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INTRODUCTION
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Human resource management can also be defined as the function within an
organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing
direction for the people who work in the organization. As a change agent, it
is concerned with the nature of and regulation of the employment
relationship at the level of the workplace and broader society.
The human resource management model emphasises.
• The need to search for new ways of working
• The central role of managing in promoting change
• The treatment of workers as individuals rather than part of a collective
workforce
• The encouragement of workers to consider management as ‘partners’
rather than as opponents – ‘us and us’, rather than ‘us and them’.
THEORY
The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that
employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should
not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing
cabinets. It takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish
to contribute to the enterprise productively and that the main obstacles to
their endeavours are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failure of
process. It is an innovative view of the workplace management, which,
asserts that human techniques when properly practiced, are expressive of the
goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall.
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that is, human resource management approach seeks to ensure a fit between
the management of an organization’s employees, and the overall strategic
direction of the company. The basic premise of the academic theory of
human resource management is that humans are not machines, therefore, we
need to have an interdisciplinary examination of people in the workplace.
That is why fields such as psychology, industrial engineering, industrial and
organizational psychology, industrial relations, sociology etc play a major
role.
PRACTICE
Human resource management (HRM) as a business practice comprises
several processes, which used together are supposed to achieve the
theoretical goals mentioned above. These practical processes include:
• Workforce planning
• Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection)
• Induction and orientation
• Skills management
• Training and development
• Personnel administration
• Compensation in wage or salaries
• Time management
• Travel management (sometimes assigned to accounting)
• Payroll (sometimes assigned to accounting)
• Employees benefits administration
• Personnel cost planning
• Performance appraisal.
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GLOBAL OR INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
Global or international human resource management is the process of
employing, developing and rewarding people in international or global
organizations. It involves the world-wide management of people, not just the
management of expatriates. An international organization or firm is one in
which operations take place in subsidiaries overseas, which rely on the
business expertise or manufacturing capacity of the parent company. Such
companies or organizations bring with them their own management attitudes
and business styles. Human resource managers of such organizations cannot
afford to ignore the international influences on their work.
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nationals’ (TCNs) – nationals of countries other than the parent
company who work abroad in subsidiaries of that organization.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS
Bartlett and Ghoshal (1993) have identified 4 models
1. Decentralized federation in which each national unit is managed as a
than on local markets. Such organizations are truly global rather than
multinational.
4. Transnational in which the corporation develops multi-dimensional
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• The power of markets
• The importance of cost
• Quality and productivity pressures
• The development of like-minded international cadres
• The widespread practice of benchmarking ‘best practice’.
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Culture and environment diversity is a key issue in international human
resource management (HRM). In a study that become a classic in the study
of cultural differences, Hofstede (1980) investigated value differences
between over 11,000 employees in some 40 countries employed by
International Business Machine (IBM). His study focused on the influence
of national culture on the sub-cultures of the worldwide organization.
4 key dimensions were identified.
1. Individualism versus Collectivism – i.e. where individualism is a
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3. Uncertainty Avoidance – i.e. the extent to which a society is tolerant
of uncertainty and which therefore feels less need to avoid it (Low
Avoidance) or feels threatened by it (High Avoidance).
4. Masculinity versus Femininity – i.e. where a nation has a tendency to
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High power distance Low power distance
High uncertainty avoidance High uncertainty avoidance
Low individualism Medium individualism
Medium masculinity High masculinity
7. Anglo 8. Nordic
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Career paths are non-specialised Generally specialised career paths
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addition, the cultural differences mentioned above have produced the slogan
in international human resource management “Think GLOBALLY and act
LOCALLY”. This means that an international balancing act is required,
which leads to the fundamental assumption made by Bartlett and Ghoshal
that: ‘balancing the needs of co-ordination, control and autonomy and
maintaining the appropriate balance are critical to the success of the
multinational company’.
To achieve this balancing act, there are six capabilities that enable firms to
integrate and concentrate international activities and also separate and adopt
local activities:
• Being able to determine core activities and non-core activities;
• Achieving consistency while allowing flexibility;
• Building global brand equity while honouring local customs and laws;
• Obtaining leverage (bigger is better) while achieving focus (smaller is
better);
• Sharing learning and creating new knowledge;
• Engendering a global perspective while ensuring local accountability.
CONCLUSION
Global human resource management provides an organized framework for
developing and managing people who are comfortable with the strategic and
operational paradoxes embedded in global or international organizations and
who are capable of managing cultural diversity. Because of cultural
diversities and issues of convergence and divergence, it is impractical to
develop a truly international approach to global human resource
management. This means that organization structures, management styles,
organization cultures and change management programmes have to be
adapted to the dominant cultural attributes of the host nation just as a careful
balancing act is sought between being global and local needs.
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