A Brief Note On International Staffing Cultural Differences

Competing in global markets entail many factors and centralization of its human resource practices is certainly vital to improve global competitiveness and empower employees for global assignments. To achieve success in global marketplace, the challenge of all businesses regardless of their size is to understand global corporate cultural differences and invest in human resources which includes selecting and retaining talented employee, training and development whilst encouraging employees to be innovative and creative. Employees selected to work in foreign locations should be prepared beforehand with adequate cross-cultural training. For an organization to be successful in the international marketplace, it must be concerned with this fit from both an internal and

This report examines cultural and institutional factors of Mexico and how they can impact global HR management and practices. Specifically, by analyzing Mexican culture based on Hofstede’s dimensions, economy, labor legislation, union and employment tradition we reached the conclusion that the features of Mexican culture (high power distance, strong collectivism, high level of masculinity and uncertainty avoidance) and institutional factors have a strong impact on management styles and HR practices of business in Mexico and may arouse some challenges for global company and their expatriates, especially those from countries that bear different cultural features and institutional conditions. In order to minimize the potential conflict between Mexican local employees and expatriates, parent companies need to provide trainings (culture assimilation, country condition, etc.) before sending anybody to Mexico. Also, whether the expatriates should put more effort to disseminate home country (headquarter) culture or to adjust to local culture depends on the company’s strategy in terms of being localized or standardized around the globe.

Performance criteria and goals are best established by combining the values and norms of each local environment with the home-office’s performance standards. An individual country profile should be developed and should take into account the foreign subsidiary’s environment. This profile should be used to review any factors that may have an effect on the expatriate employee’s performance. Such factors include language, culture, politics, labor relations, economy, government, control, and communication.

Managers in human relations needs a variety of skills and knowledge to help their firms succeed in the global marketplace. They need to cope with the initial shock that often accompanies working and living in a different culture. Also, they can become more effective through learning the language of the host country and interpreting accurately the work values of their foreign counterparts. The following traits may be associated with candidate’s who are likely to succeed in international contexts, such as, flexibility, sensitivity to culture differences, business knowledge, culture adventurous and a desire for their views. Before doing business with people from different cultures, managers can familiarize themselves with research that describes important cultural differences in work values. There is four dimensions on which different cultures can be compared, which includes of power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity/femininity.

Today, as businesses hire white-collar workers abroad, similar opportunities will abound for those ready to change and grow. As in earlier eras, the capital accumulation made possible by the increased efficiency and specialization at American companies will fuel demand for employees with new skills, such as managers able to integrate a company's activities across countries and cultures.

Selection and performance management programs that are designed for organizations that have expanded their U.S. workplace to other countries must be designed to take in many other considerations that normally wouldn’t make a difference if all the employees were from the same origin. Expatriate employees and their families should be assisted to help with adjusting to their new culture. Performance management and selection programs should be designed to incorporate the differences in ethical and cultural backgrounds that match the employees and or applicants who are overseas. This paper further examines what is necessary for selection and performance management programs for a U.S. based organization that is expanding overseas to China.

Q: Which of the following two concepts is more critical for international Human Resource Management: understanding the cultural environment or understanding the political and legal environment? Why? Include key terms and concepts from the textbook.

This has highlighted a crucial issue for international companies to be aware of the cross-cultural implications in the conception, design and implementation of the various market entry strategies for the Chinese markets, especially when considering the Human Resources Management strategies since Corporate Strategy will in turn determine the Human Resource (HR) strategy to be deployed.

Subsequently, this strategy will create an enabling environment that is biased in hiring process like in the case of the Maldives, where foreigners were given job opportunities because they had the right attitude yet, the natives had more outstanding qualifications for some of the jobs but they were denied the opportunities (Boella and Goss-Turner, 2013). Therefore, the organization should reduce the act of employing foreigners in its different branches across the world and focus on the natives of the given states dwelling more on their qualifications rather than their attitudes. This would lead to employees feeling more comfortable in their work environment and having a workforce that understands the culture the business is established in as well as being well skilled and educated in their

2. When a company grows in size and makes the decision to expand internationally, it is vital for its image among current and future customers to complete projects effectively and on time. Furthermore, it is also likely that such an expansion would entail the representation of more than one culture among the workforce. Indeed, while many employees will be relocated from the home country, a further proportion will be hired from the host country. To facilitate the relations and

In summary, the home culture of an expatriate predisposes them to certain behaviors and situations. It allows them to operate efficiently in that environment. However, moving to the host-culture changes that operating environment and makes their 'mental software ' less efficient and effective. Culture is clearly a relevant variable when expatriating employees and their families for international business assignments. Training can be applied to ameliorate these effects. Also, training provides insight into the procedural, substantive and informational aspects of their work and personal life in the host location.

This cases study examined the challenges of operating a business in a foreign country. The case study presents a specific business situation in Moscow, describes the prevailing conditions which needed to be addressed, relates the decisions that were made, and examines the consequences of failing to apply sound business and management principles. This case exemplifies many of the themes in international HR management including recruiting, onboarding, training and development, motivation and rewards/compensation, ethics, performance management, and cultural differences between the home country and host country.

In this era of Globalisation, cross cultural management is the biggest challenge that is faced by the organisations. Within the business context, cross culture refers to interaction between different cultures. Cross cultural management refers to managing the employees from different cultural background in one environment (Adler, 2008). Cross culture management is a significant issue within the organisations as the success of an organisation depends upon the smooth interaction of the employees. This paper is aimed at providing insight on the cross cultural management and the main issues and challenges relating to cross cultural management. For the purpose of this paper, two articles, “Cross-cultural Differences in Management”, by Amman & Jordan

The most recent studies in cross-cultural management reveal that the culture is a very expansive subject for organizations to study, especially for organizations, which hire the most diverse workforce. One definition of a diverse workforce could be as the one, which comes from different ethnic and demographic backgrounds (Plessis, 2011). For studying culture of the diverse workforce, there are two parts to study, the implicit and the explicit culture. The explicit culture includes behavior while the implicit part involves norms and values of individuals (Guang & Trotter, 2012). The explicit culture is already known when workers stay and work in a firm for a length of time, but the most difficult is to understand the implicit culture which is obscured in form of norms and values of the workers. Due to the differences of cultures, workers hold a great potential of variance, variety in terms of their explicit and implicit parts of the culture. The

* Cultural barriers exist when we join a group and wish to remain in it, sooner or later we need to adopt the behavior patterns of the group. These are the behaviors that the groups accept as signs of belonging. As stated in the reading once an employee had five breakdown reports, he or she was taken off the machine and given a lower paying job. Some of the managers don’t believe that this is a productive practice but goes along with it because has become the culture of the company with the previous vice president.