B845 - Strategic Human Resouce Management
Monday, March 11, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Unit 6.2 International organisational structures
6.2 International organisational structures
The main organisational forms
explored and compared in that literature tend to be:
•
centralised, hierarchical modes with direct
control
•
polycentric modes (multiple centres of
authority)
•
network modes.
These choices often interlock
with a series of staffing choices concerning host-country nationals (HCNs) and
parent-country nationals (PCNs) in the international HR field (for example,
Dowling and Welch, 2007). These, in turn, lead to HR choices about
international deployment and assignments, the management of expatriates and
other international postings (Scullion and Collings, 2007). The underlying managerial problem is how to
manage global coordination in international organisations. Additionally,
and prior to that choice, is another – namely, how to design the most effective organisational structure for the
variety of international circumstances. Many of the issues facing
international business are HRM issues. These relate, most especially, to
gaining competitive advantage through the acquisition and deployment of skilled
and interlinked workforces.
A number of analysts, such as
Bartlett and Ghoshal (1995), have suggested that there are observable stages in
the ‘evolution’ of the internationalisation of firms. These include, for
example, a domestic firm with an international division. A second step
might be the creation of a series of offices and operations in a range of
countries, perhaps in the form of relatively self-standing subsidiaries. A step
beyond could be to a ‘regionalisation’ form, which gathers
together a number of country offices and operations into semi-autonomous
territories such as Europe, Asia–Pacific, and so on. A ‘global
firm’ means that a stage is reached where national borders become even less
relevant and the world is viewed in effect as one market. Each of these
stages and organisational forms carries different strategic HR implications. In
the global
form, for example, the firm will conduct its R&D and locate its marketing
and production functions wherever in the world it judges optimal in terms of
access to talent, resources and markets. Although human resources can
be hired from anywhere, according to this model, there is likely to be a strong
emphasis on, and commitment to, building corporate identity. This will require
provision of cross-postings and management development events, and possibly a
corporate university.
The final stage proposed by
Bartlett and Ghoshal is the idea of a ‘transnational firm’. This is similar
in many ways to the global firm stage, but is distinct in that although such
firms may develop global products, services and brands, they also work very
hard to ‘localise’. Localisation and adaptation to local circumstances
and opportunities is a hallmark of such an organising and marketing strategy.
Simultaneously, these firms emphasise knowledge sharing and global
integration but also local responsiveness.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Unit 5 - International HRM and the impacts of multinational corporations (MNCs).
A final key issue in terms of international HRM concerns the
activities and impacts of multinational corporations (MNCs).
There are three
main theories:
- MNCs will tend to adopt common practices regardless of the country they are in.
- Organisations will tend to adopt the local practices of the country in which they operate.
- Organisations face conflicting pressures and will exhibit elements of both localisation and globalisation/homogeneity; this is referred to as duality theory.
To test these theories Brewster et al. (2008) analysed the
CRANET data from 22 European countries and 12 non-European countries. They
found that, in the main, foreign-owned MNCs did behave differently from local
firms. Typically, MNCs spent more on training, were more likely to evaluate
training needs systematically and to adopt the stance of more sophisticated HR
practices. Equally, in the main, MNCs tended not to simply transfer or impose
the HR practices of their country of origin. Rather, they tended to vary their
practices depending on the relative strengths of home-country versus
host-country institutions. In part this was judged to reflect the impact of
national regulations. In other words, what international organisations do is an
outcome ‘of the relative strengths of competing forces regulating their
behaviour – formal laws, informal norms and practices, ownership structures,
and relations with stakeholders’ (Brewster et al., 2008, p. 333).
As Brewster
et al. go on to note, ‘supporters of globalisation can gain some support from
our findings, but so too can those who argue for the importance of
localisation’.
Country specific to multinational organizations managing
across geographic boundaries
HR management has to be adapted to the context of each
country.
Unit 5.8 The politics of evaluation
5.8 The politics of evaluation
So far we have presented the
notion of evaluating HR policies and practices as if it were primarily a
technical process. In reality any evaluation process has important social and
political dimensions.
Measurement is often highly subjective. For example, the views
expressed by a supervisor about the impact of a training programme on their
subordinates may depend on who asks them. Employees leaving an organisation for
reasons primarily to do with their personal circumstances may use an exit
interview as an opportunity to voice frustrations about the way they were
managed. An evaluator sifting through company documents may more readily focus
on those that support their own existing ideas about the way processes are
working.
The interpretation of evaluation results may be highly subjective.
What, for example, is the impact on the organisation of low morale among
employees? It may be seen by some managers as an unavoidable and essentially
unimportant short-term response to necessary change, and by others as a
significant threat to the organisation’s ability to deliver excellent customer
service. High staff turnover may be seen by some as an expensive drain of
much-needed employee talents, and by others as a good opportunity to recruit
staff more suited to the new organisational direction.
The values and goals of key stakeholders in the evaluation process may
not be the same. For example, different senior managers may accord
different levels of relative importance to employee job satisfaction and costs.
A trade union may interpret the results of a pay system evaluation very
differently from the management team. Employees may mistrust the purpose of an
evaluation process, fearing it may adversely affect their jobs. Managers may
fear facing uncomfortable truths. Some may fear exposure of information
detrimental to their interests.
Such differences in values, goals
and interests can often motivate individuals to seek to control the nature of
any evaluation or to place obstacles in the way of effective data collection.
Unit 5.7 Who should carry out the evaluation?
5.7 Who should carry out the evaluation?
The most common issues that
influence the choice of parties to carry out an evaluation of HR practices are:
·
Cost:
An internal evaluation – that is, one done by existing HR or other employees in
the organisation – may seem less expensive but the cost in terms of using up
staff time when they could be working on other projects has to be calculated.
There are actual resource costs to be taken into account, and also the less
explicit emotional costs of employees feeling that they are, or need to be,
evaluated in what they do.
·
Competency:
The skills required to carry out an evaluation are many. It should not be just
a box-ticking exercise. Competency in using the different evaluation methods
and models is important, as is the recognition of specific organisational,
national and international nuances. A different kind of competence is required
around the potential issue of knowing the people you are evaluating (in the
case of an internal evaluation). This may be an advantage or disadvantage; how
do you disassociate yourself from knowing the people and systems of the
organisation in which you work?
·
Credibility:
Would an evaluation feel more credible or less credible if it was carried out
by external consultants or more senior members of the organisation? Why?
Perhaps the creditability comes more in the process and follow up.
·
Time
urgency: Would it be more time efficient to employ a group of evaluation
specialists from outside the organisation who could come in and perform the
evaluation as a discrete project? How quickly does the evaluation need doing
and why? What type of evaluation is it? The learning in this unit tells us that
a ‘quick and dirty’ evaluation exercise is unlikely to yield the required
results.
All of these criteria are
affected by whether an evaluation is carried out internally or by external
consultants. The next activity will help you to explore some of the issues
associated with both.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Unit 5.5 Evaluation criteria
5.5 Evaluation criteria
If you are to judge the
effectiveness of an HR programme, you need to be clear about the standards
against which you judge success. You need to ask: ‘How well are we doing in
relation to key criteria?’
If a company introduces a new
talent management programme and wishes to judge its effectiveness, what
criteria might it use?
At the strategic level it will be
concerned with the following:
1. The importance accorded to the role
of the talent management process. For example, in developing and placing the
right people in business critical roles.
2. The fit between the goals of the
programme and the wider business strategy (strategic integration). For example,
the organisation may consider how well the criteria used in identifying and
developing talent support its key drivers of success or reinforce messages
about strategic goals. To give another example, if a key strategic goal
concerns the development of effective joint venture partnerships, is the talent
management process delivering and retaining people with the right skills, such
as collaborative cross-boundary working?
3. The fit between the programme and
good practice principles. For example, how well does the programme help the
organisation to build and retain human capital?
4. The fit between the programme and
other management systems and practices (internal integration). For example,
does the talent management process work effectively with the reward and
performance management processes?
Unit 5.3 Gathering data
Record keeping
- Recorded measures can multiply over time with the original reasons for keeping the records being lost.
- When relied on alone as a source of information, changes in recorded measures can be hard to interpret.
- Can be costly in terms of resources.
- Can be hard to analyse objectively.
- If only a small number of interviews are carried out, the results may be untypical.
- Interviewees are sometimes reluctant to reveal their real opinions, especially to an internal evaluator.
- If participants work together they may feel constrained not to express their real views.
- Expert facilitation is needed.
- It is time consuming to identify, locate and analyse all relevant documents.
- Documents may present a distorted picture of the past.
- The act of observation may change behaviour.
- It can be time consuming, stressful for those observed and ethically problematic.
- What is observed may be untypical.
- It can be hard to get good response rates unless those targeted find the questionnaire user friendly and interesting to complete.
- It can be hard to address complex issues in this way.
- It may require outside expertise to carry out questionnaires effectively.
- It may take quite some time between commissioning and feedback.
- It can be hard to judge what might be relevant comparisons to make.
- It can be easy to rely on key statistics without understanding the context of the organisations with which you are making comparisons.
- It may be difficult to access appropriate comparative data.
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