Discuss about the Human Resource Management Implementing and Strategies.
According to Stone and Deadrick (2015) Human Resource Management is a significant component of implementing the strategies in a business organisation and it is increasingly becoming a primary dominant in determining the failure or success in an international business, even if there are other major dominant factors like technology, capital or raw materials. The essay deals with the contemporary issues in International human resource management regarding the source and placement of the huge human capital in the industry. This complex issue is one of the many challenging issues in the human resource management and seeks supportive strategies and proper implementation in both the domestic and international business (Dickmann, Brewster and Sparrow 2016). However, in terms of international business the issue is critical rather than the domestic ones. In implementing the strategies globally, international human resource management (IHRM) is one of the most significant factors. As long as the USA companies are concerned, the calibre of the employees of an organisation is considered to be the sole source of sustainable advantage available to the company. However, most U.S. multinationals tend to underestimate the planning faction of human resources in the evaluating and selecting the human capital abroad (Stone and Deadrick 2015). The primary objective of International human resource management is to enable the organization successful globally. This requires being internationally competitive and efficient yet responsive locally and flexible (Warner 2014). These major needs are indisputable because of the increasing competitions all over the world. For many multinational firms human resource management is critical to their respective success rate and the effective human resource management makes huge difference between the survival and the extinction for many firms. Nevertheless, the increasing significance in the human resources and the recent advancement of technology has enabled the companies to take effective measures to manage the human resource management and make best use of the global management cadre of the organisation (Warner 2014).
The issues involved with the IHRM issues are conceptualized regarding the interunit and the intraunit challenges and needs. Even if the multinational organizations deal with several nations, yet they remain as a single firm and need to consider the balancing of increasing pressure for integration and differentiation. The primary issues involved with the intricacy of control in all the geographical locations is the need of independent decision maker locally and the suitable management team from alternative sources (Renwick, Redman and Maguire 2013). The strategic interdependence of management form different locations does not worth much; rather the preferred strategy of the organisation should be dictating the organisational structure and the effective hiring process to implement the strategy. However, most of the functions are usually interdependent, the structural constraints mostly affect the strategic managements, and the employee constraints influence the organisational and strategic decisions.
IHRM practices and policies have always been the primary focus of the researchers. Apart from the basic activities of domestic human resource management, it also servers to reinforce interunit link internationally in several ways, such as, comprehensive planning which ensures the organization puts suitable people at right places around the globe, cross culturally sensitive policies, performance appraisals, culturally relevant compensation policies. The acceleration of the internationalization in business, the scope and limitations have broadened in including several types and sizes of organisations, also the need for cross cultural awareness and the understanding of the regular operations has become more salient (Renwick, Redman and Maguire 2013). The organisations having business in both the countries USA and Australia need to be cross culturally sensitive and responsive while managing across borders. The concept of the need to be cross culturally sensitive and adaptive came from the acknowledgment that cultural shock might lead to the inability in adjusting to the unknown culture, and eventually leading to failure. This failure might lead to the loss of business confidence, damaged relations with the market of the host country and ultimately with the government of the host country (Budhwar and Debrah 2013). For the last few decades, the field of International human resource management has emphasized the importance of the strategic and comprehensive programmes provided by the company, for the expatriates residing abroad and especially highlighting the cross-cultural capabilities for adapting the foreign culture and avoiding any kind of expatriate failure. This also includes selection and recruitment process, training and developing their abilities, repatriation and compensation (Storey 2014). As far as the two countries, Australia and USA are concerned, both the countries might seem similar outwardly, but there are few prominent cultural differences, especially in the business and political culture. Therefore, any USA organisation hiring their employees from Australia required being cautious about their cross-cultural acceptance.
Many researchers suggest that based on these analyses of organisational culture and management, three approaches developed in the international human resource management that are concerned with the terms building, aligning and steering human resource management (Warner 2013). Earlier works have highlighted a cross-cultural approach and scrutinized human behaviour within the firm from an international perspective. It can be considered as building international human resource management with focusing on the similar impact of cross-cultural similar and divergent behaviour on the functional components or human resource management, such as selection, recruitment, training, development, performance and reward management (Budhwar and Debrah 2013). The second approach has argued that it has developed from the comparative relations and human resource management systems across several countries and incorporates convergence and divergences in the practice of human resource management and corporate social responsibilities. In fact, there are other legal, cultural, political and developmental components of specific ancillary nations in practice and implementation of the policies of international firms (Warner 2013). The most recent third approach focuses on the features of human resource management in multinational companies in terms of implementing the procedure of internationalizing for the organisational policies and behaviour. According to Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013 this incorporates the strategic focus of the companies, which seek the outsourcing of several functional human resource management functions like diversity management, creating global teams of development of intercontinental consciousness.
The selection process of overseas employees has always been a complex procedure. The cultural differences between the nations and different national values and attitude have made the cross cultural management more critical (Shenkar 2012). Several researches have shown that different nationalities having different values can affect the way they conduct, organise and manage work. The selection criteria are based on the success figures in the domestic situation, but several additional criteria are considered for every global position as well. However, Cavusgil et al. (2014) states that in most situations the employees are chosen only based on their domestic record of accomplishment. The human resource managers need to make sure that the potential expatriates get the necessary cross-cultural consciousness and interpersonal skills for working in a different continent (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014). The company also needs to take it to consideration that the family of the employee is potential enough to adopt the culture. There are five factors, which a human resource manager needs to keep in mind before hiring expatriates, such as relational dimensions, job factors, family situation, motivational state and language skills (Hollifield, Martin and Orrenius 2014). In the case of hiring employees from Australia, the managers need not to think about the language skills, since both are English speaking countries, but the other factors need to be taken care of. All the factors are relatively important and highly situational. The selection procedure is arranged as a decision tree where the next stage is the orientation process entirely based on the assessment of essential factors concerning the job and the potential candidate. For multinational companies in USA, the human resource policies are greatly influenced by the culture of the home country and their policies.
However, the training and development for the cross-cultural interactions can be critical. Earlier in the essay, the need of cultural sensitivity has been discussed. Researches show that almost 40 percent of expatriate employees end their duration in the organisation early because of the inability to adjust in the foreign environment (Jackson, Schuler and Jiang 2014). Many of them stay in the organisation with poor rate of performance. This can cost the reputation of the company in many ways such as degradation of the relation with the government of the host country, loss at the share market and the poor status. The cross-cultural adjustment issues everyday challenge the living of the employees and their families. Several examples can be shown in this respect, a recent study proves that many expatriates state that they were not provided with enough training and developmental strategies (Hollifield, Martin and Orrenius 2014). The lack in the development and training shows poor managerial skills at the same time. Several training techniques can assist overseas employees in adjusting in the new environment. There might be documentary sessions about the geography, culture, economics of the country and the organisation as well, which help the expatriates in encountering critical situations (Dickmann, Brewster and Sparrow 2016). Global orientations also deal with the concept of national culture. According to Mello (2014) the concept of national culture develops the behaviour of a discrete national province both outside and within the companies. Training, teaching and development attributing to the national culture affect the organisational behaviour and global leadership.
This essay also deals with the critical analysis of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory and Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilization and GLOBE Model” regarding international human resource management. Hofstede with his theory of cultural dimensions and Huntington with his hypothesis on the clash of civilizations produced adequate amount of place in cross-cultural societies. Despite the success in human resource management these theories attracted several criticisms from all corners of the society.
The Cultural dimension theory of Geert Hofstede is associated with the framework of cross-cultural communications (Taras, Steel and Kirkman 2012). In this theory Hofstede elaborately explain the impact of societal culture on the values of community members and the relatedness of behaviour with these values (Taras, Steel and Kirkman 2012). Based on the researches, which Hofstede conducted on the employees of IBM Europe concluded that there are certain dimensions to the national cultures. The Cultural dimension theory is based on several dimensions such as— Power distance index, comparison between individualism and Collectivism, uncertainty avoidance index, comparison between Masculinity and femininity, long term and short term orientation and comparison between indulgence and restraint (Taras, Steel and Kirkman 2012). Hofstede explained that when people tend to minimize the cultural differences among different countries, it is misinterpreted and misunderstood by the people from different countries around the world. Therefore, to achieve an effective cross-cultural relations one must be aware about the cultural differences, as the cultural diversity is still relevant in today’s society and increasing day by day. This theory rather meets with some limitations that announce the inapplicability of the theory in such state where there are extensive subcultures existence such as in Canada, where French Canadian have different norms than those of English Canadian (Zhao 2013).
In USA the power distance index of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, is reasonably low because equal rights among individual is always implemented in America. In USA hierarchy system in the organizations is not strictly applicable and the seniors can easily approach lower level of employees and cross-cultural communication occurs (Shenkar 2012). Additionally, United States possesses one of the most individualistic cultures in the world. Therefore, in USA human resource management is generally based on individual’s performance and success. In addition, USA possesses high Masculinity to femininity ratio, which explains masculine drive within them. USA is composed of an indulgent society. Although they work very hard, they also use the wrong way of indulging satisfaction by the means of drugs (Espinoza, Johnson and Komarova 2012). Moreover, USA has a low uncertainty avoidance index as they come up with unusual and unique concepts. Therefore, the dimension of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory imposes great impact in USA community in incorporating effective Human Resource Management strategies.
Australian organizational culture is slightly different from USA. Australia possesses a relatively low power distance index that means in the organization seniors are less approachable towards the low-level staffs. Unlike USA leadership culture of Australia relies on egalitarianism where equality in the organization is well-maintained.
Clash of Civilization Hypothesis, is developed by Samuel P. Huntington (Bottici and Challand 2013). It supports the fact that the diminishing societal values are the prime reason for the conflicts between civilizations (Waheed et al. 2012). However, this does not hold true in the present world with supportive evidences from the recent clash between the United States and the Afghanistan. The U.S. attack on Afghanistan was more for an oil domination to enrich the oil prosperity in the U.S. and grow economically stronger than before. If this is not true then there are other Muslim dominated countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and many others. These are minute but represent muscular evidence in favour of the certainty that intellectual differences have no longer considerable continuation in the sight of clashes in between different nations. Huntington described “major civilizations” by dividing the world ten distinct parts— Western, orthodox, Islamic, Islamic/Hindu, Hindu, African, Latin American, Sinic, Budhhist and Japanese (Bottici and Challand 2013). Huntington explained that the central axis of world politics could conflict between western and non-western countries in future. Non-western countries are conservative about their values and therefore they will isolate themselves to get protection from western invasion. Huntington believed that after the power of non-western countries have increased Western countries are no longer considered as “Universal” (Bottici and Challand 2013).
Although both Australia and USA is under Western part in Huntington’s Clash of Civilization theory both of them have distinct differences in their culture and civilization. USA and Australian culture resembles each other in many ways such as both of them are Caucasian/Anglo Saxon ancestry and both possess same cultural heritage (Johns and Davies 2012). The immigrant civilization on USA is predominantly pilgrims from Europe who had escaped religious persecution tradition whereas Australian civilization is usually the convicts who were droved out from England (Johns and Davies 2012). In USA civilization, individualism is predominant and there is emphasize on economical success by a self-made man whereas in Australian culture, common good or communal well-being is more emphasized (Johns and Davies 2012). Therefore, clash of civilization occurs when USA civilization try to cope with the Australian civilization.
International Human Resource Management practices revolve around constructing plans to attain viable supplies and utilizing the function of capital human as a basis of spirited gain (Venaik and Brewer 2013). It involves in developing policies to influence the behaviour of employees in accordance to the Company norms. Therefore, it is highly essential to assess their cultural civilization for the betterment of International Human Resource Management.
An issue that appears in both of the theories and hypothesis revolves around societal values in irrespective of state of affairs. Both the theories and hypothesis are influentially traditional, following the path more or less of few Asian societies where cultural and holy values holds notable place (Shenkar 2012). However, globalization in the business has brought a significant change in the perspectives of those few Asian cultures giving them a new shape with elevated thoughts and ideas (Waheed et al. 2012). Globalization has brought an influential change in the international perspectives of societies and cultures. However, there are instances, which support the fact that there are intellectual and cultural conflicts in some of the societies (Shenkar 2012). Racism in Australia, U.K., U.S.A. and some other parts of world among different cultures demonstrating different parts of world merely reveals examples of societal conflicts. Nevertheless, this does not find any noteworthy stand in front of globalization. The efficiency of the managers in the foreign countries are crucial in the successful operations of a multinational company and particularly of the headquarter executives (Mello 2014). The capability of expatriates to maintain mutual relations with local employees and other organisations determines the success of the company in long term.
Reference List
Bottici, C. and Challand, B., 2013. The myth of the clash of civilizations. Routledge.
Budhwar, P.S. and Debrah, Y.A. eds., 2013. Human resource management in developing countries. Routledge.
Cavusgil, S.T., Knight, G., Riesenberger, J.R., Rammal, H.G. and Rose, E.L., 2014. International business. Pearson Australia.
Dickmann, M., Brewster, C. and Sparrow, P. eds., 2016. International Human Resource Management: Contemporary HR Issues in Europe. Routledge.
Espinoza, F., Johnson, H.M. and Komarova, Y., 2012. Indulging and Proud of It: Positive Emotional Responses to Reason-Based Luxury Consumption. AP-Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 10.
Hollifield, J., Martin, P. and Orrenius, P., 2014. Controlling immigration: A global perspective. Stanford University Press.
Jackson, S.E., Schuler, R.S. and Jiang, K., 2014. An aspirational framework for strategic human resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.1-56.
Johns, R. and Davies, G.A., 2012. Democratic peace or clash of civilizations? Target states and support for war in Britain and the United States. The Journal of Politics, 74(04), pp.1038-1052.
Mello, J.A., 2014. Strategic human resource management. Nelson Education.
Mok, C., Sparks, B. and Kadampully, J., 2013. Service quality management in hospitality, tourism, and leisure. Routledge.
Renwick, D.W., Redman, T. and Maguire, S., 2013. Green human resource management: A review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(1), pp.1-14.
Shenkar, O., 2012. Beyond cultural distance: Switching to a friction lens in the study of cultural differences. Journal of International Business Studies, 43(1), pp.12-17.
Stone, D.L. and Deadrick, D.L., 2015. Challenges and opportunities affecting the future of human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), pp.139-145.
Storey, J., 2014. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.
Taras, V., Steel, P. and Kirkman, B.L., 2012. Improving national cultural indices using a longitudinal meta-analysis of Hofstede’s dimensions. Journal of World Business, 47(3), pp.329-341.
Venaik, S. and Brewer, P., 2013. Critical issues in the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture models. International Marketing Review, 30(5), pp.469-482.
Waheed, A., Aslam, T.M., Zamin Abbas, R., Tahira, S.S., Siddique, N., Khurshid, M.A. and Malik, N.A., 2012. Exploring’The Clash of Civilization as a Paradigm’and the’Cause of the Civilizational Clash’: A Review of Literature. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(16).
Warner, M., 2013. Human Resource Management ‘with Chinese Characteristics’: Facing the Challanges of Globalization. Routledge.
Warner, M., 2014. Culture and management in Asia. Routledge.
Zhao, F., 2013. An empirical study of cultural dimensions and e-government development: implications of the findings and strategies. Behaviour & Information Technology, 32(3), pp.294-306.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download