Literature Review: International HRM Staffing, Recruitment, Selection

This assignment presents a critical literature review of international human resource management (IHRM), with a specific focus on staffing, recruitment, and selection processes. The review examines key concepts such as global mobility, employee movement, and the impact of technology and data on IHRM practices. It delves into Perlmutter’s staffing approaches (ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric, and regiocentric) and their relevance in the context of globalization. The assignment also explores the recruitment and selection of expatriates and local employees, highlighting the importance of effective policies across different countries. The review synthesizes empirical literature to identify critical issues in IHRM and concludes with recommendations for developing recruitment, selection, and staffing policies in international organizations. The analysis emphasizes the strategic importance of these HR functions in achieving business success and organizational goals, considering factors like employee attraction, retention, and diversity.

Running Head: INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
International Human Resource Management
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
2. Review of Literature....................................................................................................................3
2.1 Global mobility as a staffing plan point.................................................................................3
2.1.1 Employee Movement......................................................................................................4
2.2 Technology and data as great differentiator for global mobility...........................................5
2.3 Perlmutter’s staffing approaches............................................................................................6
2.3.1 Perlmutter’s approaches versus Globalization................................................................7
2.4 Recruitment and Selection of expatriates...............................................................................8
2.5 Importance of recruitment and selection of local employees................................................9
2.6 Recruitment policies across countries..................................................................................10
3. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................12
4. Recommendations......................................................................................................................13
Reference List................................................................................................................................14

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1. Introduction
This assignment undertakes to make a critical review of empirical literature based on
international Human Resource Management. The primary parameters of international HRM are
staffing, recruitment and selection. These three factors determine the business success and affect
the operation of the whole organization. Employees are the most valuable assets in any
organization. Recruitment is the process that attracts individuals on timely basis, insufficient
number and also which significant qualifications to an organization. This research study
highlights that strategic planning in recruitment is needed to define the goals of the organization.
In fact, human resource planning which refers to staffing is also required for identifying the
surplus or shortages of workers required for achieving the organizational goals. Recruitment is
needed to maintain the number as well as quality of employees required for achieving the
objectives. This helps in creating a segment of potential employees so that the management is
able to select the right employee at the right moment for the right job. This process is also
referred to as selection that is vital goal is to select the most deserving candidate for the most
suited job role. Selection is the key to maintenance of good organizational culture. This research
study also highlights the strategies to determine effective selection tools for job analysis and
candidate analysis also. Lastly, recommendations for development of recruitment, selection as
well as staffing policies in international organizations is also been provided in the assignment.
2. Review of Literature
2.1 Global mobility as a staffing plan point
The primary element of the talent strategy of any organization is the global mobility. The
key features of global mobility are attracting the potential candidates, retention of staff, and

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development of diverse leaders and so on. However, Kang and Shen (2016), argues that the
companies themselves are making the global mobility a difficult affair. The operational
inefficiencies are making the global mobility a difficult affair. The operational inefficiencies are
making it difficult to get approval of the employee’s mobility. For evidence, Guo, Rammal and
Dowling (2016), advocates that the issues that hinder global mobility are the lack of software,
which can help in easy projection of the costs and assessment of the impact of a move.
In this context, Tarique, Briscoe and Schuler (2015), opines that if the companies want
they can make the process of global mobility easier for the work team like HR teams, payroll
teams, mobile employees, business unit leaders, finance teams and so on. As advocated by the
same researcher, this can be easily done by connecting the global mobility ecosystem of a
company as well as global work processes in intuitive software with potential support of the
staff. As advocated by Shen et al. (2017), in case of international assignments, the companies are
mobilizing great number of staff units for various reasons and different durations.
2.1.1 Employee Movement
Employee movement is a significant step towards realizing the major aspects of global
mobility like agility. In this context, the opinions of researchers like Lozano, Meardi and Martín-
Artiles (2015), can be argued. They argue that as the first step towards moving the employees for
a company is running scenarios regarding the move, as in determining the cost of this movement,
determination of the exact policies that should be implemented in certain instances and the exact
location where they are to be moved. In the next step, all these fixations have to be approved by
relevant budget holders.

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After the fixations, Rozkwitalska (2017), the primary need is that the company should be
helping the employees to accomplish their personal needs for the movement. This is something
that is not regarded by many organizations with precision. The last step of successful transiting
of the employees is the successful management of a series of processes which includes storage of
documents, generation of payroll instructions, analyzing data on the locations, tracking of
immigrations and analyzing the success rates of such immigration.
2.2 Technology and data as great differentiator for global mobility.
In many transnational organizations, global mobility has been historically perceived as a
transactional as well as logistical function. As such there has been market domination of the
logistics companies, generally, the former shipping as well as real estate agencies who managed
transactional aspects of the relocations.
As identified by Nasurdin, Ahmad and Tan (2016), the workforce is changing at a fast
pace owing to the new demographics of workers, increasingly interdependent global
organizations and technological advances which are redefining the jobs as well as locations of
the companies. Noe et al. (2017), also defines that organizations are adopting global mobility for
developing agility of businesses, attracting as well as retaining the employees and creating
adaptable as well as diverse work teams against the sweeps of constant change. In this context,
Derous and De Fruyt (2016), defines that development of mobility software suite is critical for
the unification of the data, processes as well as partners for converting agility in to a reality.
In fact global mobility is also impacted by the lack of workplace diversity. There is a
correlation between the experiences encountered by the employees in their offices and the

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leadership potential that they has, inherently. As per Razak et al. (2018), if companies want
more diverse leadership, they must consider how to get mobility opportunities to more women.
2.3 Perlmutter’s staffing approaches
The Perlmutter’s staffing approaches incorporates three major typologies based on their
international orientation. The first approach is Ethnocentrism which is a typology based on the
parent country. The foreign markets which allow the scope for disposition of the excess
productions are perceived as secondary. In this context, the underlying assumption is that the
foreign markets are not different from the domestic penetrations which pave the way for one on
one adaptation of all major strategies (Collings, McDonnell & McCarter, 2015). This proposition
holds that the HRM department employees in the parent country are appointed and groomed for
occupying the primary positions of the secondary markets. Perlmutter’s polycentric typology
helps in close examination as well as differentiation of the individual aspects of the individual
markets. The primary position is occupied by the locally selected as well as trained employees.
However, the geocentric approach emphasizes that the whole world is a single market. This
approach aims at identifying the individual segments within the market. There are uniform
policies for all approaching all customer segments in the market that leads to a situation of high
level of comparability between products and/or services and strategic implementation
worldwide. In this context, Bakhruet al. (2016), opines that for the purpose of staffing that rule
that is followed is that the best employee in the market, irrespective of their country of origin, is
targeted for serving the customers, all over the world. Finally, the regiocentric approach allocates
foreign markets in clusters of homogenous markets.
2.3.1 Perlmutter’s approaches versus Globalization

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The approaches of Perlmutter are remarkable in the context of clustering the
multinational enterprises. However, since globalizations have had the best of world trade,
considering the ERPG framework cannot be considered to be valid any more. The ways adopted
by the multinational corporations to enlarge their business on an international level should not be
dependent on the source from the employees have originated for engaging them in the key
positions, based on the applicable strategy. On the contrary, Cascio and Boudreau (2016), opines
that the ethnocentric approach would be better suited with the localized employed occupying the
primary positions. In fact, the emergence of the locally placed employees pave the opportunity
for the establishing autarkic representations who are still driven by the company but have
knowledge of local market (Malul, Shoham & Uddin, 2016). In orders to extract the best from
the local employees there should be affordance to promote them to managerial posts.
Nevertheless, Lakshman, Lakshman and Estay (2017), holds that reduction in the number of
expats assigned, is generally accompanied by improvements in the cost situations. According to
experts like, Guo, Rammal and Dowling (2016), geocentrism is most applicable as an
internationalization strategy. Independency of markets to be penetrated, allow companies to have
an enlarged global view. When the companies are driven by a polycentric approach, they can be
perceived, as opined by Cascio (2015), to be in the pre-stage of developing and entering in to a
more geocentric mode that will equip the organization with a better global view. In this context,
Parízek (2017), is of the view that geocentrism cannot be followed as a rational strategy because
of the market limitations that would hinder large scale growth after market penetration.
2.4 Recruitment and Selection of expatriates
The selection as well as recruitment of the expatriates is another big issue in management
of international human resources. In the context of the international assignments, the main issue

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that is faced by the companies is to select the right employee for the assignment. Although,
Lozano, Meardi and Martín-Artiles (2015), suggests that there is no criteria for an ideal
expatriate so that the process of the selection of the expatriates can be fostered, other researchers
like Rozkwitalska (2017), argues that that there are actually various reference criteria that can be
followed at the time of the selection of the expatriates. It is mostly considered by many authors
that along with valorization of the international experience of the expatriates and their ability to
communicate, the personality issues as well as their mode of perception are also to be considered
in the context of successful recruitment of the expatriates. At the same time, researchers like
Nasurdin, Ahmad and Tan (2016), opines that the process of recruitment and selection must be
precise upon the basis of competency in order to combat the expect periods who are not having
knowledge regarding new opportunities in the market.
2.5 Importance of recruitment and selection of local employees
When an organization pertains to the policy of recruiting more local staff compared to
expatriates, we can enjoy a host of benefits including enhanced velocity of project impact,
growth of sustainable skills for attaining local knowledge as well as development of
opportunities for the local population. Researches like Derous and De Fruyt (2016), argue that
their fears around that localization using steam where organizations are still waiting upon
employing expatriates in the leading positions. In fact Cascio and Boudreau (2016), local
employment will result in a lower turnover rate, in the end. The factor spin that the local
employees will consider their proximity to the workplace, as benefit since they will not be burnt
out buy a long commute. The employees will also be able to enjoy an easy time management
strategy and will also maintain a proper work life balance.

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Lastly, Malul, Shoham and Uddin (2016), argues that hiring local employees will give the
chance of staying at the top in the local talent network. Employee referrals will more likely help
the company to land higher quality leads.
2.6 Recruitment policies across countries
In most cases, the small and emerging companies in Australia as also in many parts of Europe
and America employs techniques of internal recruitment. In most cases of internal recruiting, the
cost of recruitment is dramatically reduced. This can be possible due to the advertisements that
can be done by announcements gives opportunity of word of mouth publicity, opportunity of
sending direct company emails of flyers and so on. Internal recruitment gives the Organisation,
the opportunity of recruiting the best employee and the recruiters are well aware of the skills of
the Employees because of which the training costs can be reduced.
In developing countries like India, China and other countries in Africa as well as America make
use of employment agencies. These Agencies pool the job applicants and cross reference them
with the job openings in their respective domains. This makes it easier for the organizations to
conduct the selection process. The recruitment agencies mainly employ the strategies like
arranging job fairs and publishing of online and offline advertisements. However Lakshman,
Lakshman and Estay (2017), argues that there is no assurance that the recruitment agencies will
get hold of the right candidates for the Organization. That is why in many countries it is observed
that the recruitment agencies refund the fees that the take for recruitment on behalf of the
organization, if they are not able to provide significant and appropriate candidates to the
organization.
3. Conclusion

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This literature review immense importance to the process of global mobility for international
staffing. The operational inefficiencies are making it difficult to get approval of the employee’s
mobility. The employees who are shifted to different location have to face a situation where they
have to call various people to gather work related information which they would require for their
personal moves. In the context of Employee Movement, it has been argued that the first step
towards moving the employees for a company is running scenarios regarding the move, as in
determining the cost of this movement, determination of the exact policies that should be
implemented in certain instances and the exact location where they are to be moved. This
literature review also includes the Perlmutter’s staffing approaches in order to understand
international staffing. Perlmutter’s polycentric typology helps in close examination as well as
differentiation of the individual aspects of the individual markets. There is a separate set of
management strategies for each foreign market. Modification of products for suiting the needs of
the local markets is a tactical issue, which incorporates factors like price as well as promotions
that needs to be decided locally.
4. Recommendations
Staffing, recruitment as well as election are critical parts of success which determines the
future growth as well as employee retention capability of the organization. Along with internal
needs, recruitment and staffing should also satisfy extrinsic needs like the local, state as well as
Federal regulations. Some recommendations for development in staffing, recruitment and
selection of international organizations have been provided below.
The first recommended strategy is job description. Prior to recruitment and selection, job
description for each job role in the company should be defined. The job descriptions should

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clearly specify the skills required to perform them as well as the detailed list of responsibilities
that needs to be undertaken. These factors help the employees to understand the gravity of their
role and acts as a tool for the hiring person also while selecting most qualified candidates for the
appropriate job role.
Policy SBS procedures should also be defined for recruitment as well as election processes and
should ensure that each one in the company adheres to the local, Federal as well as the state
regulations. The intrinsic company policies should provide guidance for the hiring personal to
follow the required steps of recruitment as instructed by local authorities. The over-peering of
the hiring process should be conducted by the Chief recruitment officer of the human resource
manager head of the organization. The third recommended strategy is training. The managers as
well as supervisor should be thoroughly trained regarding the changing job requirements and the
job roles. Training programs should emphasize on how to link recruitment strategies to the
organizational goals and how to identify more deserving candidates for specific job roles.
The last recommendation is involvement. There should be a senior member of organizations
during recruitment as well as election processes. The appearing candidates should discretionary
power to finally employer reject a candidate over the HR team. This will help ensure that the
candidate is certain to be able to meet the desired Expectations of the organization. Most
interviewing candidates also appreciate involvement of the senior members since they feel that
they can best complementary their candidature and job skills.

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