Human Resource Practices and the Globalization (Essay Sample)

Human Resource practices and the globalization
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INTRODUCTION
Human Resource Management refers to the strategies and policies that are used in business organizations to address and handle the workforce. It is also termed as the coherent strategic approach the management uses in organizations to achieve their organizational Objectives. This is achieved trough proper management of organization employees. The act of human resource involves recruiting of new personnel to the organization, management of workforce as well as providing them with directions. Mainly, Human resource management is concerned with the nature and regulation of the relationship between the senior and junior staff members.
Establishment of Human resource management was in a bid to search for new ways of working and to start the central management that was mainly aimed at promoting organizational change. It also aimed at encouraging workers by providing them compensation and bonuses for the good job they do, motivating them and offering them advise regarding their careers (Arthur, 2004).
Globalization can be termed as a process in which there is an interaction and integration of people and business organizations of different nations in attempt to improve and market themselves internationally being aided by the emergence of information technology. Globalization in Human Resources practices has been considered to open a flow of human and economic resources mostly in the developed economies such as the European Unions. This has lead to competing in global markets since it requires loads of factors for centralization of human resources practices. Globalization has accentuated the need to deal with the human resource efficiently and effectively so as to increase benefits associated with the global market (Rees et al., 2011).
Globalization has influenced the business organizations in some ways. Due to globalization, businesses have been able to exploit international markets easily when it comes to marketing. Also, it is coherent that the business organizations should recruit and maintain the talented individuals globally so as to remain competent in its lines of products. Logically, it is clear that the demand for employees exceeds the supply in terms of specialization. So, by going around the globe, the human resource will find the qualified candidates.
With the emergence of information technology and the introduction of internet communication, the human resource management has been made easy since one can communicate with the employees regarding the progress and issues that may arise from job assignment outside the country. The department achieve this by setting up a communications for emergencies and setting up emails alerts that the employees send weekly from international assignments (Dowling,. et al. 2008).
Moreover, human resource department has been able to devise ways of training their employees so as to improve the performance trough organizations globalization. Some training that cannot be offered in home country has forced the organization to send their employees for such training. Consequently, in some circumstances, the employees may be offered this training services credential information through the internet lives streaming or via the website portals found to have essential information regarding the training.
However, globalization has led some business organizations to spend extra funds from sending their employees for international assignments. This is because; the employees who are being sent abroad may work there for extended periods of time. This implies that the company should cater for the housing, food, and any other expense to make the employee comfortable. In some circumstances, the employees are married and have children and should be accompanied by them. This means the company should furthermore cater for the entire family (Dowling et al., 2008).
Globalization has been found to lead to some practices. All this are dependent on the way the human resource management department chooses to play. In some situations, globalization of the human resource functions has been found to converge. This implies that the practices are uniform globally. This will ensure that the roles of each department irrespective of the location globally will be understood by others in the same department. It helps in ensuring consistency On the other hand, globalization has been found to lead to divergence of its practices in that the roles of departments are differentiated to adhere to the local policies. This seeks to ensure that the department applies the policies that they might be very effective to such company and more understood than the global policies posed by convergence (Rees et al., 2011).
CONVERGENT HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES
Since the function of the Human Resource Management department is to deal with the management of the employees of an organization, converging its practices is very crucial as the organization may have recruited international personnel. In addition, the company’s personnel may be working across a border which as well needs guidance from the department (Dowling et al., 2008).
Globalization and increase in international trade have found that it is necessary for organizations that are taking parts in the international markets adhere to convergent policies so as to ensure that they become consistent and understood by the practicing nations. Convergence has been found to be essential since with success in various economies of different nations, the ideas of improving the organizational performance also increases as well as the need to effectively manage the employees both locally and at international levels.
Moreover, given the regional and international range of stages regarding the economic development, convergence will allow for exploration of the advanced policies and styles of management as well as the less developed nations management style. In short, convergence allows for exploration of more superficial and effective styles of human resource management Dowling et al., 2008).
Most importantly, as the organizations are seeking to be more competitive and volatile than ever before, firms are embarking on expanding their operations and doing business globally. They send their employees for international assignments that they can as well be managed by international companies working in conjunction with the home company. If the policies applied by the international company are not the same as the ones applied by home company, then there will be a challenge. This addresses the importance of convergence of human resource practices.
Reasons that have been attributed to the global convergence are the power markets that have attempted to ensure that the firms are more productive. It was found that, firms could become more productive at a lower cost merely by copying the styles of the management styles used by those successful organizations. Additionally, the transaction cost economics rule that implies that at any point it time, there can exist the best ever solution that can help in employee management.
Analysis shows that the tendency of firms to converge towards the similar structures of the organization and the practices of the labor flows towards the achievement of the same needs for an organization. Furthermore, the like-minded international cadres also contribute to the convergence of the human resource practices. This implies that the ways in which the human resource management department thinks about globalizing will play a part in the convergence of this department. Consequently, the tendency of a company to feel an urge in standardizing its human resource practices so as to achieve better cost structure and the similar services and products will lead the company into adapting that.
Various debates have been ongoing with the main aims of bringing the human resource practices globally into uniformity. This has been contributed by the actions that have led to creations of unprecedented wealth and have broadened the availability of capital. The organizations saw that it was a perfect chance to venture into international markets. For instance, the McDonald's fast food culture opted to venture into all continents. In this acts, they were to use the available labor so that they can save some funds associated with moving around with their employees. This implied that the human resource management had to be done centrally. Furthermore, reality being that the employees are from diverse cultural beliefs and needs to be managed forced the divergence of the human resource practices to ensure that they follow the required standards associated with management of employees (Effron et al., 2013).
Additionally, the process in which the principles of fast food restaurant chain McDonalds have brought the entire world into fold depicts some of the strategies applied in ensuring that they excel in these international markets. They ensured that they are efficient in what they do and additionally calculated the likely income and gains to be made in venturing globally. They thus predicted the products that were likely to be loved by the customer’s irrespective of culture differences. This implies that the restaurant had to standardize its operations in order to reduce and avoid chances of misunderstandings between the new employees and the company management (Daniel, & Reitsperger, 2014).
Globalization created many opportunities for business organizations. Organizations being driven by talents and the need to reduce the cost of their operations in order to maximize profits found that international interactions were very crucial. Thus for the shortage of talent in the developed countries and the need to fill this gap, there was a need to perform tasks in international standards. This implied that the operations of th...