Global Staffing - the Challenges and the Importance of Hr

Global Staffing- The Challenges and the importance of HR

''Just as Old World Explorers navigated uncharted waters, today's executives have the challenge of leading organizations into new, unmapped outposts of the global marketplace.''

For my individual IHRM essay, I have picked up 'Global Staffing' as the topic. After reviewing the journals and articles provided, I rounded up on this topic as I feel that in today's changing times and working conditions and the growth of multinational enterprises, the issue of global staffing must be studied and evaluated intrinsically. The world has taken on a character of a 'global village' where we see the issue of global staffing on the rise.

Global staffing, defined as - 'the critical issues faced by multinational corporations with regard to the employment of home, host and third country nationals to fill key positions in their headquarter and subsidiary operations' (Scullion and Collings 2006, p. 3), has represented a key theme of research for international management researchers for a number of decades. However, most MNC's, underestimate the complex issue of global staffing and this is what has come to the forefront in the recent years and called for a strategic evaluation and study of the issue by various academics, most notably in the field of International Human Resource Management (IHRM).

Staffing issues are complex in the international environment (Torbiorn,1997), something which is attested to by a stream of research highlighting inter alia: the importance of effective staffing strategies for the successful implementation of international business ideas, especially strategic alliances and cross-border mergers in informal and emerging and culturally distant markets; the decision points relating to different approaches to international staffing; the problem of shortages of international managers, particularly in emerging markets, where there is often fierce competition between the multinational corporations and local organizations; the requisite supports necessary in order to ensure a satisfactory outcome from the organisational and individual perspective; and the management and utilisation of knowledge flows which may accrue (cf. Evans et al., 2002; Dowling and Welch, 2004; Schuler et al, 2004; Scullion, 2001; Scullion and Collings, 2006a).

These various issues can however be tackled using the human resource management approach.

The function of IHRM can be viewed as the principal provider of the 'soft' coordination instruments; as a result its importance has increased tremendously. (Harvey et.al 1998). Globalization along with relative alterations in strategies has changed the role and content of international human resource management and has brought it closer to the strategic core of business.

The following, four international HRM tasks are known to increase the coordination of globally dispersed activities in multinational companies as it supports the development and functioning of an integrated network on strategic, organizational and individual levels: (1) international transfer of managers, (2) provision of management training, (3) use of international teams, and (4) design and implementation of performance evaluation and reward systems (Holtbrügge and Mohr 2004).

Global staffing has its set of complications and problems as mentioned at the onset of this essay, however, despite the varied problems, one of the biggest of them all is the problem of 'cost' of global staffing.

The amount a multinational corporation invests in global staffing is huge and the failure of this is not unheard off. Global Staffing plays a major and a very important role in the international strategies of multinational corporations or enterprises. Failure of global staffing would include the premature termination of the assignment and actual costs for its failure were reported to reach $55,000 to $250,000. In addition, indirect costs of expatriate problems would also include loss of company reputation, failed negotiations, expatriate depression and loss of self-esteem and family dysfunction (Cited from Giles et al. 1997).

Further researches also show that expatriate experience is usually a negative one. This is in relation to other researches that show that the number of repatriates' assignments, time return from overseas and family accompany was found to be considerably associated for the employee to leave the organization. Moreover, it is noted that there is a steady decrease in career developments and promotion opportunities upon repatriation (Cited from Giles et al. 1997). The failure of global staffing has consequently influenced potential expatriates. Employees begin to be reluctant to expatriate offers as they hear failures and turnovers caused by the assignments and experiences of fellow colleagues and other acquaintances.

Thus we see that global staffing has failed in many ways in many cases and there are a number of evidences supporting the same. One of the other most important reasons is that of culture differences. Culture can be defined as "socially transmitted beliefs, behaviour patterns and values that are shared by a group of people (Cited from Palmer and Varner 2005).

Cross culture differences can be extremely stressful for the expats which can have an effect on the overall development of the individual. The inability to fit into the culture or adapt to it can lead to a mental stress which has a major and serious impact on the executives work, performance and as well as his relationship with his colleagues, seniors and family and friends. Communication is the key to human existence and cultural differences and the inability to communicate in the language if the country the executive is placed in can also result in high degrees of frustration, anger, stress thus affecting