Ethnocentric Staffing Approach

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

Productivity in the new culture is experienced to an extremely positive extent. Business dealings and negotiations become secondary nature to the expatriate, and the expatriate’s journey becomes a great success in the perspective of their employing company.

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.

When companies engage in a cross-national border business, there is often the need to send employees among the parent country nationals (PCNs) to manage the company’s activities. This strategy of staffing is known as ethnocentric staffing and these employees are regarded as expatriate while the host country nationals (HCNs) are regarded as local staff (Robson & Society for Human Resource Management (U.S.), 2008).

While there are many various global issues that affect the International Human Resource Management to run efficiently, there are two key concepts that play a major role in understanding how to approach them with cohesive and a well coherent strategy; they are the International Human Recourse Management Strategy and Understanding the Cultural Environment. In the International Resource Management strategy, many companies will do their research in finding companies that offer the

The ethnocentric staffing policy approach chooses United States as top ranking employees international operations. We will give executive positions to US citizens located in the manufacturing state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. The main advantage of this staffing approach is that it allows the EcoPlay! to make sure that the people in the top positions are experienced in the business of the manufacturing industry. This is because the people in the host country, Mexico, does not have enough skilled workers for staffing top positions in the industry. The ethnocentric staffing policy approach is also employed to make certain the culture of the entire industry is unified rather than diversified. The problem we might encounter with this approach is that

Whinch-it can pursue one of several approaches to international staffing, with each having its advantages and disadvantages. These staffing methods include ethnocentric staffing method which the strategic decisions are made at the headquarters and the foreign subsidiaries have limited autonomy. If Whinch-it feels there are no qualified personals in the host country then ethnocentric approach will prove to be the best one. Having a parent company national will also maintain the communication, coordination and control links to corporate headquarters. Disadvantages of this staffing model include reduced productivity and high turnover as a result of limited promotional opportunities to the host country nationals. Another staffing method that can be used is polycentric, this models allows each subsidiary to be managed by a host country national with some decision making autonomy, this will eliminate some of the problems that ethnocentric have while also eliminating adjustment periods, language barriers and it gives continuity of management of foreign subsidiaries Dowling et.al 2008. Polycentric however has its disadvantages such as language barriers with parent company national and the loyalty to the PCN might be lower that the loyalty to the HCN’s nationality. Geocentric method of staffing takes no account of the

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

As the US expatriate managers are poorly trained for international assignments, they experience difficulty in adapting to the new culture and tradition. The adaptation to the new place, language, people and their cultural attitudes slow down their workplace performance. Also in the workplace, they experience the cultural shock in the different working mode and staff relations.

These findings suggest that an American company should not assume that it can adapt an ethnocentric approach and operate in a foreign country by its own rules. As shown in the case study and research, complexity of culture and other economic and social factors have a strong impact

Briscoe D., Schuler R., Tarique I., (2011). Internatonal Human Resource Management : Policies and Practices for Multinational Entreprise.

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.

Medical Precision Systems (from now on MPS) have a HR strategy with the intentions of gaining strong control over its subsidiaries through the extensive use of expatriate managers in both technical and managerial areas of the business. Expatriate managers have been told to try to keep the unions out or to ensure that they have a minimal influence. The main issue with MPS IHR strategy is that they are using an ethnocentric approach where they export their HR strategy to foreign countries. It's different working environment, culture and mentality between the local subsidiaries' workforce and its American

Forster, N., 2000. Expatriates and the impact of cross‐cultural training. Human Resource Management Journal, 10(3), pp.63-78.

With regard to executive nationality staffing policies, “There are major four categories on the HRM within Multinational corporations : the ethnocentric approach, the