International HRM: Cultural and HRM Issues Faced by UK Companies While Expanding Globally

International HRM

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................3
Cultural issues faced by International HRM while expanding business globally.........................3
International HRM issues faced by UK companies while expanding globally.............................6
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
International human resources is a process that require the acquisition, allocation and
proper utilizations of the human resources in a worldwide business in order to accomplish their
objective. It is a set of the activities targeting HRM at the global level. International HRM deals
with three aspects that include the human resource activities, types of employees and different
countries of operation. It adopt same traditional HRM functions including the recruitment and
selection, employee's training and development, the performance appraisal and other etc. at the
global level. It manage peoples in a the multi national context. It is concerned toward the
management of all humane resources activities in the global organisations. This report will include
facets of the cultural and HRM issues that HRM require to take into the consideration during
expanding its organization globally together with its benefits (Acquah, Agyabeng-Mensah and
Afum, 2020).
MAIN BODY
The cultural issues faced by the International HRM during expanding a business globally.
The International HRM is mainly engrossed with administration and the global
understanding of the HR practise within the business. It focuses on the three approaches that
include comparative IHRM, cross cultural and the focus on multinational enterprises
With increasing the internationalization of a businesses, function of an international HRM
extends to decision making process, cross culture communication and inter cultural negotiations.
IHRM require to build the understanding related to the cross culture to avoid conflicts during
operation globally (Alatyat and Carballo-Penela, 2020).
Office culture in the UK and Japan is differ in numerous aspects that may give a rise to
conflicts due to which companies faces a wide range of the problems. Japanese approach in the
working is completely different from the UK, the organization operating in United Kingdom may
face various issues with spread out their business globally or internationally in the Japan. Some of
issues are given below:
 Obsessed with unneeded information- UK companies give less attention in the details
and work with a perspective. They focus on the major points that results a fast decision
making process. Whereas, the culture adopted by Japanese workforce involve that staff
who are very obsessed with inapplicable information. They require the detailed

explanation regarding to applicable as well as the irrelevant problems that results in a
delayed decision making process (Anh Vu and et. al., 2021).
 No priority to private life. UK company's workforce give more priority to their personal
life over the professional lives. It shows a large cross cultural issue between both nations
because, employees in Japan are much obsessed for their working life and ignore personal
lives. It affect their efficiency and effectiveness to operate the internal operations as they
show less motivated to fulfil their personal wants and desire ( Wood and Bischoff, 2020).
 Pre determined working- Japanese employees comes up with a predetermined answer of
selected questions and this results in lacking of the creative ideas and thoughts. Their
employees are engaged in the predetermined circle where the diversification is very
difficult. Whereas, UK workforce are very casual for their meetings and they can not get
the predetermined answer of their queries. It will helps them to think some creative and
useful ideas (Armstrong and Taylor, 2020).
 Cultural barriers- Different language and other cultural barriers may impact the effective
communication that lead to the inefficient process of decision making. For instance, the
Emma Ball Ltd has faced the language barriers during their business expansion in Japan. It
become very difficulty for them to communicate with them but slowly it adjusted
themselves into the new environment and successfully expand their business globally.
 Long working hours- Japanese workforce s is very formal with a proper dress code and
they work for long hours as they are less informal with themselves. Often, Japan is called
Karochi as these peoples will die from the overwork. They focus less on holidays or
vacations. Whereas, UK citizens are very casual or informal for their OpenOffice and they
does not concern for dress code and they only prefer a limited working hours. It will
results in the problems of expatriates of the UK organisations. They require to adjust to
work for long hours when operating in Japan (Atay and Ayvaz, 2020).
 Expensive establishment- The Japanese culture demand an excellent services with a high
quality products due to which, their market is very costly and require a major cost to
establish business operation. UK companies like Tesco also could not expand their
business in Japan because of large cost and it failed to expand their services in this market.
Thus, it will affect UK companies such as a call centre's establishment in Japan Bolívar,
L.M., 2020.