At the end of the 2015 fiscal year, Pentair has 27,600 employees worldwide with 9,600 at its domestic locations (Pentair, 2016, p.8). The company website revealed that the company primarily uses a geocentric approach (Plakhotnik, 2008, p.117) in hiring and retaining its employees as concurred by the cultural diversity of its workforce (Pentair, 2016, p.10). The code of business conduct and ethics revealed that Pentair management does not consider race, ethnicity, age, personal style, gender, country of origin, physical ability, life experiences, religion, and sexual orientation when hiring, retaining and promoting talented individuals (Pentair, 2016a, p.10). The adoption of a geocentric culture is further seen in the company’s code of business conduct and ethics where it revealed that employee practices must be non-discriminatory and fair (Pentair, 2016).
The reason for using a diverse workforce is that it is believed to minimize cultural differences in every country that Pentair is operating in (Plakhotnik, 2008, p.118) while improving its potential growth. This is especially crucial due to the fact that each country has different cultural insights that will require modifications in a company’s organizational practices, culture, structures, and processes (Plakhotnik, 2008, p.117). The value of a diverse workforce is that each employee contributes to the company’s growth revenues through their different backgrounds and experiences (Pentair, 2016a, p.10). The resulting effect of which is that it improves operating effectiveness especially in the international markets (Harvey, Speier and Novecevic, 2001, p.898).
However, Pentair believes that the highest managerial position of its international operations must come from corporate headquarters (Pentair, 2016) since he/she is the primary liaison between the corporate and national culture (Rozkwitalska, 2012, p.50). The reason for the non-issuance of choosing an expatriate or local manager is that Pentair primarily uses a talent management process in selecting and placing the best and brightest individuals in essential functions and industries (Pentair, 2016). This means that employees are chosen based on their personal talents while ignoring individual characteristics, which conforms to a geocentric culture (Pakhotnik, 2008, p.118). This is primarily based on performance accountability wherein the employee must bear responsibility for their failures by learning from their mistakes, which will improve their chances of future success.
References
Harvey, M, Speier, C., and Novecevic, M. M. (2001). A theory based framework for strategic global human resource staffing policies and practices. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(6), 898-915.
Pentair. (2016). 2015 annual report. Pentair. Retrieved from http://www.pentair.com/en/investors/annual-and-other-reports
Pentair. (2016a). Code of business conduct and ethics. Pentair. Retrieved from http://www.pentair.com/en/about-us/leadership/corporate-governance
Plakhotnik, M. S. (2008). Geocentric corporate organizational culture and employee national identity. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual College of Education Research Conference: Urban and International Education Section, 117-122.
Rozkwitalska, M. (2012). Staffing top management positions in multinational subsidiaries – a local perspective on expatriate management. Journal on GSTF Business Review, 2(2), 50-56.
