Case study 4 (A)

INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AT GLOBAL

ENTERPRISES
The case
Global Enterprises Ltd is a multinational corporation dealing primarily with food and other agricultural
products. Its headquarters is in London and its eight overseas subsidiaries operate in all parts of the
world, running plantations, farms, processing plans and sales and distribution centres. The majority of
them are local organizations acquired by Global. The corporation employs over 5,000 staff, most of them
locals. Four of the most recently acquired of the eight overseas companies – the ‘new’ companies – are
run by their former management. Local nationals had also taken over in two of the ‘old’ companies, the
other two being run by expatriates – executives transferred or seconded from the parent company.
Local country nationals predominated (95 per cent) in the new companies. In the old companies a higher
proportion of employees are expatriates (20 per cent in the companies now run by a local national and
45 per cent in the other two). Expatriates are almost entirely managers, professionals or technicians.

An effective performance management system is in operation at headquarters. It had been

transferred successfully to two of the ‘old’ companies based in Canada and Australia. But the other
companies based in West Africa and various Asian countries had not adopted the headquarters’ scheme.
The top management team of the corporation feel that the scheme should now be extended to all the
other overseas companies but they realize that this might not be easy in the companies based in Africa
and Asia where the cultures where different from those at headquarters. The HR director therefore
undertook to prepare a board paper discussing the issues and the possible way forward.

The task
As the HR director, prepare the paper.