that affects the choice of HRM systems for foreign branches of a business. 2. Analysis of external factors that affect a business' choice of human resource management transfer systems for an international business in its overseas operations 3. Examination of implementation issues that affect the type of choices that HR managers of parent companies can make about the transfer of human resource management systems to overseas branches.

Business Strategy & Structure & International Human Resource Management Choices Every MNC has to draw a balance between globalisation and localisation. Meier (2009) calls it a balance between standardisation and customisation. In other words, a business will have to either prescribe a set of uniform standards for all the international branches or allow international branches to develop their own local standards. In real life, a UK business that has international subsidiaries will have to decide whether the subsidiaries around the world will operate according to standards in the UK or create their own systems and methods.

In the case of PriceWaterHouse Coopers, there is an international application of standards that exist in the UK head office. This is a globalised entity. On the other hand, KPMG exists as a group of independent accounting firm. Each national branch operates independent of the Swiss headquarters. According to Meier, the way this discourse exists in relation to human resource management transfer can best be examined on three fundamental levels. The strategy of a business in relation to whether it wants to go according to globalisation or localisation determines the policies of the business (Tempel, 2001 p115).

In other words, the strategy determined by the top-level management set the tone for functional managers of strategic business units to come up with a policy. The policies determine the practice in the department. Thus, for the Human Resource department, the main determinant of the transfer of practices is the overall strategy of the business. The strategy determines the HRM activities of the business. This goes a long way to influence the transfer and other practices related to the overall tone of human resource management and its transfer.

Strategy refers to the overall plans for a business determined by top level management with a view of guiding a company between the medium and long term (Cook, 2008 p76). Strategy is a critical element that affects the Human Resource Manager's choice of transferring company Human Resource Management to overseas management because it sets the framework between which the HR Manager operates. As such, the manager needs to remain within the scope of the