TABLE OF CONTENETS
1) INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………. P3.
2) RECRUITING AND SELECTING THE INTERNATIONL MANAGERS …….. P3.
3) RECRUITING AND SELECTING MANAGERS FOR TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES ........ P5.
3.1) CASE STUDY OF HSBC: THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER PROGRAMME ........ P6.
4) DIFFERENT METHODS IN SELECTING PROCESS ............................................ P6.
5) INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCE IN SELECTION METHODS ………….......... P7.
6) CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………......... P8.
7) REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………........... P9.
1) INTRODUCTION:
Every year, hundreds of companies expand their operations into the international market place. At the same time, corporations that are established in the international sphere redefine their business to maintain a competitive edge. For organisations like in more categories, recruitment and selection of international managers are key to the success or failure of international business. Selecting the right people for these assignments is a matter of great concern, as early return or failure is costly and can be damaging to business relations with international partners or customers. It is difficult to find people who have the skills necessary to perform well in the international environment. By keeping long term goals in sight during recruitment efforts, multinational firms can build a globally aware work force, one composed of talented members who support the company’s global philosophy.
For any organisations, recruitment and selection for international managers are key determinants of long term success. International recruitment is synonymous with expatriate selection. Significant process made to ensure candidates are screened for global competency, which according to most experts includes such qualities as flexibility, open mindedness, technical expertise, multiple language proficiency and the willingness to take risks. Today, HR professionals in progressive global companies are discovering that it isn’t enough just to look for these skills among members of the expatriate community. Rather every employee needs to have a certain level of global awareness, and many companies are finding that screening must begin at selection and recruitment level.
2) RECRUITING AND SELECTING THE INTERNATIONL MANAGERS:
Recruiting and selecting is an extremely significant issue in international human resource management, for the simple reason that an expatriate assignment can be a catastrophic waste of money and time for both the manager in question and their company. An assumption is often made that an effective manager at home will also be an effective manager abroad. One of the main dimensions of International human resource management is selecting and recruiting the qualified managers capable of furthering organisational goals. Adopting an international strategy for global expansion is likely to lead to the extensive use of expatriate managers. These are managers from the home country who are recruited to work overseas. Such expatriates will typically fill the key positions in the overseas operation. Adler (1984). In international management, it has been said that managers who are unwilling or incapable of generating global learning practices significantly reduce the effectiveness of an organisation.
Recruitment can broadly define as the practice of deciding what the company needs in a candidate and instigating procedures, what sort of person is needed for it, to attract the most appropriate candidate for job. Recruitment thus involves identifying the needs of the company regarding the position to be filled, and attracting suitable candidate for the job.
Selection by contrast, involves choosing the right candidate for the position from those who have been recruited. This holds true as much when selecting international managers as when selecting those who will be working closer to home. Finally an international manager is define the term is broadly speaking, used to describe a manager who is sent on an international assignment. Edwards and Cris Rees (2006).
Selection of such expatriates is, therefore crucial as they will determine the success or failure of the overseas operation. As early as 1966 it was noted that selection and training for international assignments were inadequate. This situation appears to have changed little with few companies systematically attempting to develop selection methods which accurately predict overseas assignment success. Anderson and Herriot. (1997).
Research in this area of selection is limited, although it is clear that the successful use of expatriate managers depends on a number of variables, including technical competence on the job, personality traits or relational abilities, environment variable and the family situation of the individual. Moreover research suggests that a majority of firms base their selection decisions mainly on technical abilities and do not assess the individual personality, adaptation skills or family issues perhaps not surprising therefore the failure rate for expatriate assignments is high. In the
The cost of such a high level of failure enormous. These includes start up cost and cost of increasing salaries as a result of working abroad, opportunity costs, psychological cost for the expatriate brought on by the recognition of failure ,damages to the credibility of the parent organization in the eyes of host country nationals, and the cost of projects that been left unfinished. Given this failure rate it would seen important to develop more stringent selection methods which included the evolution of an individual ability to adapt to the new culture. Utility analysis demonstrates very clearly how even small improvements in selection validate can improve job performance markedly (Schmidt et al., 1979). Thus much work remains to be done in this area of predicting expatriate success on overseas assignments.
3) RECRUITING AND SELECTING MANAGERS FOR TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES:
Recruitment for the transnational company however, depends on the selection of individual from the countries in which it is developing in business, in order to fully utilise the resources and capabilities present in this countries. In this strategy rather than attempting to export national ways of operating, cultural diversity id encouraged and extolled. While the selection of personnel for overseas assignment is not without its difficulties, as already noted, the selection of personal from different countries is likely to be an even greater challenge.
Any company wishing to recruit someone from outside its own country will have problems there are number of challenger to be overcome .Hendry (1994) lists some of these. Lack of knowledge of local labour market. Lack of presence in the other country which makes it harder to attract good candidates. Ignorance of local education system and the status of qualification. Variability in the experience and qualifications of graduates even in different structures of national systems. Trying to transfer native recruitment methods to other countries where different system may apply, Language and cultural problems at the interview, Pay difference and expectation about the pay. Lack of pension and finally Constraints on and attitudes to mobility.
Selection is thus only one of the challengers to such international recruitment, but it is nevertheless the important issue which companies need to consider .this is because approaches to selection and recruitment vary significantly across cultures.
The traditional psychometric view of selection and recruitment can be compared with an obstacle, race, where the recruiting organization puts up the hurdles over which recruits have to jump. The recruit who managers to get over the most hurdles, while knocking the fewest over, will be taken on the company. In this perspective, recruitment and selection are seen as a managerial decision making task ,in which knocking the fewest over, will be on by the company .these hurdles might be in the forms of interviews, references, tests, group discussions and soon on . one of the main problems with this approach is that it ignores the fact that the candidates themselves are making decisions throughout the process.
3.1) CASE STUDY OF HSBC: THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER PROGRAMME:
HSBC is a major financial services organisation that employs about 170,000 people and operates in over 80 countries. The bank has colonial roots and was originally based in Hong Kong. It was managed by international officers who were largely British expatriates. In the early 1990s, Midland bank was acquired. Major acquisitions in North America have also made HSBC the largest foreign bank in Canada and USA. The corporate centre is now in the UK. The banks vigorous advertising campaign features the need to be sensitive to local culture and customs in order to succeed in business, proclaiming it to be Worlds local bank.
The expanding geographical reach of HSBC and its growth through acquisitions have increased the need for international development of people. This currently outweighs the decreasing need for expatriates in some of HSBC`s earlier markets, where more highly skilled local people are now available. HSBC has retained a specific group of international managers. Individuals recruited to the international manager programme either from higher education or internally. The career deal for IMs is clear. They can be sent anywhere and at short notice, and so give high commitment to the organisation. In return, the individual has a good employment package, a wide range of challenging jobs and good career prospects leading to general management positions. Harris, Brewster and sparrow. (2003).
4) DIFFERENT METHODS IN SELECTING PROCESS:
International human resource management have different techniques and programmes for recruiting of mangers. In that only a small amount of empirical evidence on the relative use of the various methods of selection by different countries. Thus, as sparrow and Hiltrop (1994) point out, we must be careful in making sweeping generalization because without a large scale comparative study, the data that are available need to be treated as a series of snapshots and insights into national practice nevertheless this does provide an indication of the diversity.
Shackleton and Newell (1994) compared the methods used to recruit managers in France and the UK. The samples for this survey were drawn from directories listing the top 1000 companies in each country. These questionnaires asked a range of questions relating to the frequency with a variety of selection methods was used. The results from this selection method that psychologists advocate as having higher reliability and validity French companies in general continued to use methods that have lower reliabilities and validities, especially graphology. Companies in the UK also made extensive use of references that are known to have low validity in the typical open format. For example even though interviews were the dominant selection method in both countries, the format of these differed. Over 90% of the respondents from the French companies used more than one interview for the candidate compared with only 60% of the respondents from the British firms.
In an attempt to look more broadly at the diversity in selection across Europe, Shackleton and Newell (1994) expanded this comparison to include Belgium, Germany, and Italy. The same questionnaire are sampling methods were used so that direct comparison across five European countries. The data from Australia are directly comparable. The data on North America are not based on the same set of questions but on a published studies of selection methods usage. For this reason the North America data present a range of reported usage, rather than specific percentages.
5) INTERNATIONAL DIFFERENCE IN SELECTION METHODS:
One of the key problems of many expatriate recruitment and selection programmes is that they tend to focus on standard, traditional hiring practices. However, many researchers are coming to realize that, given the difference between companies and the contested nature of globalization, this approach is detrimental to good performance. In trying to understand the observed difference in selecting methods used in different countries national cultures appears to be most obvious starting point. Hoecklin (1993) suggests that in Anglo Saxon cultures, selection methods are devised to test how far an individual is likely to be able to contribute to the tasks of the organization. Assessment centres, intelligence tests and measurements of competence each of which can be designed to measure such attributes, will thus be the norm in such cultures. In Germanic cultures selection will focus on the quality and specialization of the education standard reached. Finally in Latin cultures selection methods will focus on establishing how well the candidate is likely to get on with those in his/her prospective working group. There are two aspects that are seen as important in such cultures. First, the elitism of the higher educational establishment attended, for example attending a prestigious grand evolve in France is taken as evidence of managerial quality. Secondly the interpersonal style of the individual and his or her ability to develop networks. Such abilities will typically be assessed during interviews, but if test are used they are likely to be tests that assess personality communication and social skills rather than the more Anglo Saxon tests that measure intelligence or cognitive ability.
Hoecklin (1993) suggest that these difference in the focus of assessment and thus the selection methods used can be understood in terms of the relative position countries on the cultural dimensions of universalism particularism, achievement ascription and the difference in how people from different cultures perceive the organization thus, countries that are more universalist and the achievement-oriented trend to use more objective criteria ,which are measurable such as intellectual abilities or technical skills and so assess the ability to satisfy technical task demands. More particularistic, ascription oriented countries are more concerned with assessing whether the personality of the individual is likely to match the work group. Thus for example in France and Italy there is a tendency to use a number of interviews and interviewers this is sensible if one believes that organizational success depends on the ability of function in a web of relationships and hierarchies in this context it is more plausible to assess interpersonal skills than more objective technical skills.
6) CONCLUSION:
The one certain thing in international recruitment would seem to be the lack of certainty. While one can identify certain general skills and abilities that can be useful under particular circumstances, the nature of globalization and the political manoeuvring that the implementation of IHRM policy involves mean that it is impossible to identify hard and fast criteria for all expatriates, or for that matter all expatriate assignments. Each situation must therefore be taken on its own merits. The strategy of the company, the MNCs relationship with home and host country cultures, the tension between global and local interests within the MNC and the agendas of the candidate and their family all need to be taken into account, and the recruitment and selection programme needs to be designed accordingly. Instead of forcing the individual to conform to the company’s policies and practices, the overall objective is to capture and leverage the knowledge and expertise that each organisational member brings to the company.
The conclusion drawn from the analysis of these data was that the methods used to select managers vary significantly across countries in Europe. From the perspective of international recruitment these differences are likely to be important. For example an Italian candidate on the basis of common practice in his or her own country is likely to expect to be faced with some interviews and to have a reference taken up about his or her suitability. However if an Italian candidate applies for a job with a Belgian company and that company uses selection methods typical in Belgium then he or she will asked to sit various cognitive and personalities tests, may be asked to supply some handwritten for analysis if the company is based in the French speaking part of Belgium and may have to go to as assessment centre, as well as go through the more familiar interviews and supply reference. Given this dramatic difference, expectations of both parties are unlikely to be met.
The world of work is changing fast, as everyone is aware now here more so than in the area of internationalizing. Mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, joint ventures and collaborating across borders are taking place like never before. The truly global product, be it cars, furniture, jeans, or audio equipment, is getting ever closer. The people managing this process in the transnational and international companies are themselves more and more international in outlook. The recruitment and selection process seems much improved according to these internationalisation trends.
7) REFERENCES:
· Anderson, N. And P Herriot. (1997). International handbook of selection and assessment. London. John Wiley & sons. Pp. 81-97.
· Adler, N. J. (1984). Women in international management: what are they? California management review, vol. no. 26. Pp. 78-89.
· Edwards, T and C Rees. (2006) International human resource management: Globalization, national systems and multinational companies. London, FT prentice hall. Pp. 195-213.
· Harris, H. Brewster, C. And P Sparrow. (2003). International human resource management .London. Cipd. Pp. 144-159.
· Hogan, G.W. and Goodson, J.R. (1990). The key to expatriate success. Training and development journal. Vol.no. 44(1). Pp.50-53.
· Hoecklin, L.A. (1993). Managing culture difference for competitive advantage. Journal of multicultural differences. Vol.no.44 (3). Pp. 21-29.
· Hendry, C. (1994). Human resource strategies for international growth. London and Newyork. Routledge. Pp. 150-162.
· Schmidt, F.L., Hunter, J.E. and Muldrow, T.W. (1979). Impact of valid selection procedures on workforce productivity. Journal of applied psychology. Vol.no.64. Pp. 604-626.
· Shackleton, V.J. and Newell, S. (1994). European management selection methods: a comparison of five countries. International journal of selection and assessment, Vol.no. 2(2). Pp. 91-102.
· Sparrow, P. And Hiltrop, J.M. (1994). European human resource management in transition. Hemel Hempstead. Prentice Hall. Pp. 340-354.