International HRM Practices at Foster's Group

This assignment delves into the human resource management (HRM) challenges faced by Foster’s Group, a global brewing company. It focuses on the shortcomings in managing international managers and the impact on recruitment and selection processes. The task requires proposing effective international HRM practices, including selection criteria and strategies, to ensure successful global business operations for Foster’s Group.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
International Human Resource Management
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

1
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Nature of International human resource management.....................................................................3
Contemporary needs of business in strategic decisions...................................................................4
Trends and challenges for IHRM....................................................................................................5
Impact of these trends and challenges on the IHRM practices of Foster’s Group..........................7
Cross cultural similarities and differences.....................................................................................10
Criteria for selection and management of international managers................................................10
Issues in international business......................................................................................................11
Approaches to international human resource management...........................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

2
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
The international human resource management is basically similar to the management of
human resources through inclusion of various HR activities, payroll, talent management
processes along with processes of recruitment and selection of employees on an international
scale. The IHRM includes all the major activities of managing human resources through
management of business functions such as recruitment, selection, training, appraisal of
performances and termination of employees too, all of which are done on an international level
for promoting successful business operations and improve organizational efficiency. The various
functions of IHRM could help Foster’s Group in Australia to achieve the goals and objectives
and gain competitive advantage over its competitors in both local and international levels (Alfes
et al., 2013). The topic will focus on the various trends and challenges for international HRM
and its probable impacts on international business of Foster’s Group in Australia
(fostersbeer.com, 2017).
Nature of International human resource management
While managing IHRM within a multinational corporation, three different types of
employees are involved such as the home country employees, host country employees and the
hired country employees. The Home country employees find working at Foster’s Group the most
convenient, because they stay at Australia only and this can allow them to work at the place
where the corporate headquarter is located. The employees who belong from Australia where the
subsidiary is located are the host country employees whereas the employees who are neither

3
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
home country employees nor host country employees, though work at the subsidiary corporate
headquarter re third country employees (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). An employee from some
other country working at the Australian Multinational corporation could be a third country
employee. Institutional theory is an important theory concerned with the international HRM
practices that allows for consideration of various processes to establish structures, schemes,
rules, norms and routines as important guidelines for management of social behavior. The
institutional theory enables to combine the various components of IHRM, manage the HRM
practices on an international level, and ensure business success with ease and effectiveness. This
kind of theory can help in managing proper flow of the global human forces and form power
struggles (Bratton & Gold, 2012).
Contemporary needs of business in strategic decisions
There are various contemporary needs for business in making strategic decisions
including gaining sustainability related to finance, environment and even enabling proper
certification and licensing to manage the business functioning properly. Foster’s Group is known
for its good quality beverages including Wine and beer and so proper management of supply
chains is essential. The contemporary needs of the organization include gaining sustainability by
taking care of the vineyards, extract the best quality juices and make great wine and beer, which
can ensure running business responsibly and generating huge amounts of profit in business.
Enough revenue should be generated so that it could cover the costs and continue the business
operations to meet the contemporary needs of gaining financial sustainability (Brewster et al.,
2016). Foster’s Group, Australia has good amount of capital and enough funds to meet the

4
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
objectives of the organization and make premium quality wine so as to remain successful in the
business long run.
Contemporary needs of Foster’s Group could be met by creating very less harmful impact
on the environment, though delivering high quality wine to the consumers. The company has
focused on marketing and supply chain management to increase the interests among customers
and develop good mindset, thereby influencing their buying behaviors too. Beer and wine are
made from various agricultural products and this is why, it is important to meet the contemporary
needs by managing environment friendly practices and create a sustainable position in the
market. The IHRM needs have been met by employing various individuals from the host
countries and even from outside Australia (Budhwar & Debrah, 2013). To make them habituated
with the surroundings and adopt the current business practices of Foster’s Group, Australia,
proper training and development sessions should be provided to improve their skills, knowledge
and expertise level.
To fulfill these contemporary needs, Foster’s Group must develop proper strategic
management plan for making predictions of the future and identify the new ideas, trends and
make sure that the resources are utilized properly. The HRM managers must ensure that
employees with proper skills, knowledge and expertise should be hired who had knowledge of
the agricultural components had needed for wine production along with the sustainable practices
that could be considered by the organization (Buller & McEvoy, 2012). It would also be
important to train them well and good, make them knowledgeable about the ways of approaching

5
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
the objectives, and maintain sustainability through fulfillment of contemporary needs in business
(fostersbeer.com, 2017).
Trends and challenges for IHRM
The most important trends for International human resource management are integration
of the economy of the world and internationalization of business, which can result in
management of international trade properly and bring out positive outcomes. Another major
trend of the IHRM is the increased flow of foreign direct investments along with the emergence
of cross-cultural business activities and inter-firm agreements for Foster’s Group, Australia.
With the recent trends in IHRM followed by Fosters Group, the social, economic and political
factors have changed and created impacts on the various approaches of conducting international
business (Daley, 2012). The outside environment influences the IHRM activities largely because
of the different laws, business customs, political environment and rules that are present in
Australia.
The major issues and challenges in IHRM include difficulty to manage the international
projects, having problems to adjust and give time with the families as few employees are away
from their home country while working at Foster’s group in Australia. It often becomes difficult
o manage the human resources properly while recruiting and selecting the right individual for
doing the right job and there are other barriers too such as cultural barriers, language barriers and
differences in external environment as well (fostersbeer.com, 2017). Few other challenges faced
by the IHR manager could be tax related issues, unable to coordinate the foreign currencies and
rates of exchange and the difference in HR systems for the various geographic locations. The

6
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Government rules and regulations are also different in Australia, so the employees who would be
recruited or might have left their home country should be subjected to various issues like health,
legal and financial complexities too. During the international management of human resources,
the failure rate of repatriation and expatriation is quite high and getting the appropriate mix of
skills and knowledge among the newly recruited employees is quite difficult, regardless of the
geographic location (Griffin & Pustay, 2012). Other challenges for IHRM could be distribution
of knowledge and information related to the organization and often it had been seen that the flow
of information had deteriorated.
The labor laws are different and even the political environment, which are considered as
major challenges. There are various stages related to the advancement in technology and the
employees who have visited Australia from their home country may not be able to feel free with
the new technologies at Foster’s Group. The level of education achieved is another challenge for
IHRM, because the employees who want to work at Australia and pursue education at the same
time may not be familiar with the Australian educational system and know about the various
learning facilities and systems due to the variance in culture (Jiang et al., 2012). The variation of
culture is based on five major dimensions including the individualism vs collectivism, power
distance, uncertainty voidance, masculinity and long term vs short term orientation. Mobility is
another major challenge because employees will have to leave their home country and visit the
place where they need to work in Australia and ensure that they perform to their potential. The
main barriers to effective IHRM are variations in rules and regulations, perception of human
resources management, resistances to change or adopt the new environment and differences in
culture during the management of learning and teaching styles (Marchington et al., 2016).

7
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Impact of these trends and challenges on the IHRM practices of Foster’s Group
Based on the recent trends, it could be understood that the HR department must enable a
proper mix of staffs within Foster’s Group who possess all the relevant skills, knowledge and
expertise to adopt the new work culture. The recent trends include providing training and
developmental sessions to the employees that can not only improve their skills, but will also
enhance their performance level and ensure that they commit fully to the organization for
achieving the desired goals and objectives (Mendenhall, 2012). In this way, the employees will
also be able to gain working knowledge of the culture and language as well as know the values,
beliefs, morals, customs, laws, rules and regulations of the organization where they have been
working at present. This would also promote flexibility, identify the differences in performances
of employees, and furthermore provide them with developmental programs for improving the
areas where they lacked certain skills and strengths. Nowadays, Foster’s Group has managed to
recruit and select individuals from diverse backgrounds, culture and from different educational
backgrounds as well for managing workforce diversity and ensure better innovation and
creativity for allowing the organization to gain competitive advantage in business. This could
enable providing a strategic direction to the organization as well as allow for focusing on the
goals and objectives with ease and effectiveness (Renwick, Redman & Maguire, 2013). With the
presence of a diverse workforce, it would be easy to gain potential benefits from enhanced
innovation and creativity along with better decision-making ability for improving organization’s
competitiveness. Thus, the recent trend of managing a diverse workforce should create a positive
impact by proving proper training to individuals and making them skilled of managing and

8
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
dealing with other people within the organization and respect the diversity of views and opinions
of theirs as well (Snell, Morris & Bohlander, 2015).
It is evident that people as well as organizations learn from mistakes and so it is believed
that challenges related to the IHRM practices can often lead to making changes and
improvements for enhancing the organizational efficiency and ensure that the issues are not
faced again in the future. The challenges in IHRM could often bring negative implications such
as change in prices of products and services offered by Foster’s Group. There are various
evidences which showed that lack of educational skills can often be the cause of not
understanding the projects undertaken by the company and furthermore deteriorate the
organizational effectiveness (Sparrow, Brewster & Chung, 2016). The business
internationalization at Foster’s Group has resulted in better mobility of the human resources and
created a diverse workforce. But there were many employees who had felt depressed and faced
issues regarding country permit, finance and even legal issues while visiting Australia, where
they worked at Foster’s Group. Mobilization of human resources is costly and it can hamper the
production level of the company sometimes too. New technologies should be implemented
otherwise, it could also result in degrading the business performance and prevent proper business
functioning as well. Often, discrimination at workplace is experienced when individuals from
different backgrounds and cultures are recruited. Lack of skills and proper education could also
create issues and affect the IHRM practices, as the employers would not be able to recruit and
select the potential candidates and assign them the right kinds of tasks (Stahl, Björkman &
Morris, 2012). Knowledge about the different culture is important for the third party employees,
because they need to adopt the new culture to perform to their potential at Foster’s Group. The

9
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
challenges could even pose major threats because relocating to another country might even
change their health condition and create financial issues and furthermore make them unable to
perform efficiently and manage the IHRM practices. This would hamper the efficiency of IHRM
practices and degrade the efficiency of business operations and processes, thereby resulting in
creating negative impact while managing international business (Alfes et al., 2013). Political
risks could prevent the organization to enter new markets and even recruit the most skilled
employees. The challenges also create difficulties to manage suppliers and supply chains and
even hinder the human rights policies that not only results in inappropriate management of
human resources but also deteriorates the effectiveness of IHRM practices (fostersbeer.com,
2017).
Cross cultural similarities and differences
There are both similarities and differences between the HRM practices in Australia and
other countries. In Australia, the multinational corporations implemented various policies to
reduce the central Government employment. The private sector has been mostly focused on to
manage the savings methods and manage the IHRM practices properly to sustain in the global
business environment and make a positive impact on the public service resourcing too. The
organizational values and beliefs more or less remain same for the multinational companies, and
so it creates very lesser issues for the employees to cope up with the surroundings. Every diverse
culture present within the workplace of multinational companies consists of individuals from
different backgrounds, ethnicity, religion or race (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). The diverse

10
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
culture and workforce can bring the varied opinions of many employees, which will not only
create ease of managing global business, but will also increase the overall business performance.
Criteria for selection and management of international managers
The first and foremost criterion for selection of international manager is to check whether
the individuals do possess enough leadership skills and knowledge of managing the human
resources properly or not. Management of human resources is a serious issue and organisation’s
success depends upon how well the human resources are managed. Selection of international
managers is done who has the ability to mix the organizations culture and can get the employees
involved in the working environment with ease. The international managers must also have
proper leadership skills to ensure that the international assignments and tasks are allocated
properly to the employees and they are even guided in the right direction for successful
achievement of organizational goals and objectives (Brewster et al., 2016). The local and
international values along with international trade theories must be known to the international
manager to create an useful strategy for the international markets and make the global business
and human resource management successful and noteworthy.
Issues in international business
The employees might not understand foreign laws and rules including tax implications
properly, which could threaten the international business scenario. The prices were not set
properly due to the new global trading activities along with lack of ability to position a particular
brand. Fluctuations in currency rate is another major issue in international business whereas the

11
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
cultural differences and communication barriers also create difficulties for managing global
business (Daley, 2012).
Approaches to international human resource management
The most important approaches to manage human resources globally are ethnocentric,
regiocentric, polycentric and geocentric approaches. The ethnocentric staffing enables to provide
the most important positions in foreign subsidiaries with individuals from the home country.
Many expatriates of Foster’s Group are transferred to a foreign subsidiary in Australia. The
polycentric staffing approach allows for recruiting the individuals from the host country while
the regiocentric approach to HRM enables mixing up the foreign and local employees to work as
an unit and create a good level of autonomy from the headquarter present at the home country.
As the head of HR, I would consider the regiocentric staffing approach the most suitable for
managing human resources internationally (fostersbeer.com, 2017).
Conclusion
The topic was concerned with the international human resource management where the
three trends were technology, education and mobility along with the challenges including
language and cultural barriers and even different trade rules, regulations and foreign policies.
These challenges often created difficulties for management of global business properly and
furthermore deteriorated the efficiency of managing recruitment and selection of the most
appropriate employees and international managers within the workplace of Foster’s Group. As
the head of HR, I had presented few criteria for selection and management of international

12
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
managers and approaches to IHRM to ensuring that the human resources would be manage
properly and successful global business should be possible.

13
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
References
Alfes, K., Shantz, A. D., Truss, C., & Soane, E. C. (2013). The link between perceived human
resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated
mediation model. The international journal of human resource management, 24(2), 330-
351.
Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2012). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave
Macmillan.
Brewster, C., Houldsworth, E., Sparrow, P., & Vernon, G. (2016). International human resource
management. Kogan Page Publishers.
Budhwar, P. S., & Debrah, Y. A. (Eds.). (2013). Human resource management in developing
countries.
Buller, P. F., & McEvoy, G. M. (2012). Strategy, human resource management and performance:
Sharpening line of sight. Human resource management review, 22(1), 43-56.
Daley, D. M. (2012). Strategic human resources management. Public Personnel Management,
120-125.
fostersbeer.com. (2017). Fosters. Retrieved 5 October 2017, from http://www.fostersbeer.com/
Griffin, R. W., & Pustay, M. W. (2012). International business. Pearson Higher Ed.

14
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Jiang, K., Lepak, D. P., Hu, J., & Baer, J. C. (2012). How does human resource management
influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating
mechanisms. Academy of management Journal, 55(6), 1264-1294.
Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R., & Kynighou, A. (2016). Human resource
management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.
Mendenhall, M. E. (Ed.). (2012). Global leadership: Research, practice, and development.
Renwick, D. W., Redman, T., & Maguire, S. (2013). Green human resource management: A
review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(1), 1-14.
Snell, S. A., Morris, S., & Bohlander, G. W. (2015). Managing human resources. Nelson
Education.
Sparrow, P., Brewster, C., & Chung, C. (2016). Globalizing human resource management.
Stahl, G. K., Björkman, I., & Morris, S. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of research in international
human resource management. Edward Elgar Publishing.