International Business

11e

By Charles W.L. Hill

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 Chapter 19

Global Human
Resource
Management

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 What Is Human
Resource Management?
 Human resource management (HRM) - the
activities an organization carries out to utilize its
human resources effectively
 These activities include
 determining human resource strategy
 staffing
 performance evaluation
 management development
 compensation
 labor relations
 Firms need to ensure that there is a fit between
their human resources practices and strategy
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 What Is the Strategic Role of
HRM in International Firms?
 HRM can help the firm reduce the costs of
value creation and add value by better
serving customer needs
 more complex in an international business
 differences between countries in labor
markets, culture, legal systems, economic
systems, etc.

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 What Is the Strategic Role of
HRM in International Firms?
 HRM must also determine when to use
expatriate managers
 citizens of one country working abroad
 who should be sent on foreign
assignments
 how they should be
compensated
 how they should be trained
 how they should be reoriented when they
return home
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 What Is the Strategic Role of
HRM in International Firms?
The Role of Human Resources in Shaping Organizational Architecture

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 What Is a Staffing Policy?
 Staffing policy is concerned with the
selection of employees who have the
skills required to perform a particular job
 can be a tool for developing and
promoting the firm’s corporate culture
 the organization’s norms and value
system
 a strong corporate culture can help the firm
implement its strategy

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 What Is a Staffing Policy?
 Three main approaches to staffing policy:
1. The ethnocentric approach - fill key
management positions with parent-country
nationals
2. The polycentric approach - recruit host-country
nationals to manage subsidiaries in their own
country, and parent-country nationals for
positions at headquarters
3. The geocentric approach - seek the
best people, regardless of nationality, for
key jobs
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 Why Choose an Ethnocentric
Staffing Policy?
 Firms that pursue an ethnocentric policy believe that
 there is a lack of qualified individuals in the host
country to fill senior management positions
 it is the best way to maintain a unified corporate
culture
 value can be created by transferring core
competencies to a foreign operation via parent
country nationals
 it makes sense with an international strategy
 But
 it limits advancement opportunities for host
country
nationals
 it can lead to "cultural myopia"
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 Why Choose a Polycentric
Staffing Policy?
 The polycentric approach
 makes sense for firms pursuing a localization
strategy
 can minimize cultural myopia
 may be less expensive to implement than an
ethnocentric policy
 But
 host-country nationals have limited opportunities to
gain experience outside their own country and so
cannot progress beyond senior positions in their own
subsidiaries
 a gap can form between host-country managers and
parent-country managers

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 Why Choose a Geocentric
Staffing Policy?
 The geocentric approach
 is consistent with building a strong unifying culture
and informal management network
 makes sense for firms pursuing a global or
transnational strategy
 enables the firm to make the best use of its human
resources
 builds a cadre of international executives who feel at
home working in a number of different cultures
 But
 can be limited by immigration laws
 is costly to implement

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 Which Staffing Policy
Is Best?
Comparison of Staffing Approaches

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 What Is Expatriate Failure?
 Firms using an ethnocentric or geocentric
staffing strategy will have expatriate managers
 Expatriate failure is the premature return of an
expatriate manager to the home country
 each expatriate failure can cost between $40,000
and $1 million
 between 16% and 40% of all American expatriates in
developed countries fail and almost 70% of
Americans assigned to developing countries fail

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 What Is the Rate of
Expatriate Failure?
Expatriate Failure Rates

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 Why Do Expatriate
Managers Fail?
 The main reasons for U.S. expatriate
failure are
 the inability of an expatriate's spouse to
adapt
 the manager’s inability to adjust
 other family-related reasons
 the manager’s personal or emotional
maturity
 the manager’s inability to cope with larger
overseas responsibilities
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 Why Do Expatriate
Managers Fail?
 The reason for European expatriate failure is
 the inability of the manager’s spouse to adjust
 The main reasons for Japanese expatriate
failure are
 the inability to cope with larger overseas
responsibility
 difficulties with the new environment
 personal or emotional problems
 a lack of technical competence
 the inability of spouse to adjust

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 How Can Firms Reduce
Expatriate Failure?
 Firms can reduce expatriate failure through improved
selection procedures
 Four dimensions that predict expatriate success are
1. Self-orientation - the expatriate's self-esteem, self-
confidence, and mental well-being
2. Others-orientation - the ability to interact effectively with
host-country nationals
3. Perceptual ability - the ability to understand why people
of other countries behave the way they do
4. Cultural toughness – the ability to adjust to the posting

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Expatriate failures can be a costly problem for multinational
enterprises. As such, expatriate selection is an important
role for global human resource managers.

If you were an HR manager for a London-based

multinational enterprise that was launching a subsidiary in
your home town, what are some challenges that you would
expect an expatriate manager to face, and how might you
seek to minimize those challenges and reduce the chance of
failure? How would your response change if your company
was based in Japan, India, or South Africa?

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 Why Is a
Global Mindset Important?
 A global mindset may be the fundamental
attribute of a global manager
 cognitive complexity
 cosmopolitan outlook
 A global mindset is often acquired early in life
from
 a family that is bicultural
 living in foreign countries
 learning foreign languages as a regular part of family
life

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 What Is Training and
Management Development?
 After selecting a manager for a position, training
and development programs should be
implemented
 Training focuses upon preparing the manager
for a specific job
 Management development is concerned with
developing the skills of the manager over time
 gives the manager a skill set and reinforces
organizational culture
 Historically, most firms focus more on training
than on management development

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 Why Is Training Important for
Expatriate Managers?
 Training can reduce expatriate failure
 Cultural training - fosters an appreciation for the host
country's culture
 Language training - an exclusive reliance on English
diminishes an expatriate's ability to interact with host
country nationals
 Practical training - helps the expatriate and
expatriate’s
family ease into day-to-day life in the host country
 But, studies show that only about 30% of managers sent
on one- to five-year expatriate assignments received
training before their departure

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 What Happens When
Expatriates Return Home?
 Training and development should include
preparing and developing expatriate
managers for reentry into their home
country organization
 need good programs for
 re-integrating expatriates back into work life
within their home-country organization
 utilizing the knowledge they acquired while
abroad

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 Why Is Management Development
Important to Firm Strategy?
 Management development programs increase
the overall skill levels of managers through
 ongoing management education
 rotations of managers through jobs within the firm to
give them varied experiences
 Management development can be a strategic
tool to build a strong unifying culture and
informal management network
 support both transnational and global strategy

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 How Should
Expatriates Be Evaluated?
 Evaluating expatriates can be especially
complex
 typically, both host-nation managers and home-
office managers evaluate the performance of
expatriate managers
 But, both types of managers are subject to
unintentional bias
 home-country managers tend to rely on hard data
when evaluating expatriates
 host-country managers can be biased towards their
own frame of reference
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 How Can Performance
Appraisal Bias Be Reduced?
 To reduce bias in performance appraisal
 more weight should be given to an on-site
manager's appraisal than to an off-site
manager's appraisal
 a former expatriate who has served in the
same location should be involved in the
process
 Home-office managers should be consulted
before an on-site manager completes a
formal termination evaluation
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 What Are the Key Issues in
Compensating Expatriates?
 Two key issues on compensation
1. How to adjust compensation to reflect
differences in economic circumstances
and compensation practices
2. How to pay expatriate managers

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How Should National Differences
in Compensation Be Treated?
 Currently, there are substantial
differences in executive compensation
across countries
 Research shows
 a top U.S. executive made an average of
$525,923 in the 2005-2006 period,
compared to $278,697 in Japan, and
$158,146 in Taiwan

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How Should National Differences
in Compensation Be Treated?
 Question: Should pay be equalized
across countries?
 Many firms have recently moved toward a
compensation structure that is based on
global standards
 especially important in firms with a
geocentric staffing policy
 But, most firms still set pay according to
the prevailing standards in each
country
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 How Should
Expatriates Be Paid?
 Most firms use the balance sheet
approach
 equalizes purchasing power across countries
so employees have the same living standard
in their foreign posting as at home
 and adds a financial incentive to take the
position

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 How Should
Expatriates Be Paid?
 A compensation package has five components
1. Base salary - normally in the same range as the
base salary for a similar position in the home
country
 can be paid either in the home currency or in the
local currency
2. Foreign service premium - extra pay the
expatriate receives for working outside his
country of origin
 generally offered as an incentive to accept foreign
assignments

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 How Should
Expatriates Be Paid?
3. Various allowances - hardship, housing, cost-of-
living, education
4. Tax differentials - may have to pay income tax
to both the home-country and host-country
governments when no reciprocal tax treaty
exists
 company usually covers extra tax assessments
5. Benefits – many firms provide the same
level of medical and pension benefits abroad
that employees receive at home
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 Why Are International Labor
Relations Important?
 Question: Can organized labor limit the
choices available to an international
business?
 Labor unions can limit a firm's ability to
pursue a transnational or global strategy
 HRM needs to foster harmony and minimize
conflict between management and organized
labor

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 What Are the Concerns of
Organized Labor?
 Organized labor is concerned that
1. Multinationals can counter union bargaining power
by threatening to move production to another
country
2. Multinationals will farm out only low-skilled jobs to
foreign plants making it easier to switch production
locations
3. Multinationals will import employment practices and
contractual agreements from their home countries
and reduce the influence of unions

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 How Does Organized Labor
Respond to MNC Power?
 Organized labor has responded to the
increased bargaining power of multinational
corporations by
1. Trying to set-up their own international
organizations
2. Lobbying for national legislation to restrict
multinationals
3. Trying to achieve regulation of multinationals through
international organizations, such as the United
Nations
 So far, these efforts have had only limited
success
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 How Are MNCs Responding
to Organized Labor?
 Many firms are centralizing labor relations to
enhance the bargaining power of the
multinational vis-à-vis organized labor
 in the past, labor relations were usually
decentralized to individual subsidiaries
 The way in which work is organized within a
plant can be a major source of competitive
advantage, so it is important for management to
have a good relationship with labor

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