17 Apr 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
How Intercountry Differences Affect HRM
• Differences in laws àhow many employees in board of directors?
• Need for security and terrorism awareness training
•cultural factors
•power distance: how accepting they are of unequal power distribution
•individualism vs. collectivism: ties between individuals loose or close? Ie.
Canadians look out for themselves and immediate family. Pakistani people
look out for extended family, firms. Etc.
•attitude towards gender differences: male dominated mining ie.
• All of this shows that there is a need to adapt to host country HR
practices such as training and pay plans
• Hr staff members in foreign country should include host country
citizens
• High degree of sensitivity and empathy needed for cultural and
attitudinal demands ESPECIALLy for “human” jobs
• economic systems
• legal systems
• labour laws are different à different definitions of terms such as
discrimination, minimum wage etc. minimum length of service to qualify
for severance pay
• labour cost factors
• ie. Some countries might not see investment in employee training and
development as a necessary cost
• industrial relations factors
• relationship among workers, union, employer vary dramatically
• ie. Employees may have the right to voice company policies
• unions may not play an effective role in labour disputes
•global staffing policy
– an ethnocentric staffing policy is based on the attitude that home-country
managers are superior to those in the host country, and all key management
positions are filled by parent-country nationals
– a polycentric staffing policy is based on the belief that only host-country
managers can understand the culture and behaviour of the host-country
market, and therefore foreign subsidiaries would be staffed with host-
country nationals and its home-office headquarters with parent-country
nationals
– a geocentric staffing policy assumes that management candidates must be
searched for globally, on the assumption that the best manager for any
specific position anywhere on the globe may be found in any of the
countries in which the firm operates
• Human resources used more efficiently since they pick the best
person for the position