Role of International Human Resource Manager - Essay Example

?Do you think that intercountry differences affect HRM practices and strategies? Discuss and debate the specific activities an international HR manager typically engages in, using cases and examples. Name Course Professor Date of Submission Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………,,……………. 3 Review of Literature ……………………………….……………,,…………….. 5 Inter-country inequities and disparities……………………………,,……………5 Human Resource Management …………………………………..………………6 Analysis ……………………………………………………...…………………...8 a.Role of International Human Resource Manager ………………………………8 b.Resource-based View ………………………………………………………….10 c. Required Competence ………………..……………………………………….11 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………..12 Introduction Intercountry differences refer to substantial distinction and variant geopolitics and economic relations adopted and practiced within specific respective region, including the dissimilarities of opportunities present in a social sphere (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 1-10). Some people would perceive that this egregious disparity violate their sense of being especially if there is little that can be done to transform the divergence between advanced and emerging country. Is this situation affecting corporate human resource management strategies and practices? This paper will critically discuss human resource management within the context of intercountry differences using peer-reviewed journals and books sourced from online publication and books from the library. The researcher will likewise demonstrate the significance of the importance between corporate and human resource (HR) strategy, including the management of performance and development. Researcher will likewise synthesize the inter-relationship between the key areas of organizational strategy and HRM. It is further hoped that researcher will be able to demonstrate the significance of wider environmental context in the drafting and formulation of HRM strategy. The researcher will use qualitative study in the explication of the subject using descriptive narratives that are sourced from secondary peer-reviewed journals and books. Qualitative study offers complex textual descriptions about organizational experiences and observations notwithstanding the differing behaviours, beliefs, opinions, emotions, and relationships (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 12). It is a generally used effective tool in identifying factors, social norms, socioeconomic conditions, and other causes associated in this study. Researcher maximize the historical and contemporary evidences to elucidate the subject matter hand and in correlating strategic human resource management with business management offshore. Whilst delving into the inter-country differences and its affects to human resource management, the researcher will likewise appreciates the contemporary values of the society that have serious implications in this study. Such encompassed concerns on beliefs, behaviours, objects, and characteristics, adhered by the populace in a society, including the oppressive system of governance, have strong influence in their decision-makings (Plummer, 1983, p. 18). Review of Literature Organizational strategists noted that human resource management is influenced by variegated factors and influences emanating from socio-political, cultural, and economic disparities. Intercountry inequities and disparities The market, which is less perfect, reflects such inequalities in power and wealth that is also deflected to opportunities and the manner on how resources are allocated and on how potentials are maximized (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). Different countries have varied economic policies, employment regulations, and resource distortions or disparities. If capital is only consistent and perfect, there would have no significant discussion about the relation of investment and about the distribution of wealth or all may have equal opportunity to access finance and to sell equities in a firm (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). But every country has just its own different economic situation. As a matter of fact, they all differ in credit and interest rates across lenders; differ in salary scheme and standards; they face risks differences; and required capital for operation. Aside from that, off-shore policies in different countries also have distinct market policies and production vary, depending on the capacity and the internal-external forces that are supportive or not to corporate management (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). Also, expected returns of investments are reliant on location, networks, culture, discrimination, race, and peace condition of the company (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). These are realities that the company needs to grapple and make some decision-makings and strategizing to be able to sustain its corporate presence amidst intercountry mode of social stereotyping (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). But as economic and political disparities or inequalities are impaired by institutional development, capacitating institutions and understanding their historical contexts could help corporate management determine how to perfect the relations to gain local incentives and ease constraints (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). At the outset, it’s understood that variegated institutions are organized through historical processes and their structure are designed to maintain the nature of political influence it intended to enforce. Hence, market imperfection and disparities that benefited them (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 2-20). Those social structures that promote inequality of wealth, statuses and power also caused negative impacts to social investment, innovation, risk management and undermine strategic growth. Human Resource Management The differences, as discussed in the preceding paragraphs, posed as major challenges in the on how to bring about corporate management that are contextualized in cross-country historical narratives but at the same time direct corporate performance to attain its reasonable business interests based on ruling circumstances. The company’s flexibility and adherence to standards coupled with good relations with governmental authorities remained the formidable processes – as ways of contributing to the reduction of global inequities (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 15-39). Albeit regional differences, companies operating offshore must evaluate the geopolitics in the region to (a) determine what are the best policies that are offered by the state that can be maximized as legal foundation in business relations; (b) see what the company can equitably promote in the region that could help in the redistribution of influence, advantage and subsidies that could assist its communities instead of dominant groups; and (c) look into economic and tax policies, including how the government is spending the tax contributions, and evaluate how the corporate social responsibility of the company localized it in an advantageous trade-offs and in full transformational benefits that will be rewarding to the management as well as to the country where business is operated (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 15-39). But whilst the strategically leveraging from the dichotomy of growth and internal policies of served state, the company must adhere to standards of international human resource management. This means (a) hiring employees with expertise and skills required for business operations; (b) defining salaries and incentives scheme for those who provide exceptional performance services; (c) provision of motivational policies for human resources thru incentives, benefits and perks; (d) enforcing corporate policies to regulate the behaviours of the employees using corporate standard of ethics; ( e ) develop complementary policies for risk management by upholding safety nets and trainings; (f) involving human resource in participatory decision-making especially when managing changes and in increasing their performances; (g ) upholding corporate management that is supportive to local governance and human resource empowerment; (h) ensure accountable mechanism that could influence development effectiveness; and (i) uphold the culture of diversity and adhere to transparency (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 15-39). These strategies are observably utilized by successful multinational companies such as Apple, Microsoft, SAS, NetApp, Facebook, Google, FedEx, Cisco, Marriot Hotels, McDonalds, Kimberly-Clark, SC-Johnson and the like (Rogers, 2011, p. 1). Analysis With gargantuan tasks at hand, HR manager must ensure that human resources are hired based on the criterion set by internal policies of the company, aside from standards of skills, knowledge and expertise. Role of International Human Resource Manager Managers must adhere to hiring policies and standards, instead of attenuating inequalities by birth, status or by race. Human resource capacities are not driven by the circumstances surrounding their birth but must be based on their cognitive and social developments attained from formal education and experiences. The quality of education attained and the experiences derived from previous employment matters. This should be complemented by corporate rules and standards to attain quality performance to reach targets and desired outcomes. Companies, as has been known, conduct business in accordance to strategic plans, goals, objectives, goals, results and outcomes. These are however completed following international standards of international and national laws of the company and based on the complexity of global market. Formal regulations must be observed, including respect to international covenants on rights and trading, to ensure that safety measures are adopted amid underlying power imbalances between the corporate and public interests. Whilst we observed that some global markets and developing countries significantly benefit from global trade, capital flows, migration policies, and broad sharing of growth (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 1-30). If the company operates within a developing or emergent economy, the human resource management must understand how reliant its economy is reliant to foreign aids, public investments, and the like to generate endowments for human and infrastructural developments (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2005, pp. 1-30). Wei (2006) pointed that company can only gain sustainable competitive advantage by strategically managing human resources depending on the conditions and policies applied by the corporation to attained performance (p. 49). This entails some underlying interactive role of HRM practices viz-a-viz organisational strategy and the facilitating factors befitting the adapted mechanism for corporate growth. What is imperative here is that they, the human resources are genuinely functional at the organizational level – both in the horizontal fit and vertical fit. This connotes that the human resource management are able to strategically design and implement a set of internally consistent regulations and standard practices for the company’s human capital, whether operating domestically or offshore, to reach business objectives (Schuler & MacMillan, 1984, p. 241; Baird & Meshoulam, 1988, p. 116; Jackson & Schuler,1995, p. 237). This goes beyond traditional HRM because contemporary employment practices has already set of standards on the recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, human resource development and the administration of compensation and benefits. With combined HRM operation and business strategy, human resources can be dealt in ways that are aimed at optimizing them to achieve the organisational goals for competitive advantage or leverage. The latter is contextualized from the resource-based perspective of strategic human resource management. Resource-based View For the company to attain sustainable competitive advantage against other competing firms, the human resources must be considered valuable, unique (rare), inimitable and non-substitutable. That means that the company must be able to hire employees with such inherent distinction and expertise par excellence, whose performance and abilities bring about business intelligence and leadership albeit complexity and causal ambiguity(Barney, 1991, p. 99; Boxall, 1998, p. 265). Through this, the strategic integration of human resources to corporate goals generates competitive advantage for the company. Experts opined that resource-based view of HRM require that employees must possess such high values and capacities that are exceptional; not just some kind of human resources that are technically differentiated. They are those human resources whose presence evidently pursues an integrated strategy of the company with their expertise. Hence, the company must employ high quality employees and designate them in proper positions and motivating them to devote on their roles to contribute in the attainment of goals. Organizational experts suggest that this require systematic design, approaches, mechanism, and practices. In consonance thereto, performance management and appraisals should also be standardized to maintain their high performance. Required Competence  Companies with offshore operation must manage the human resources based on their core competencies. This will inspire the management to endeavour to exercise its administrative function with utmost competence, expert decision-making, and in the acquisition of business resource. It is also an imperative for the management to optimize the approaches for resource transformation whilst acting on the production of goods and services. The capacity of human resource manager is therefore critical in developing an internal and strategic human resource system. Managers must likewise demonstrate support to HR functions as its backbone for operational and organizational performance. Such will show how the top management value their workers as stakeholders of business strategic making process (Martell, Gupta & Carroll, 1996, p. 18). As HR functions is fundamentally based on adding value to the organization, the employees should be consulted and be allowed to participate in some decision-makings pertaining to their performance and in the implementation of strategies. Thus, HR managers’ capability, the top management expertise and support, and the employees’ knowledge and skills are maximized to affect HRM practices and firm strategy. All of them contribute to the execution of business strategies and in gaining competitive leverage. Conclusion Strategic human resource management and practices are designed to reinforce functional implications of organizational strategies (Porter, 1985, p. 1) to varying context of international business operation. The company must diversify its approach to fit in to the policies, needs, leadership strategy, social context, and political nature of the place where the business is operating. The management must opt to employ human resources whose knowledge, expertise, skills, and capacities must be par excellence to generate the desired performance dreamt by the company to leverage from the rest of its competitors. Further, the human resource management must strategize its functionalities to integrate itself to the strategic business plans and management of the company. Martell, Gupta and Carroll (1996) opined that the effects of different HR practices and business strategy on firm performance are imperative to broader organizational strategy (p. 18). This is essential to uphold international business management, leadership and excellence of service within the continuum of the company’s corporate life. This finding is likewise reflected in a study affirmed the need to establish set of strategic HRM practices which encompassed training, participation, results-oriented appraisals, and internal career opportunities to generate positive product and service performance and financial performance (Akhtar, Ding & GE, 2008, p. 15). Great employment security and producing services that are distinctly contributing to the product and service performance, whereas profit sharing contributes uniquely to financial performance. Treating the human capital as organizational capital will compel the management to opt for workers that have excellence knowledge, skills, and capabilities with strong corporate culture to attain its desired performance domestically and offshore. The HRM must be considerate in acting justly and humanely in managing its resources to encourage career development; appreciation of diversity; enjoyment of multifunctionalism; and, make them truly contextual in their services. The corporate administrative bureaucracy has the entire strategic role in harnessing this potential and in facilitating the attainment of desired outcome. References Akhtar, S., Ding, D.Z.; & Ge, G. L. (2008), Strategic HRM Practices And Their Impact On Company performance In Chinese Enterprises, Human Resource Management, 2008, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 15–32. Baird, L., & Meshoulam, I. (1988). Managing two fits of strategic human resource management. Academy of Management Review, 13(1), 116-128. Barney, J.B. (1991). Firm resource and sustainable competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17(1), 99-120. Boxall, P. (1998). Achieving competitive advantage through human resource strategy: Towards a theory of industry dynamics. Human Resource Management Review, 8(3), 265-288. Jackson, S.E., & Schuler, R.S. (1995). Understanding human resource management in the context of organisations and their environment. In J.T. Spence, J.M. Darley & D.J. Foss (Eds.), Annual review of psychology. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc. Vol. 46, pp. 237-264 Martell, K., Gupta, A., & Carroll, S.J. (1996). Human resource management practices, business strategies, and firm performance: A test of strategy implementation theory. Irish Business and Administrative Research, 17(1), 18-35. Porter, M. (1985). Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Free Press. Plummer, K (1983). Documents of Life: an introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic method, London:Unwin Hyman . Rogers, A. (2011). The 25 Best Multinational Companies to Work For, Business Insider, p. 1. Retrieved: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-25-best-multinational-companies-2011-10?op=1 Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Schuler, R.S., & Jackson, S.E. (1987). 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