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).
That being said, there are numerous advantages and disadvantages of recruiting expatriate staff over local staff. Some of the advantages are:
a. Expatriate staff understands the company’s values. Every company has a cherished value that distinguished its operations from other companies and by recruiting expatriate staff, the company’s value is certainly guaranteed to continue in the foreign
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Some of the disadvantages are:
a. Expatriate staffs are expensive. Imagine sending an expatriate with a family of four to a foreign country, the cost of maintenance would triple the cost of recruiting a local staff. Similarly, expatriate staffs enjoy special benefits to compensate the inconveniences of working far from home country. These huge expenses make it a disadvantage of recruiting expatriate staff over local staff.
b. Expatriate staffs are ignorant of the local culture. Recruiting a local staff eliminates the cost of training an expatriate on intercultural issues. Because the expatriate staff is unfamiliar with the local culture, there will often be the struggle to acclimatize and adapt to the new culture. Additionally, the expatriate staff does not know how the employment system in the host country is so to recruit local staff will pose an enormous challenge for the expatriate staff (Malamud & Rotenberg, 2010). Additionally, expatriate staffs will not efficiently and effectively network with local stakeholders because of language and cultural
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.
The opportunities to work abroad are more today than they have ever been in the history of mankind. The big planet Earth has become a small global village and sovereign barriers seem to have disappear. While working in a foreign country, some individuals
Due to the price of goods and cheap labor costs. Owing to the fact that if the cost of labor is high, the product has to be high which may cause the business to shut down. Outsourcing is a mischievous practice for the job market. While some good benefits can come from it, the ethical, legal, and business issues for the company's, employees, customers, and other external stakeholders outweighs them. For businesses that are small or big, there are both pros and cons to outsourcing HR functions.
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.
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.
In analyzing the second reason listed for why outsourcing is used; ‘inability to attract the highest caliber of employees to job functions that may be peripheral to the organization’s core discipline’, companies employ a different kind of outsourcing tactic. This reason leads to offshore outsourcing solutions. If a company cannot attract high caliber domestic employees to job functions secondary to their main function then they seek help where labor may be less expensive and more efficient.
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
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.
One of the major corporate problems in the current century involves continuously soaring salaries and wages. In fact, some companies face up to 50 percent of their annual income being expended on staff compensation only. In several such cases, the highest number of employees are usually nationals of the host country within which the company operates. It thus follows that the numerous costly legalities involved in getting an expatriate into the country, coupled with getting to compensate them for their troubles away from home would amount to a significantly higher amount of staff compensation costs. Add this to the already compounding corporate problems and you land in a real nightmare of a situation.
International businesses that are ill informed about the practices of another culture are unlikely to succeed in that culture. One way to develop cross-cultural literacy is to regularly rotate and transfer people internationally.
There are also several disadvantages to outsourcing agreements, which include becoming dependent on an outside supplier for services, failing to realize the purported cost savings from outsourcing, locking into a negative relationship, losing control over critical functions, and lowering the morale of permanent employees.
Face to those options and wide resource, the managers in global enterprises have particular concern about the employees’ ability to disseminate knowledge and innovation throughout their global operations . The use of expatriates has seemed to be a logical choice for staffing, while the use of parent-country nations seems to be most appropriate in some specific situation . Some other global enterprises also prefer integrate the expatriates and local human resource. Nevertheless, each procedure has both advantage and disadvantage.
The importance of expatriates being able to interact and communicate with local nationals is emphasized by the contact theory assuming that interpersonal contacts between individuals from different cultures lead to understanding and adjustment. One of the ways that expatriate newcomers become aware of appropriate behaviours in the host country is interacting with host country nationals in a social setting, as local people would be the sources of information and help to understand. The successful expatriates are socially well-integrated. Therefore, expatriates who often communicate and interact with locals will be less surprised and frustrated by differences in non-work circumstances of the host country comparing with expatriates who are socially isolated from the host culture. In the host country, inappropriate behaviours are more likely to result in negative outcomes, leading the expatriate to make the wrong attributions about the culture of the host country and consequently to further withdraw from it. Avoiding interaction with the host country nationals in daily life outside work leads expatriates to ignore local thinking and mentality, which affects their ability to assess work situations and make them develop inaccurate assumptions about the people they are managing. However, others have argued that to bring about adjustment merely interacting with host nationals is not enough, suggesting that adjustment will be facilitated if the expatriates have the cultural empathy