Differences between Human Resource Management and International Human Resource Management

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
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Human Resource Management
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Question 1
Differences between Human Resource Management and International Human Resource
Management
Human Resource Management is the process of managing people of an organization or
company (in both the private and the public sector) in a structured and thorough manner in
order to achieve the set goals and targets as decided by the company’s management.
Today industries and industrial groups are no more limited to one geographical region or
country. A company almost spans three to four continents and thus with such a large work
force spanning boundaries of other nations, companies require a management concept which
would cover each and every employee.
Thus keeping the global perspective in mind HRM has now also been modified into IHRM
(International Human Resource Management) to cover the ever changing work scenario in
the world.
IHRM or International Human Resource Management is the process of employing competent
people across all the nations in which the company spans and effectively utilizing the talent
of these human resources in the organization to achieve the company’s mission statement.
International HRM is concerned with the management of the company’s dispersed work force
and their output despite being geographically divided by boundaries to ensure that the
company receives a competitive advantage both locally as well as globally.
While IHRM is into the management of employees in the three nation categories i.e. the
parent country where the company is actually originated and has its base headquartered; the

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host country where the branch of the parent country is located; and other countries from
where the organization may source the labor, finance or research and development. Since
IHRM involves international employees, it brings with it a broader range of perspective than
the domestic department of HRM.
IHRM includes activities such as international taxation, coordinating foreign currencies and
exchange rates, international relocation, international orientation for the employee posted
abroad, etc.
The HR managers in IHRM department are thus faced with the responsibility of looking after
the issues of employees belonging to more than one nationality and consequently have to
handle the task of setting up domestic HRM department for each of the country from where
employees are working.
Despite a local HRM department the IHRM have to continue to closely monitor all the
employees since they are the ones heading the other departments in different countries.
IHRM has a host of duties to mete out in case of an executive posted to a foreign country
because they are more directly involved in the personal lives of the employees than the local
HRM department. In short IHRM links the HRM of local subsidiaries and creates
organizational strategies in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
Question 2
Impact of the culture on countries on the job of a human resource manager
The global anarchy has witnessed the growing importance of Human Resource
Management in both business and public life. The stormy business climate brought in the

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wake of liberalization, globalization, changing technologies, development in knowledge and
advances in information technology is offering managers a complex and challenging
situation. So researchers are looking into Human Resource Management (HRM) practices on
a comparative basis comes across a major question. This question has to do with the extent at
which societal culture influences the way firms manage their personnel and the way HRM
practices are developed and implemented within firms across various countries in the world.
Globalization has shifted the attention of both researchers and practitioners to the way that
organizational practices, and especially HRM, are differentiated across various countries as
per their cultural context. In the literature one can find several comparative HRM studies
concluding, in their majority, that national culture is a conclusive factor in shaping HRM. In
studying about Multi National Companies (MNCs) in 12 countries, Sparrow et al. (1994)
found differences in the HRM practices that are perceived to be a source of competitive
advantage across the countries.
Of all the factors affecting Human Resource Management (HRM) perhaps none is more
effective than the national culture and the most popular model for comparison at the level of
national culture is that of Hofstede (1980, 1991), which has been the base of numerous
research studies in the area of management in general. Every culture has also developed
specific and unique blind spots in the art of managing and organizing. Described that due to
the increasing demands of the globalized and liberalized business environment, both
researchers and practitioners have started paying more attention to the study of culture as an
explanatory variable. By using Hofstede’s framework of national culture, the objective of
research is to examine the impact of national culture on HRM practice by applying the
Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions of collectivism/individualism, power distance,
uncertainty avoidance, and femininity/masculinity theory. In the new global economy, HRM
has become a vital issue for the effectiveness of organizations. In accordance with the

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existing studies, the shift to globalization required from corporations to achieve focused
performance by all means. This shift emphasized the necessity for businesses to fully utilize
their human resources engaging suitable practices and strategies. The presence of supportive
cultural factors is essential for the efficiency and success of the HRM result. It seems obvious
that the ways western organizations cope with HRM practices are different from the ways
Middle Eastern organizations with their different cultural and institutional situations cope
with these issues. Because Arabic countries have different values and attitudes than the
developed countries, which may determine and shape specific managerial approaches in
human resource as cited by cultural research perspective. This restlessness to adopt western
HRM tools could results lack of suitable practice in the Arabian context.
Question 3
Discuss the following Statement: All human resource management policies should be
standard across units of international organizations
Global businesses should have a global HR function. At the same time, in order to
compete successfully in diverse markets, companies should recruit, train, and manage people
locally—reflecting local culture, local labor markets, and the needs of diverse local business
units. Creating global standards, platforms, and service centers addresses only part of the
challenge. Leading companies are developing HR operating models that are flexible enough
to allow for local implementation and agile enough to adapt to local markets and business
needs. The ultimate goal: to combine scale and agility to optimize talent management in
every market where the company does business.

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For many organizations, one of the key drivers of a globally integrated HR strategy is the
need for talent mobility within the company. Leading companies often move talent from
region to region to address key talent gaps.
Consider a business unit in California with a strong need for engineering skills. The company
may have a team in Moscow with precisely the right skills that has just finished a similar
project. Unless the company’s talent practices are globally integrated, this match between
business need and existing skills may never take place.
Companies operating on a global basis often offer high-potential employees global
developmental assignments as one of their “tours of duty.” They also face the need to move
specialists to global assignments rapidly. Globally integrated HR is critical to this process,
but many companies do not have the systems in place to accomplish these increasingly
common HR responsibilities.
This task was made more complex by the organization’s history of acquisitions and
decentralized operations. As a result, HR had operations in over 90 counties and more than
200 HR and payroll systems. This decentralized operating structure made it difficult to meet
the growing need for global HR data and processes for managing talent, performance, and
compensation. The result was duplication of effort, high costs, HR service quality problems,
and inadequate data for both HR and business-unit managers.
To lead the transformation of HR, the organization hired leaders and staff from the outside
with experience doing similar projects for other large global companies. The program was
ambitious. During the initial phase, an intense, thorough review of all HR systems confirmed
the presence of a wide variety of unintegrated technological solutions and an unusually high-
touch, local HR service delivery model—even by the standards of its industry. A senior team