International Staffing and Cultural Difference

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
INTERNATIONAL STAFFING
AND CULTURAL
DIFFERENCE

MANAGEMENT 1
Operating human resource across cultural and geographic boundaries often found
challenging and difficult for the organisations. As the business started to expand into global
marketplaces or as they start recruiting employees from diverse cultural and geographic
backgrounds, they may face various approaches towards cultural diversity and differences in
order to synchronise individual goal with the organisational mission and strategies (Stahl et
al, 2012). However, before exploring challenges the organisation faces with their
international staffing in the context of cultural differences, it is important to under the
concept of IHRM.
International Human Resource Management (IHRM) is an innovative and dynamic
changing extent with including various HR practices in the international marketplace. Tarique
& Schuler (2010) defined it as a club of actions used to control and manage all the resources
at global level to attain the company objective effectively. It is not just concerned with global
hiring but also including training, coaching and resolving challenges that the organisation
face due to any of issues such as cultural difference and cross cultural activities. Hence, one
of the key advantages of global HRM is to create awareness related to cross cultural activities
through the geographical boundaries as with advent to strong forces of globalisation, it is
significant and builds and implement a significant level of flexibility. With regards to this, a
contemporary organisation also needs to sustain an organisational standard for building
efficient and capable workforce system.
Conferring to a New York Times report, there are only 5 African-American CEOs out
of Fortune 500 corporations (Donnelly, 2018). This shows that how much cultural difference
impacts international HR practices of an organisation. Business firms undertaking their work
in international environment select a model of their organisational culture and a degree of
national culture influence or strategies and firms decision rules. The cross cultural challenge
just starts with finding sources of recruitment and selecting the right channels of job
marketing is the very first step on the way to hire the best applicant for the vacant position
(Daim et al, 2012). Every time company needs to ensure that job posting is available in
official social profiles and online webpages such as LinkedIn. As a hiring manager, one

MANAGEMENT 2
requires to consider various things into the account. The next thing is the CV screening as
individual from different cultural backgrounds have un-similar way of presentation of CV.
For instance, in most of Asian nations like China, South Korea and Japan, applicants often
treat education as the most significant aspect in resume/cv and therefore, place the related
information on top just right below personal information. On the other hand, Western
recruiters generally assess resume depend on applicant experiences and skills. The next
challenge comes in staffing is the interview, recruiters may face problem as of differences in
cultural perception. As in international staffing, each candidate will have a different way to
answer in terms of verbal language, body language postures and so on. It may hamper the
staffing process and can be a reason to reject potential talent by the interviewer. At last, at the
time of hiring decision, the ultimate objective is to recruit the potential applicant who can
contribute to best of the organisation and fit with the organisation culture. This requires more
efforts from the side of recruiters and the most ideal recruitment team should have member
engagement from various cultures.
The next unique challenge that an organisation can face in case of international
staffing is the “expatriate issue”. Expatriates are the citizens of one nation working in another
and some of common issue with expatriates assignment in cultural context includes – work
adjustments, lifestyle issue, family adjustment, poor performance, language skills and
difficult with new environments (Colakoglu & Caligiuri, 2008). This also results in difficulty
in training as company is required to develop training plan differently for each employee
comes from different cultural background so as to use best of the skills. Sometimes, this
situation results in cultural shock which can be defined as distressing reaction to rapid change
in cultural setting and therefore, negatively impact on individual ability. However, majority
of the people overcome cultural shock in their own time, however, some might unable to
continue with their position and become overwhelmed.
Taking an example of corporate organisation, Gamescorp Plc is an UK-based
organisation that offers PC playoffs and currently running their corporate successfully in
Europe. The company is looking for another market to expand their business and therefore,
decided China as a preferable marketplace. However, they are required to take out proper
study on cultural difference to undertake their staffing practices successfully and effectively.
In such scenario, International Resource Management plays a significant role in extent of
attaining overall goals of the organisation. The HR manager team in the company is required