Global Mindset
Gupta, A. (2013). Human Resource Selection & Development: Challenges for MNC’s. J. Glob. & Sci. Issues, 1(4), 17-24.
In this article, Gupta reviewed challenges facing multinational corporations MNCs) in the context of human resources management issues which include development, training, and selection as part of the ways of preparing their employees for overseas assignments. The author gathered information available from literature sources including research findings of other scholars in the past. His research focuses on potential sources of human resources which multinational corporations can deploy for overseas assignments, issues of compensation, as well as methods that are applied during the selection process. The article is very useful for the research topic, as Gupta contends that there are numerous human resources challenges facing MNCs. The major limitation of the article is that it is based merely on research findings done among the senior level managers and the article lacked data to back up its conclusions. The author did not indicate whether there is a need to conduct further research in the future. However, he concludes that four sources that can be used by MNCs to fill overseas positions include home-country nationals, expatriates, host-country nationals, and third-country nationals.
Jackson, P., & Sparks, L. (2005). Retail internationalization: Marks and Spencer in Hong Kong. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 33(10), 766-783.
Jackson and Sparks, in their work, reviewed retail internationalization of Marks & Spencer in Hong Kong. The authors gathered data from four main sources: informal interviewing of former Marks& Spencer management, national and trade press commentary on internationalization of Marks & Spencer, previous data gathered by authors in a previous research of M&S in Hong Kong, and lastly M&S’s publications and statements regarding international activities. The research focused on aspects of retail internationalization such as market entry, maintenance, and exit. The article is important to the research topic in that it highlights market challenges facing multinational retail outlets. The limitation of the article is that the conclusion was based on a case study of one retail outlet operating in one country. Therefore they it can be suggested that a future study should involve more than one retail outlet selling different stock and spread in many countries. The authors contend that their study will stimulate further research on the topic and more comparative studies.
Issues in Global Oriented Organizations
Globalization has been defined as a business concept that entails a multiplicity of issue including new ways of thinking, products, competencies, mindsets, and markets (Ulrich, 1997). Although the term is not new in the business world, there has been increased level of intensities to go with it. While globalization has opened up new opportunities, it has also resulted in almost an equal number of challenges in almost all aspects. For example, the more globally oriented a company becomes, the more competition it encounters from other firms. And competition has been pointed out to be not just a matter of creating and launching a new product in a foreign market. Studies have shown that it is more than that. Rather, competition entails a whole set of issues regarding creation of centers of excellence in one location and sharing the same excellence globally; people, effective logistics, global ideas to solve local needs, information, local responsiveness, and global economies of scale. The uncertainty in politics of global markets is also one of the central issues. To highlight the importance of one of these issues, one local company, say, located in USA can be employing a workforce of 10,000 employees in USA with a global workforce of 60,000 employees spread across more than 100 countries. Besides everything else, management of such a large number of employees in a multi-cultural context is not an easy task for human resources managers. The challenge is further complicated when there is a need to assign tasks to employees in overseas countries with different cultural set-up.
Previous studies by various scholars have concluded with suggestions on how to handle such myriad of problems facing organizations with a global mindset or those which are intending to go global in the future. For example, investigations carried out by Jackson and Sparks (2005) suggest that internalization is marked by non-linear, ongoing, dynamic activity that involves impacts, developments and retrenchment at all levels of an organization. These findings led them to the conclusion that globally oriented organizations must prepare well before going global. Besides other technical aspects like logistics, locations, and finance, multinational corporations (MNCs) ought to also plan for their human resources. Planning for human resources involve strategies for sourcing employees who shall be deployed to work in overseas markets. Gupta (2013) reviewed various issues regarding human resources challenges faced by multinational corporations. One of the challenges is sourcing of personnel. Gupta identified home-country nationals, host-country nationals, third-country nationals, and expatriates as the possible sources of personnel for overseas assignments. Gupta further listed criteria that can be used for selection of international staff as age, education, experience, adaptability, physical and emotional health, independence, and motivation, knowledge of the local language, leadership qualities, and self-reliance. Besides selection criteria, Gupta also emphasized the importance of transition management and training of international employees on cross-cultural issues.
Multinational corporations are continually facing the full force of globalization than any other time in history. Available evidence suggest that one of most critical aspect is human and cultural problems. In this regard, there has been a lot of emphasis that MNCs should focus more on not only understanding but also developing leaders with global mindsets (Joana et al, 2013). However, although the concept of global mindedness has received a lot of attention in the recent past, that has been little research aimed at supporting this hypothesis. Global mindset has been defined as an ability to marry one’s cultural intellectualism with business orientation. Investigations carried out by Morris and Snell (2011) suggests that there is an association between organizational capabilities in human resources subunits of an organization and the level of intellectual capital configuration. However, their investigations revealed that the intellectual capital dimensions vary with the nature of the usefulness for sharing, generating, and implementing human resources management practices.
The issue operational challenges affecting MNCs has been considered by Vahlne, Schweizer, and Johanson (2012). The authors argued that some global organizations operate as a loosely coupled network with subsidiaries spread across the globe and the headquarters (HQ) designing global agenda. Such an arrangement has been found to be prone to a lot of uncertainties since each subsidiary operates with different proprietary capabilities, investment motive, and business strategy (Goerzen & Asmussen, 2013). The authors pointed out that the uncertainties are a liability of outsidership since the HQ have a slight knowledge of networks and actins taking place in its respective subsidiaries. The authors then suggested that owing to the global distribution of the subsidiaries and differing context of uncertainties, the subsidiaries ought to be given some degree of autonomy in their decision-making process. This view is shared by Meyer, Mudambi, and Narula (2010) who had earlier observed that MNCs continually face challenges in their attempts to manage complex networks and subsidiaries due to heterogeneous context within which they operate. A suggestion for handling such a challenge is to balance the strategic role of the subsidiary within the MNC and its local identity and its domestic networks.
Survival in a competitive markets requires that organizations develop elaborate strategies to adapt with the dynamic nature of the global competition. Carlopio et al (2012) suggested that a truly global business mindset which is operating in a hypercompetitive environment requires a mindset that is very flexible and capable of making far-reaching decisions faster. The authors argue that organizations that exhibit high levels of flexibility ensures that every component of their organizations as well as all individuals within an organization are flexible in all circumstances when and if needed. They further suggested various kinds of flexibilities which organizations ought to adopt to survive. Collings, Wood and Caligiuri (2014) content that truly global and dynamic organizations can cannot do without effective and efficient leaders who can work in ambiguous, complex, and dynamic environments that require a very high degree of flexibility. They further pointed out that for business leaders to succeed, they ought to be very well conversant with the cultural diversity of a globally oriented organization. Organizations with culturally-competent leaders have a high chance of business success in a MNCs because they are a number of critical issues that affects business performance and that require such competent leaders with cross-cultural competence. Some of the issues that has been cited include but not limited to negotiating cultural challenges, deep understanding of conflicting regulatory requirements, stakeholder demands, and management and motivation of diverse workforce from different cultural settings. They concluded by suggesting that global leaders ought to be well-trained before being deployed to handle overseas assignments. According to them, competency in global leadership requires a multi-skill capability that includes communication skills, interpersonal skills, cultural awareness, and understanding of local politics, motivation of workforce, market dynamism, and so forth.
References
Caligiuri, P. M., & Dragoni, L. (2014). Global leadership development. The Routledge Companion to International Human Resource Management, 226.
Carlopio, J., Harvey, M., & Kiessling, T. (2012). A key to prosperity in hypercompetitive markets: organizational “hyperflexibility”. Tržište, 24(2), 189-200.
Collings, D. G., Wood, G. T., & Caligiuri, P. M. (Eds.). (2014). The Routledge Companion to International Human Resource Management. Routledge.
Goerzen, A., Asmussen, C. G., & Nielsen, B. B. (2013). Global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy. Journal of International Business Studies, 44(5), 427-450.
Gupta, A. (2013). Human Resource Selection & Development: Challenges for MNC’s. J. Glob. & Sci. Issues, 1(4), 17-24.
Jackson, P., & Sparks, L. (2005). Retail internationalization: Marks and Spencer in Hong Kong. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 33(10), 766-783.
Meyer, K. E., Mudambi, R., & Narula, R. (2011). Multinational enterprises and local contexts: the opportunities and challenges of multiple embeddedness. Journal of Management Studies, 48(2), 235-252.
Morris, S. S., & Snell, S. A. (2011). Intellectual capital configurations and organizational capability: An empirical examination of human resource subunits in the multinational enterprise. Journal of International Business Studies, 42(6), 805-827.
Story, J. S., Barbuto, J. E., Luthans, F., & Bovaird, J. A. (2014). Meeting the challenges of effective international HRM: Analysis of the antecedents of global mindset. Human Resource Management, 53(1), 131-155.
Ulrich, D. (1997).Human Resource Champions: The Next Agenda for Adding Value and Delivering Results. Harvard: Harvard Business School Press
Vahlne, J. E., Schweizer, R., & Johanson, J. (2012). Overcoming the liability of outsidership—the challenge of HQ of the global firm. Journal of International Management, 18(3), 224-232.
