International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American

multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New

York, with operations in over 170 countries. The company began in 1911, founded
in Endicott, New York, as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR)
and was renamed "International Business Machines" in 1924. IBM is incorporated
in New York. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the
Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the world's largest employers, with (as of
2018) over 350,000 employees, known as "IBMers". At least 70% of IBMers are
based outside the United States, and the country with the largest number of IBMers
is India.
During its existence it faced several ups and downs which took place in
1991-1993 and in 2000s again. Let`s look through the history of IBM and assess
challenges witch it took over in sphere of HRM.
At the beginning, I`d like to talk about IBM`s competitive environment which
stably evolved in the early 2000`s. During that period of time all the companies
faced dramatic changes brought by the development of PC and the Internet
followed by Globalization “Together, new perceptions of the permissible and the
possible have deepened the process of corporate globalization by shifting its focus
from products to production—from what things companies choose to make to how
they choose to make them, from what services they offer to how they choose to
deliver them.”
Whereas the competitive environment was shifting towards new approach “Some
consulting firms had begun to implement systems that used the language of
competencies, capabilities or skills to depict the “inventory” of workforce
capability and then matched that inventory to the pattern of their clients’ needs.”
“IBM’s workforce systems and decisions tended to be focused on accurately
projecting demand and creating sufficient supply of talent against a multinational
model that often operated separately within countries or regions.” this state of
things caused many issues that company had to cope with and required vigorous
actions. The most vital troubles were:
 IBM was not distinctively knowledgeable or unique in hardware or software
(like Intel or Microsoft). Rather, IBM differentiated itself on its practical
know-how and the ability to deliver its services quickly, effectively and
efficiently.
 IBM clients were seeing their own businesses change as well and
increasingly demand information technology services that understood,
anticipated and responded to those specific changes. Organization had to
keep up with it.
 There were “bottlenecks” annoying to IBM leaders, but there was evidence
that they were contributing to an unacceptable level of unsatisfied clients
and a lack of market penetration in key strategic regions.
  IBM had “frictional” unemployment of individuals who were “on the bench”
awaiting assignments. They were essentially simply waiting for something
to do.
 There was even low visibility, and thus even lower coordination, between
the contractor hiring decisions in the businesses in one location and those
being made elsewhere in IBM.
 Within the current system, too many opportunities were missed, or that IBM
leaders simply did not have the information they needed to see all the
possible opportunities.
To respond these problems CEOs and Randy MacDonald, the senior vice president
of human resources for IBM corporation and his team took several retaliatory
measures and programs such as:
 “Globally Integrated Enterprise” implications for every aspect of IBM,
including significant implications for IBM’s supply chain, IT systems,
strategy, marketing and services development and deployment. Underlying
all of these implications were significant challenges for IBM’s human
capital and its approach to human resource management.
This approach to coming changes perfectly represents choices that company`s
management made in terms of competition. At that time IBM had to be able to
quickly and accurately find the capabilities of its workforce, wherever those
capabilities existed, and deploy them against clients’ problems faster and at a lower
cost point than the competition. Therefore, it was essential to modernize the system
that could not simply provide the global flexibility that would be needed to serve
the needs of IBM’s evolving clients.
 Workforce Management Initiative (WMI) A cornerstone program that
enables IBM’s globally integrated enterprise is the Workforce Management
Initiative, or WMI. As mentioned previously, moving the right skills to
opportunities is a critical response for business success in today’s global
economy.
Such a massive program addressed the strategic human capital, organizational and
talent needs of IBM embracing series of measures including: 1. Resource
management 2. Talent and mobility 3. Learning 4. Supplier or vendor
management. Although, all of them had proved to be beneficial for IBM it would
have taken much effort to bring these ideas to life because of many controversies
deriving from. For example, the HR team anticipated that the full investment might
be more than US$100 million over the course of five years. What is more, many
questions arose like:
How comprehensively should the system cover IBM’s different business
segments? How much organizational traction could be gained by expressing the
initiative through a supply chain metaphor? Would IBMers be willing enough to
move across national borders? and so on.
All of the above increased pressure on the management and especially on
Randy who was in charge of HRM. Looking through the prism of time I can see
that in the end the company followed innovative programs and was able to survive
and even grow. This case is a wonderful example of the role of managerial
decisions that influence the whole destiny of a firm and can either drive it into
abyss or bring prosperity both to the stake and shareholders.