Challenges and Strategies in International Human Resource Management: A Case Study of British Airways

This paper discusses the challenges faced by British Airways in human resource management, including the inability to transfer best practices among countries, cultural divide constraints, ethical and legal issues, and safety and security concerns. It also explores the advantages and disadvantages of a uniform performance management system for a multinational corporation. The paper suggests context-specific strategies for human resource activities and the need to evaluate the business environment before investing in a particular country.

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Strategic International Human Resources
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Introduction
British Airways (BA) is the largest international airline company in the United Kingdom
(UK). It has flights to over 550 destinations around the world. The BA has won global awards
regarding providing its clientele with first-class services (Hoeffler and Keller, 2002). One of the
strengths that BA prides itself in, is the ability to have modernized planes which increase
customers comfortability. Like any other Multinational corporation, the role of human resource
management is at the center of BA’s operations. Further, managing performance management is
also vital for ensuring consistent results regarding profitability. This paper will highlight the
challenges faced by BA in human resource management and the different strategies they used to
manage these challenges. The paper will also evaluate the possible pros and cons that BA could
be experiencing when applying a uniform system of performance management bearing in mind
that it is a Multinational Corporation.
Human Resource Management
Human resource management resource management is a vital component in an
organization if it seeks to obtain maximum performance from its employees (Cascio, 2018).
Normally, the human resource department provides a framework that can tap into the different
qualities of employees hence utilizing this diversity to the organization’s advantage.
Furthermore, organizations have realized that having the right employee for the right job
increases both efficiency and profitability of the organization. Hence developing and maintaining
human capital is a major problem, since it directly determines the performance of the company at
different levels and its ability to survive in the ever-changing and competitive business
environment. Some of the roles that the human resource department seeks to accomplish for an

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organization include; recruitment of workforce, staff development, ensuring they match
compensation rates with employees’ tasks, aligning the goals of employees and those of the
organization, and making sure that employees have access to functioning public allocations
(Jiang et al., 2012). Like many other companies’ BA has greatly invested in human resource
departments to ensure it has consistent operations and profitability. However, being a
Multinational cooperation (MNC), the human resource department is faced with different
challenges in their attempt to ensure efficient management of operations.
Challenges Facing British Airways Human Resource Strategy
One of the challenges faced by human resources in the BA company is the inability to
transfer best practices among countries (Briscoe et al., 2012). Normally, the universalist
approach in human resources argues that the best practices meant to increase the performance of
human resource management can positively contribute to all organizations regardless of their
industry, size, and location. The BA company has models that have worked very well already in
some countries, and there is the desire to transfer these models to other countries. However,
taking this universalist perspective in the application of best practices in BA has proved to be
futile. This futility is mainly because transferring best practices in human resource management
is mainly applicable at an organization level, and it is centered on the idea that the different
departments are in one country. Further, this transferability of models does consider the social
context under which the practices were successful, which is a major concern for BA with regards
to determining which practices to use in different contexts.

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Secondly, the BA company also faces the cultural divide constraint when it comes to the
application of its human resource strategies. Normally, human resource in MNCs are required to
have a global employee community that consistently identifies with the parent company.
However, diversity in terms of languages, culture, and customs hinder this alignment for MNCs
(Jackson et al., 2014). THE BA company has to apply caution on the kind of method it applies in
different countries, and it should not overlook the cultural definitions of a particular destination.
Further, current research has demonstrated that organizations face the risk of losing their
overseas workforce when most of their promotion and employee relations activities are
performed from the home office.
Thirdly, BA like many other MNCs face complex ethical and legal issues in their attempt
to do business abroad (Vance & Paik, 2014). Further, BA is normally confronted with diverse
human rights, environment, and social equity problems, which greatly affects their
competitiveness in the global market. In BA, the human resource has the role to ensure
compliance with employment laws and regulations and tax codes globally. The laws might be
sometimes conflicting and complicated as compared to the laws in their home country, which
poses a lot of challenges to human resource department.
Fourthly, safety and security also pose a major threat to human resource department in
BA. Lack of security has been cited as one of the main challenges facing human resources in
MNCs (Deresky, 2017). More to this disaster such as tsunami and floods have also proven to be
challenging for Human Resources (HR) in MNCs. Normally, it is the responsibility of the HR to
ensure employee safety at their workplace. However, this component is in jeopardy for MNCs
operating in areas with high political instability.

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Solutions to Challenges Facing British Airways Human Resource Strategy
The BA company needs to adopt a divergent approach regarding applying different
strategies it uses for human resources. Different countries might have different specifications,
and hence it can be difficult to replicate the success of a strategy that was applied in one country
to a different nation. For instance, developed states have well-functioning systems in place that
makes their systems work fully. However, for developing countries, their systems are still slow,
and they cannot quickly respond to some business needs. Hence, it is quite important for BA to
apply context-specific strategies regarding human resource activities. This has already been
witnessed by the way BA changes the qualification levels of its staff across different
destinations.
The second challenge faced by BA in its human resource activities is the diversity of
culture in their different countries of operation (Nickson, 2013). The BA company has
formulated a method to work against this constraint. The main method used is through hiring
nationals of a particular country to head the BA departments so that they can ensure BA’s
operations reflects the values and culture of the destination.
The BA has put together a team of legal experts that are constantly reviewing the various
legal aspects and ethical issues that may cause potential problems if they seek to upgrade their
activities to different countries abroad (Claeys and Cauberghe, 2012). The legal department has
saved BA a lot of revenue regarding penalty fees for being charged for violating different laws.
The law department also liaises with a human resource to ensure compliance with different
country rules.

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Lastly, in light of the effect of unstable political and social environments on human
resource. The BA has invested a lot of resources that are used for screening for potential political
tension before deciding to upscale their operations to different countries. More to this, they only
expand their outreach in countries with manageable levels of risk factors. This has provided their
human resource department with the ability to guarantee their employees safe working and living
conditions.
Performance Management
It is defined as the cooperation between employees and management staff regarding
planning, monitoring and reviewing the work objectives of each employee in the desire to
accomplish organizational goals (Gruman and Saks, 2011). Performance management is not a
one-time event in the organization but rather a continuous process of defining goals, determining
employees progress and enhancing the capacity of employees to ensure that both their personal
and organizational goals are aligned and met (Moynihan and Pandey, 2010). This section will
discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having a uniform performance management system
for British Airways (BA) company which is a multinational corporation.
Advantages of a Uniform Performance Management System to BA in its International
Operations
A uniform system of performance management in an MNC ensures that employees
performance improves and they have a chance of developing their skills further (Van Dooren et
al., 2015). Through performance management, the human resource can evaluate the level
performance of each employee and know the kind of problems that hinder them from reaching

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their potential. Through this, they can design both on and off the job training to increase their
capability.
More to this, a uniform performance management system will ensure that the British
Airways company achieves employees’ loyalty since through this they can discuss with the
employees the different career opportunities, challenges and goals they have. Knowledge of
these factors enables the organization to respond to employees’ expectation hence fostering their
growth fully.
Disadvantages of a Uniform Performance Management System to BA in its International
Operations
Having a uniform performance management system in BA’s international operations has
the potential of generating biased results since different countries have different business
environments. Hence if employees in different countries are evaluated through one criterion
without taking into account the differences in their business environments, the results generated
will not be a true reflection of the situation.
Additionally, having a uniform performance management system for an MNC like BA
will lead to lower self-motivation among employees (Kim et al., 2010). When the results of the
evaluation are made public, and employees in one area that has a tough regulatory framework
always seem to be achieving low results, yet they give their best in terms of work. There is a
possibility of low self-motivation which sometimes might advance to high turnover rates.

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Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to highlight the probable challenges faced by MNCs in
their human resource activities and how they cope up with these challenges. Further, the paper
also highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of an MNC using a uniform set of
performance management in its international operations. The paper used British Airways as an
MNC to explore these issues. Through this exercise, I have been able to understand the different
challenges faced by human resource departments in MNCs. I have also developed my skills
regarding critical thinking, research, and analysis as well as synchronizing my thoughts. It is
important for MNCs to evaluate their business environment before deciding whether or not to
invest in a particular country.

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