International People Management - Research Paper Example

International People Management Companies, organizations and other industries are made up of hundreds and thousands of men and women, which make up the manpower of any such organization. Apart from managing various other aspects of any company, one of the most important among them is the human resource management. It is the responsibility of the Human Resource Manager, to make sure that he or she recruits the best available manpower for his/her company. The better the manpower, the higher the company rises and eventually, the better the economy becomes. With the process of globalization gaining momentum, the idea spread to other countries – as the risk associated with the volatility of the global marketplace forced employers to become more aware about the need for managing all their resources including their human resources, strategically (Sett, 2004). Many studies have been done regarding the human resource management most companies follows. Every company has a different requirement for every vacancy it has. Not all companies are on the same platform. Some are small scale, while others are very large. Hence, their human resource management is different for different requirements. Human Resource Management is a planned approach to managing people effectively for performance. It aims to establish a more open, flexible and caring management style (Michael, 1995). This paper will put forward a critique of the study done by writers Dhruba Kumar Gautam and Ann. J Davis, on their article titled “Integration and Devolvement of Human Resource Practices in Nepal”. They have compiled information regarding the human resource management that is followed in the Nepalese companies and organizations. Starting with the abstract of the article, the writers have explicitly sketched out their purpose, approach and the findings in the first part of their work. Gautam and Davis have taken into consideration the finance companies of Nepal. They conducted interviews with the senior personnel involved with the Human Resource Department of the selected 26 finance companies. They have also outlined the limitations of their research and implications. The reader, as he reads the first paragraph, can almost understand what the article is all about. If not that, at least they will be able to have an idea about the comparison that is made in the paragraphs that follow. Along with that, a small job that the authors have identified the key words that have been used repeatedly in the article. Terms like Human Resource Management, Nepal, Corporate Strategy, etc. have been written before the starting of the main body of the article so that along with the readers who are already familiar with the topic, those who are not so acquainted with it, will succeed in getting a picture of what is going to be spoken about in the paper. Also, not many have tried to throw light on the Human Resource management and practices in Nepal. As a result, the work done by the two authors is one of its kinds. Although the article notices some work done by different writers talking about the models of the human resource management in Nepal as well as other parts of the world. Talking of the references used and also identification of the works done by other authors some time back, the article uses lots of names and specifies the respective year of study too. The authors have listed many names of those writers who have done previous studies on the Human Resource Management. For example, writers like D.R. Adhikari, P.F. Boxall, Forster and Whipp, and many more have been listed. Other journals or magazines like CIA and CRANET have also been used for reference. The authors have, as can be seen, used various sources for their study. This shows that the authors have took pains to search through and take help from a spectrum of sources. Writers like Boxall, Brewster, Cully, Guest, Gennard, Hall, Hutchinson, Jackson have also been listed. Coming to the aims and objectives of the article, it is given that Nepal is known to have undergone a long history of bureaucracy and hierarchy of kings. The main aim of the article is to discuss about the integration and devolvement of human resource management in Nepal. Through different methods and means, Gautam and Davis have tried to find out the degree of devolvement and integration in the financial, insurance and the banking sectors. The article says that even though Nepal is still under the influence of its historical traditions, the integration of Human Resource Management would be a great step in strengthening the small and large financial companies. It has been pointed out that the HRM activities in these companies are not what they should be. Instead of the HR doing the job, it is transferred to the line managers, thus giving it the term, devolvement. In some companies, the HR does the job all by himself, while in some, it is shared between the HR and the line manager. There are also those where the line manager does all the work. But the authors say that the state cannot progress until it breaks its traditional ties and works independently. There’s more to it. It has been said and everyone knows that Nepal has only half of the population as literate. Also, there is a great shortage of skilled manpower in the state. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the human resource managers and the line managers to recruit the best possible manpower for their respective organizations. This concept has been time and again stressed in the article. The authors have also emphasized on the devolvement of the human resource management by sharing the responsibilities and duties among the line managers and the human resource managers. The main job of the line managers is to meet service and the production goals. But, sometimes, it becomes the responsibility of the line manager to take up some of the duties of the HR specialists. The authors clearly portray the internal situations of the companies where such devolvement of duties takes place. While in some places it happens without many issues, the others do face some difficulties in doing so. The authors have clearly explained the hesitation by the line managers in taking up the responsibilities of the Human Resource Managers. Often it is the case when the line managers are not skilled enough in doing full justice to the responsibility given to them by the human resource managers. They also provide with various ways in which the integration and devolvement of Human Resource Management takes place. The authors have also compared the practices that take place in the banking and financial companies in Nepal with those of the western economies. In the article, they have clarified that the epicenter of their study is the banking sectors since; they are larger in size as compared to the financial sectors and also older as compared to their financial counterparts. They have included insurance sectors too. In the later part of the article, Gautam and Davis have described the details of Nepal. That Nepal is the ninth poorest state of the world and what is its position with respect to the economies surrounded with it, have all been stated, which further gives a detailing to the work. Also, they make the reader aware of the situations in Nepal regarding the weak economy and the relationship between the HR and the line managers. They also point out that the HR managers, who were recruited by various companies in Nepal, were first of all not recruited as one and secondly, the way they took over the post is also not transparent. Thus the article also portrays the confusion and ambiguity, which prevails in the economies of Nepal. If the human resource managers themselves are not fit for the position, they can never take the organizations to greater heights. It seems that the authors have done a significant amount of study before writing the article since, for every point and every statement they make, they have relevant sources and thus the whole paper seems like a work well done. They have properly analyzed the difficulties the state is going through presently. Firstly, it is a poor state, followed by a very weak economy and opaqueness in the recruitment of the human resource managers themselves is a cause for concern. Besides this, they also throw light on the approach the banking and finance sectors of Nepal would be willing to take, as they want to break free from the traditional ties. To find out whether the financial organization follows the concept of integration or devolvement, the method used by the authors was to meet a senior person responsible for the human resource management in different organizations. Their approach was backed by the fact that Nepal being a developing country, emailing and postal services would prove ineffective (Adhikari and Gautam, 2006). Hence, a face-to-face meeting was arranged. There, they mined information with the help of a questionnaire. Depending on the replies they obtained from the managers, they listed the companies as high integration and low integration. They also clarify that the respondents were highly educated, having degrees in business or public administration. The overall flow of the passage is smooth and the article is structured well. It does not break the theme at any place, hence giving rise to a clear and systematic thought. The method used by the authors was commendable, though tiresome. But, the results it gave in the end of the study were satisfactory later on. According to the authors, the results they achieved were very much in accordance with the works done by other authors, Brewster and Larson, and Budhwar and Sparrow in the years 1992 and 1997 respectively. Gautam and Davis tried to find the level of integration and devolvement by using two different methods. For integration, they used the method of giving out questionnaires. On the other hand, to know the level of devolvement, they found out with whom the responsibility of the main HR duties lays. The managers were provided with the options- solely the line manager, solely the HR manager, line manager consulting the human resource manager or the human resource manager consulting the line manager. Secondly, they tried to find out the extent to which the responsibility on the line managers increased. They awarded one mark to those companies where the responsibility lay with the line managers and those where the responsibility of the line managers increased considerably in the recent years. The others were awarded no marks at all. Also, it was a rare case where any firm opted for either only human resource managers or only the line managers. Now the companies which had almost five responses which said that devolvement took place, were categorized as high devolvement, whereas, the rest were considered as low devolvement. Such a method adopted is a good way to find out the level of human resource management in an economy like Nepal. There may have been other ways to conduct the research, but knowing the conditions prevailing in the then economy in question, limits the authors to handing out questionnaires. Nevertheless, the results that they obtained after the research were at par with most of the other studies that had been taken place even before the authors had done so. Some of the other studies don’t tally with those of Gautam and Davis, but when the reader evaluates the depth of work done by both of them; he can judiciously come to the conclusion that the authors have reached a satisfactory result, without hampering the actual facts. On page 716 of the article, Gautam and Davis have pointed out that there is very restricted information with regard to the state in question. Still they have tried to chalk out as much information as possible. Also the manner of operation, which is carried inside Nepal, is very different from that which goes on within its close neighbors India and China. Moreover, the data used by the authors is diverse and detailed. The article provides the reader with ample data, raw as well as other. For example, the article specifies the number of companies taken into consideration. It says that 26 companies were studied, out of which, 14 banks and 12 insurance companies participated in the survey. So, overall, the results obtained by the study were unbiased and true. Also, the fact that all the companies are not very old, prove that Nepal has a very young economy. The article tells us that the banking sectors are at most 13 years older than the financial companies, which were in turn less than 8 years old. The splitting of the data in the paper is commendable. The reader can have a full view of the status of the organizations of the state in question, thereby letting him understand better the study done. Moreover, anyone who would want to do a separate research based on this article would find it easy and handy. The abundance of data, raw as well as actual, tabular as well as non-tabular, provides the reader with a better understanding of the argument. The systematic approach followed by the authors and their urge to make the reader aware of the actual prevailing conditions in Nepal proves to be a success. On page 8 of the article, the reader comes across the first tabulated data. The authors have represented the integration in the banking and the financial sectors of Nepal in a tabular form, wherein the reader can easily study the degree of involvement of the human resource department while the company makes corporate strategies. Data represented in the form of tables makes it easier for the reader to understand the intricate detailing done by the authors. The approach used by them is very profound and is beneficial to those who really want to learn from the author’s study. Whatever approach the authors have taken, the study has always been done separating the banking sector and the financial sector. They have not mixed the two results anywhere in the article, which shows that the authors have done some serious and elaborated work. Even the minutest details have been included. Also, some sources like CRANET, CIA, and Budhwar and Sparrow’s surveys did not include financial sectors, whereas, Gautam and Davis have taken into consideration both the banking and the financial sectors equally. They have also observed that the banking organizations are more interested in integration than their financial counterparts. Also the banking sectors are large in size than the financial or insurance sectors. As a result, they have faced more challenges of coordination and growth than the other companies (Tayeb, 1987; Hendry and Pettigrew, 1992; Jackson and Schuler, 1995). The authors finally concluded that among the sample they collected for their study, only 20 percent of the sample was categorized as high integration, i.e. 5 organizations. The rest were termed as low integration. For the financial sectors, the authors found that 42 percent organizations recruited human resource managers from within themselves, while another 27 percent recruited them from external sources. Moving on to the discussion of devolvement, page 10 of the article provides a second set of tabular information, which provides data for those organizations, which follow the concept of devolvement. The activities taken into consideration were pay and benefits, recruitment and selection, training and development, labor relations and workforce expansion and reduction (Davis and Gautam, 2007). Only those companies were given the status of highly devolved where the responsibility lay only with the line managers. This, however, is a rare case as far as organizations of Nepal are concerned. The finance sector appears to be more westernized (CRANET, 2006). The article gives the reader a comparison between the different studies and also explains why it has included several factors that others haven’t or have used in their studies. For every omission or addition that Gautam and Davis have done, they have provided proper reason for doing so. The third table on page 11 of the article gives the reader data regarding the change, i.e. increase or decrease in the responsibilities of the line management in the last three years. According to Purcell, (1995), the presence of a personnel director on the main board makes a considerable difference to the role played in corporate strategy. Page 12 of the article in question draws out two points where organizations surveyed were not very old and second, where the human resource managers were highly qualified personnel. In both the cases, the article clearly explains the level of devolvement. It has classified the financial sectors and banking organizations further into those that are small, large, old and new. Based on these small classifications, the authors have been able to mark out the differences between the two sectors of the economy. The analysis of the paper also has been done carefully. This is to say that whatever data the authors have used for their research, has been include with complete credibility. Nothing in the article is imaginary or supposed. The data arranged into a tabular form gives the article a well-structured look. It becomes very easy for the reader to read and understand the information quickly and easily. The comprehensive research done by Gautam and Davis is a successful attempt towards analyzing the integration and devolvement of HR in Nepal. For every work done, there are always strengths and weaknesses. Any critique done on the article may appreciate its matter and information, or it may as well pint out the fewer strong points in it. In the article “Integration and Devolvement of Human Resource Management in Nepal”, Finally, in the last part of their article, the authors chalk out the limitations of their research. They confess that the sample they have taken for their studies consists of only 90 percent of the population. They also know that had they included some more organizations, the result could have varied, but the authors have retained the internal consistency of the sample (pg.13). They have further reported that they did not include many other factors like health and safety, strong risk aversion, sense of social obligation and limited legal imperatives, would not contribute to the study (pg.13). The authors summarize the paper by saying that the Nepalese organizations are more influenced with the western flavors. Also, the concept of integration is picking up pace, whereas, the devolvement strategy is losing interest. All this is due to the fact that Nepal is a small economy and most importantly, it has less or no relations with the other economies of the outer world. They have said in the last line of the article that- “This study addresses only a small elite of the country’s population and over generalization must be cautioned against” (pg.14). In the end, the article contains a bibliography section, where referencing has been done following the Harvard style of writing and referencing. Near about 50 such references have been used in the article, giving it a literary feel. Since the referencing has been done alphabetically, locating an author’s name and publication is an easy process and adds to the systematic approach to the paper. The article has incorporated ample sources, including comparisons of the work of different writers. But, the only thing that this article doesn’t contain is an appendix. The writers could have used one, but its absence does not lower the quality of the research paper. As far as using footnotes is concerned, it seems that the article did not need one. Although the authors could have explained the key terms in the initial part of the research paper, so that it could have been easier for those readers who have no idea about the topic. Such readers could have benefited from the definitions. However, there are more positive aspects of the article than negative ones. Moreover, the article is for those readers who are acquainted with the topic at least to some extent. A person who doesn’t have any knowledge of the human resource management and how is it done, will not benefit from the paper. But, for those who do not fall into that category, the paper can prove to be a rich collection of facts and figures, with all the aspects that a research paper is expected to incorporate. Moreover, the writers have already labeled each subheading of their study very clearly and explicitly. It makes reading and understanding easy and clear. The reader can find any particular topic without much trouble. Also, since the paper is only of 16 pages out of which 3 of them contain references, it’s not an extremely necessary issue to include an appendix. But, the references have been put in very well. Nowadays, the organizations are becoming international in their operations. To withstand the international competition, organization must develop and retain skilled, talented and motivated employees to develop quality, cost consciousness, and productivity, but its no doubt that HR planning and career development are two vital pillars on which the organizations stand strongly (Budhathoki, 2004). References Adhikari, D.R. and Gautam, D.K. (2006). Human Resource Management in Nepal: integration and organization performance. Banijya Sansar – A Journal of Management, Vol. 12. Budhathoki, D.K. (2004). Human Resource Management: Career Development. The Journal of Nepalese Business Studies. Vol.1, pg.100. CRANET. (2006). CRANET Survey on Comparative Human Resource Management: International Executive Report 2005. Davis, A.J. and Gautam D.K. (2007). Integration and Devolvement of human resource practices in Nepal”, Employee Relations, Vol.29, pp.720-724. Hendry, C. and Pettigrew, A.M. (1992). Patterns of strategic change in the development of human resource management. British Journal of Management, Vol.3, pp.137-56. Jackson, S.E. and Schuler, R.S. (1995). Understanding human resource management in the context of organizations and their environments. Annual Review of Psychology, Vol.46, pp.237-64. Michael, C.C. (1995). Human Resource Management. Docstoc. pg.7. Purcell, J. (1995). Corporate strategy and its link with human resource management strategy, in Storey, J. (Ed.). Human Resource Management: A Critical Text, Blackwell, Oxford. Sett, P. K. (2004). Human Resource Management and Firm Level Restructuring: The South Asian Drama. Research and Practice in Human Resource Management. Vol.12 (1), pg.1-33. Tayeb, M. (1987). Contingency theory and culture, a study of matched English and Indian Manufacturing firms. Organisation Studies, Vol.8, pp.241-61. Read More