International Management: Leading a Global Workforce Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of international management, focusing on the opportunities and challenges of leading a workforce in a globalized economy. It critically evaluates the impact of culture on HRM policies and practices, emphasizing recruitment, training, and compensation. The report explores essential leadership skills for managing a diverse workforce, including understanding cultural characteristics and avoiding detrimental leadership styles. It also delves into the process of setting up global teams, utilizing Hofstede's cultural model to address challenges related to team management. Furthermore, the report addresses ethical and responsible global citizenship, highlighting the importance of diversity management and its benefits for both employees and employers, including reduced litigation and enhanced marketing opportunities. The report emphasizes the need for effective HR personnel who understand diversity as individual differences, not just group distinctions.

International
Management

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Critically evaluating the opportunities and challenges of leading a workforce in a globalised
economy to create value and achieve the organisational mission...................................................3
Impact of culture on HRM policies and practices.......................................................................3
Leadership skills..........................................................................................................................5
Setting up a global team..............................................................................................................6
Ethical and responsible global citizenship...................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
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Critically evaluating the opportunities and challenges of leading a workforce
in a globalised economy to create value and achieve the organisational
mission.
Impact of culture on HRM policies and practices
Human resource management plays an integral role in the management. They are duly
responsible to handle the workforce with a greater contribution in attaining the organisational
mission. This is basically on considering the fact where the HR personnel’s are directly in touch
with that to the appointed workforce who then also share their concerns and grievances to them.
This leads to create yet another prime responsibility of the HR’s in order to resolve such
pertaining issues at the workplace with a quick and answerable approach (Brewster and et.al.,
2016). It is with a special consideration of those operating at a global level that are required to
work within a diversified culture of work with people coming from different socio- cultural
background. This becomes important for the HR’s to handle such a varied culture at the
workplace where people having distinct perceptions can easily get into a disputed state of
conflict leading to create a negative environment at the workplace. This demonstrates the fact
where an espoused culture is apparent to impact upon the undertaken policies and practices of
HR. It is on referring to the notion of internationalization that is a necessity for almost all sorts of
companies, irrespective of their nature and type of work.
This is mainly to operate at a worldwide level by enlarging the existent base of customers
where adopting the tactic of internationalization as a strategic approach increases the challenges
of HRM. It is basically to comply with distinct set of socio- cultural and religious opinions. A
vital problem related to it is in association to handle such a diversified workforce with employees
hired from distinct countries with their dissimilar values and attitude towards the work.
Nationality of individuals is apparent to impact upon the means they choose to carry out and
arrange the work assigned to them (Reiche and et. Al., 2016). This formed the definition of
International Human Resource Management or IHRM as a procedure by which the entities
operating at an international level can consider managing its workers who belongs to a different
set of nation with distinct cultural morals and principles. For this, it is important for the
concerned bodies of IHRM to have proper data to handle such cultural dissimilarity at the
workplace by paying a special attention at the time of designing the work related policies. While
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framing such policies, it is important to consider whether the standardised procedures will be
implemented all over the globe or not.
Beside this, there exists a direct link among the cultural variables as well as the accepted
policies of HRM in an organization. Mostly, an adopted culture is known to make a direct impact
on the undertaken structure of globally operating organizations (Kuusela, 2013). It also impacts
upon the applied measures of recruitment by deciding the pattern of benefits and compensations,
etc. This is for instance an establishment may or may not opt to pay performance based wage or
incentives to its employees if it is functioning in a nation that is placed high on individualism.
Below are some detailed HRM policies with a chance of getting affected from culture- Impact on recruitment- This is on considering the hiring policies of organisations that
differs from their domestic projects with that to their overseas projects. The concept of
internationalization necessitates HR to hire candidates on the basis of 3 major policies
namely, Ethnocentrism, Poly-centrism and Geo-centrism. The ethnocentrism shows the
dominance of an organisation expanding their operations in an internal market with
similar norms and regulations as they used to follow in their domestic marketplace
(Cascio, 2018). This in turn creates a sense of negativity in the workers operating in the
host nation where they consider it to be a very self-centred process of work. Another is
in regard to specify about the tact of polycentrism which regards distinct cultural norms
of international market with a specially appointed local manager to administrate the
functions of expanded market. Lastly, the concept of geo- centrism states esteems the
necessity of regarding distinct socio- cultural norms where people are hired to work in
any country and themselves understand such dissimilar values and beliefs. Impact on training- Another relative fact of working at a universal level is to understand
the kind of work in a company, along with its adopted cultural standards. However, it is
referred to be a challenging process for the manager to train individuals belonging to
different set of culture with dissimilar choices of food, dressing practices and language,
etc., (Bratton and Gold, 2017). This is for example to consider the views of American
employees who believes in marinating a minimum distance of 6 inches while making
interpersonal communication. Whereas, in contrast to it, the Arab people favours to
communicate closely. Likewise, the importance of words as well as gestures differs
from one country to another. This creates more difficulty for the individuals coming
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from different backgrounds to effectively interact with one another and the HR
managers face challenges to train them. Impact on rewards and compensations- The compensation policies necessitates the
organisations operating at worldwide level to consider several aspects of tax structure in
a nation, pension scheme, people’s cost of living and policies of retirement, etc.,
(Armstrong and Taylor, 2014). It is therefore important for the HR managers to consider
all such differing aspects of different nations while framing effective compensation
related policies in an enterprise. Also, the payment to individuals employed to operate at
international locations must get more wages in comparison to what they used to get in
the domestic countries.
Leadership skills
This is to discourse upon the abilities of global leaders by developing a key
understanding of such organisational as well as national ethnic features to successfully manage a
diversified workforce. For this, it is firstly important to determine the national cultural
characteristics in the work setting. This is on considering the fact where the workers in a healthy
work culture comprised with high morals and uprightness comes to work with a willing sense
instead of coming only because they are ought to (Brewster, 2017). But, in case, maltreatment
becomes a part of culture, it directly impacts upon the worker’s productivity by directly
impacting upon people’s as well as organisation’s overall performance. It thereby depends upon
the organisation to bring accordant changes in their accepted culture by adopting positive
cultural features as a way to encourage productive work setting. For this, it is also important to
understand some standard cultures that pertains in an organisation and are as specified below-
 Ego driven culture of leadership- This should be avoided in the host market where
people must not feel pressurized at work.
 Bullying culture of workplace- It could also lead to create a sense of dissatisfaction
where the employees may also face difficulty in combating such situations leading to
partiality and unfair measures (Ogunyomi and Bruning, 2016).
 Culture composed of values and integrity- This is the most positive way of accepting a
diversified work culture where all employees must respect one other’s social values
and beliefs that may differ from each other.
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 A Relaxed culture- It is yet another effective approach, through which, people can
easily operate at a diversified culture of work with an ease of adjusting within
different social norms (Cristiani and Peiró, 2015).
Setting up a global team
This is yet another vital consideration of organisations that have adopted a approach of
internationalization with a greater role of its workers employed at leadership position along with
the authorised HR personnel’s. Operating at worldwide level requires them to undertake a
strategic approach to successfully set up a global team. This can be done by applying the
Hofstede’s cultural model comprised with its 5 major dimensions to be followed. All of these
dimensions are as stated below-
1. Individualism and collectivism- It is the primary element that exhibits the relationship
level among the individuals in the social order.
2. Power distance- It is the next vital element which describes the degree of allowable
exploitation of power in a culture.
3. Uncertainty avoidance- This demonstrates the manner in which any changeability in
upcoming future can be handle by a particularly specified culture (Gurkov, 2016).
4. Masculinity/ Femininity- This states the significance given by a specific culture to distinct
ethics and practices which are related to male or female.
5. Long term/ short term alignment- It determines whether any accepted cultural beliefs
concentrate upon past, present or future.
Although, there together exists various challenges that are being faced by the global
leaders to manage such diversified workforce. These challenges increase when the establishment
starts working at an international scale. Several globally operating firms are apparent to face the
issues related to heterogeneously in terms of an effective management of teams to operate at a
worldwide level (Becker and Smidt, 2016). This is basically due to a need of understanding
distinct organisational behaviour that may arise from a distinct set of culture around the globe.
This is mainly in accordance to the fact which states that people belonging to distinct nations are
evident to have dissimilar perception and beliefs that together reflects in professional situations
as well.
Some major barriers impeding the management of a culturally diversified workforce is a
negative attitude where people behaving in a destructive manner directly harms the work
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relationships by together damaging the work productivity and morale of optimistic people.
Handling diversity is something more than merely recognizing dissimilarities in people. It
includes distinguishing the worth of dissimilarities, battling discernment by together encouraging
inclusiveness (Bainbridge and et. Al., 2017). Managers may also feel challenged due to losses of
personnel’s as well as work productivity arising from a biased and discriminated work setting
where complaints and legal actions are also being taken against the business. Also, HR’s should
also avoid such practices at the time of hiring, retaining and terminating workers.
There together exist certain effective tools for managing a diversified workforce, along
with several numbers of benefits. These are especially in context to effective managerial skills
where they must be firstly understand the concept of discrimination and its negative
consequences to completely avoid it at the workplace. Also, they must be able to acknowledge
the cultural biases and prejudices at their own with a willing sense of bringing change, if
necessary (Rothenberg, Hull and Tang, 2017). Diversity at the workplace is composed of several
numbers of benefits where the businesses must learn the way in which they can effectively
handle diversity at the work setting and attain a successful future. This demonstrates the
requirement of such efficient HR personnel’s who will be aware of the actual notion of diversity
that not only determines the dissimilarities among varied groups but instead demands to identify
the differences among individuals. It is basically to understand the distinctiveness of each
individual who does not denotes or express a specific group.
Diversity also comprises with several number of benefits with opportunities for both
employees and employers. Although the employees are co-dependent in the work setting,
regarding individual dissimilarities can lead to an improved productivity. Diversity at the
workplace can also tend to lessen down any chances of litigations by together increasing the
scope of marketing, prospects of recruitment, inventiveness as well as the image of the business
(Chambel, Castanheira and Sobral, 2016). It is in today’s era when both flexibility as well as
creativity are means to effectiveness, diversity is also critical for the success of an organization.
This together necessitates overlooking some of its related consequences which are loss of money
and time to a limited extent.
Ethical and responsible global citizenship
This is to demonstrate the factors which contribute to the concept of a globalised
economy by together validating the need of being aware of ethically sound and liable
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international guidelines to operate at a global level. It however necessitates the workers to
efficiently operate as a member of global virtual team by practically applying the sense of
cultural awareness that also involves team working abilities (Cooke, Saini and Wang, 2014).
This is basically to possess the skills of cultural sensitivity to create a sense of awareness in
others as well. Also, it requires the HR’s to be familiar with certain aptitudes where considering
some aforesaid cultures; it has been found that a global leader should also possess some effective
abilities and competencies. Effective managers are aware that certain skills are necessary for
creating a successful, diverse workforce, as stated below-
 A tactical perspective is a must for effective decision making.
 Customer focussed approach to serve the needs of culturally distinctive users in the
international set of market.
 Readiness to take risk is also referred to be yet another requisite ability of effective
managers to operate with an innovative outlook and no fear of adopting newer set of
requirements.
 Deeper understanding and expertise is required to easily handle any disputed concern
at work and resolve the state of conflicts.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Bainbridge, H.T. and et. Al., 2017. The Pervasiveness And Trajectory Of Methodological
Choices: A 20‐Year Review Of Human Resource Management Research. Human Resource
Management. 56(6). pp.887-913.
Becker, K. and Smidt, M., 2016. A risk perspective on human resource management: A review
and directions for future research. Human Resource Management Review. 26(2). pp.149-165.
Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Brewster, C. and et.al., 2016. International human resource management. Kogan Page
Publishers.
Brewster, C., 2017. The integration of human resource management and corporate strategy.
In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 22-35). Routledge.
Cascio, W., 2018. Managing human resources. McGraw-Hill Education.
Chambel, M.J., Castanheira, F. and Sobral, F., 2016. Temporary agency versus permanent
workers: A multigroup analysis of human resource management, work engagement and
organizational commitment. Economic and Industrial Democracy. 37(4). pp.665-689.
Cooke, F.L., Saini, D.S. and Wang, J., 2014. Talent management in China and India: A
comparison of management perceptions and human resource practices. Journal of World
Business. 49(2). pp.225-235.
Cristiani, A. and Peiró, J.M., 2015. Human resource function strategic role and trade unions:
exploring their impact on human resource management practices in Uruguayan firms. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management. 26(3). pp.381-400.
Gurkov, I., 2016. Human resource management in Russian manufacturing subsidiaries of
multinational corporations. Post-Communist Economies. 28(3). pp.353-372.
Ogunyomi, P. and Bruning, N.S., 2016. Human resource management and organizational
performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria. The International Journal
of Human Resource Management. 27(6). pp.612-634.
Reiche, B.S. and et. Al., 2016. Readings and cases in international human resource
management. Taylor & Francis.
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Rothenberg, S., Hull, C.E. and Tang, Z., 2017. The impact of human resource management on
corporate social performance strengths and concerns. Business & Society. 56(3). pp.391-418.
Online
Kuusela, K., 2013. Diversity management – Challenges and possibilities. [Online]. Available
through: <https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/64004/Ksenia%20Kuusela
%20Bachelors%20Thesis%202013%20Diversity%20Management.pdf?sequence=1>
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