Professional Documents
Culture Documents
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
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Strategies of international, multinational,
global & transnational organizations
International company – transports its business
outside home country; each of its operations is a
replication of the company's domestic
experience; structured geographically; and
involves subsidiary general managers
Companies offering multiple products often find
it challenging to remain organized e.g. need to
have a common information systems for
accounting, financial and management controls,
and marketing. Most evolve to become
multinational companies
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Strategies of international, multinational,
global & transnational organizations
Multinational company – grows and defines its
business on a worldwide basis, but continues to
allocate its resources among national or regional
areas to maximize the total.
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Strategies of international, multinational,
global & transnational organizations
Global organizations – treat the entire
world as though it were one large country;
may be the entire company or one or
more of its product lines; may operate
with a mixture of two or more
organizational structure simultaneously.
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Strategies of international, multinational,
global & transnational organizations
Transnational organization - Use
specialized facilities to permit local
responsiveness; more complex
coordination mechanism to provide global
integration
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Global efficiency and local responsiveness
of different types of firms
High
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Orientation to international
operations
(1) Australian organization with international
operations
All senior and many middle management positions
held by Australians
Highly centralized in Australia, large head office
Instruction and advice from Australian head office to
subsidiaries
HR policies and practices are predominantly
Australian with some modification to satisfy foreign
requirements
Australian corporate culture
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Orientation to international
operations
(2) Australian multinational organization
Localization of some management positions but all
top corporate positions held by Australians
Some decentralization to regional or area
headquarters
Regional headquarters is the main source of
communications; instructions from Aust head office to
regional headquarters
HR policies and practices are mixed
Mix of Australian and host country culture
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Orientation to international
operations
(3) Australian global organization
All management positions are open to
between headquarters
HR policies and practices are benchmarked on
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Example from Japanese MNCs
Campbell, N. (1991). How Japanese multinationals work so well. Prism, 4, 61-69.
1. Borderless structure and bottom-up decision-making processes
that encourage communication and information flow among all
components of the company and extend the network to its key suppliers,
distributors, and other business partners.
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IHRM - a shift in thinking
Laurent (1986)
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Important lessons for global firms
The need to manage change
The need to respect local cultures
The need to understand a corporation’s
culture
The need to be flexible
The need to learn
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Main challenges in IHRM
High failure rates of expatriation and repatriation
Deployment – getting the right mix of skills in
the organization regardless of geographical
location
Knowledge and innovation dissemination –
managing critical knowledge and speed of
information flow
Talent identification and development – identify
capable people who are able to function
effectively
Barriers to women in IHRM
International ethics
Language (e.g. spoken, written, body)
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Main challenges in IHRM
Different labor laws
Different political climate
Different stage(s) of technological advancement
Different values and attitudes e.g. time,
achievement, risk taking
Roles of religion e.g. sacred objects, prayer,
taboos, holidays, etc
Educational level attained
Social organizations e.g. social institutions,
authority structures, interest groups, status
systems
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Strategies for managing a global
workforce
(1) Implement the spatial career strategy
Get people from everywhere (geocentric approach)
Expats work in multiple countries during the course of
their career
Gain a lot of knowledge about different cultures &
operations
Develops in-depth knowledge
Use previous knowledge for new assignment
Extremely high cost
Mainly managers, not technicians
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Strategies for managing a global
workforce
(2) Implement the awareness-building assignment
strategy
Expose a candidate to cultural training exercises
Usually for short term (3 months to one year)
Family members usually not required to relocate
Usually used to train candidates for future
assignments
Learn from foreign assignment and bring experience
back to HQ
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Strategies for managing a global
workforce
(3) Implement the SWAT team strategy
Highly mobile teams for short term
assignments
Deployed throughout the organization to
different parts of the world
No development agenda, plain
troubleshooting
Transfer technical knowledge to locals as they
fix problems
E.g. technical troubleshooters
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Strategies for managing a global
workforce
(4) Implement the virtual solutions strategy
Collection of practices that exploit electronic
communication
E.g. internet, intranet, videoconferencing,
electronic databases, email, electronic expert
systems
Low cost and very fast in terms of
disseminating knowledge
Used by Xerox and Ford
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