The Global Context for HRM (Blog 8)

What is Global HRM..?

The preliminary function of global Human Resource Management is that the organisation carries a local appeal in the host country despite maintaining an international feel. Globalisation of itself brings the HR function closer to the strategic core of the business and also leads to considerable changes in the content of HRM (Pucik, 1992). As explained by Ulrich (1998), Globalisation requires organisations to move people, ideas, products and information around the world to meet local needs.

Sparrow et al. (2005) identified three processes that constitute global HRM:

1. Talent management/employee branding
2. International assignments management
3. Managing an international workforce.

Traditionally, international HR has been about managing an international workforce – the higher level organizational people working as expatriates, frequent commuters, cross-cultural team members and specialists involved in international knowledge transfer. Global HRM is not simply about these staff. It concerns managing all HRM activities, wherever they are, through the application of global rule sets (Sparrow et al., 2005).

(Video 1 : International HRM) 

Three reasons are forwarded for its inclusion under consideration of global HRM (Sparrow et al., 2004),

• The corporate HR function is best placed to understand the new risks associated with employment-related behavior of contractors or firms that form part of the supply chain.

• HR has a historical strength in understanding the complexities of labor law. PR specialists often have a lack of understanding about labor laws where they relate to undesirable practices and the distinctly local and cultural context of people management. In making reputational promises that might not be capable of delivery as easily as assumed, they may make the firm a bigger target than before.

• Activity closer to the heartland of a global HR function, such as the attraction of global talent, is increasingly dependent on reputation management.

Perspectives on globalisation in HRM

International HR professionals need to adopt a broad view of globalisation. Their organisations experience a wide range of factors associated with it that are of an economic, political, cultural, regulations and Technical.

(Figure 1 : Factors affecting Global Human Resource) 

A true understanding of global operation must also incorporate learning from international family business units, overseas networks of entrepreneurs and even illegal gangs, all of which have found ways of operating more globally (Parker, 1998). Internationalization connotes an expansion of interfaces between nations, the flow of business, goods or capital from one country to another, that is, an action in which nationality is still strong in the consciousness.

A global enterprise, by contrast (Parker, 1998):

• draws resources from the world
• views the entire world as its home
• establishes a worldwide presence
• adopts a global business strategy 
• transcends internal boundaries (of people, process and structure) and external boundaries (of nation, time and space).

The growth of global enterprises leads to increased permeability in the traditional business boundaries, which in turn leads to high rates of economic change, a growing number and diversity of participants, rising complexity and uncertainty.

References

• Parker, B. (1998) ‘Globalization and Business Practice: Managing Across Boundaries’, London: Sage.

• Pucik, V. (1992) ‘Globalizing Management’, London: John Wiley.

• Sparrow, P., Brewster, C. and Harris, H. (2004) ‘Globalizing Human Resource Management’, 1^st edn., Taylor & Francis Group, London, p. 28.

• Sparrow, P., Brewster, C. and Harris, H. (2005) ‘Towards a new model of globalizing HRM’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16(6), pp. 949-970

• Ulrich, D. (1998) ‘A new mandate for human resources’, Harvard Business Review, January-February, pp. 124-134.

• Figure 1:  Southwestern College Publishing (2002) Factors affecting Global HRM, [Online] Available at : https://www.slideshare.net/Nenemane/managing-global-human-resource-management [Accessed on: 30 Sept 2018].

• Video 1 : International HRM (2018). [Online] Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdgNbPluyr4 [Accessed on: 30 Sept 2018].