Rennie and McGee & International Human Resource Management (Essay Sample)

International Human Resource Management (IHRM)
Authors’ Name
Institutional Affiliation
Introduction
I base my critique on a case study written by Rennie and McGee (2012) that describes an employee being mentored for a future executive position in a transnational establishment in the petrochemical industry. The case study’s essence describes the several challenges that confront the employee being groomed relating to working in a relatively new business location without having been briefed about the country. In particular, the employee was not given the relevant instructions regarding the politics, security issues, and other dynamics of international assignments in the North African country as all she knows is about the oil partnership deal. Accordingly, my critique will focus on what the employee ought to have done to bridge the gaps existing in the organization’s career development policies as regards the incorporation of international assignments. It shall also discuss what the employee ought to have done differently. The critique also addresses the obligations of the company’s HR function in international assignments. It focuses on the practices, policies, and procedures it should have implemented to assist, educate, and inform this employee before the acceptance of the assignment. Addressing these areas will help me establish whether or not the international assignment befitted the employee.
The Gaps in Company’s Training Policies
The case study reveals the existence of some gaps in the organization’s career development policies vis-à-vis international assignments. One very prominent gap is the absence of programs for promoting language training to promote linguistic abilities. It was only after the employee arrived in the new geographical location that she discovered that Arabic was the core national language and that there were no schools providing English education (Rennie & McGee, 2012). Another gap identified in the company’s career development policies is the lack of provisions to educate expatriate employees about dealing with security concerns associated with new international human resource environments. The case study delineates categorically that the organization never briefed the employee about the security concerns pertinent to the North African country. Indeed, the employee learned about Al-Qaeda, a worldwide radical Islamist association that can threaten her security, as well as her insecure new place of residence from the UK ambassador once she arrived in the country as Rennie and McGee (2012) affirm. The fact that the employee never learned about security issues from the company indicates the inadequacy in terms of information, data, and briefing systems for international assignments in the corporation involved. I also identify gaps in the organizations’ career development policies when it comes to educating expatriate employees about how politics influences business in the new host country. The company never informed the employee that that the colleagues she was going to meet were Arabic-speaking contractors, all of whom were relatives of government ministers. Additionally, it was after her arrival that she discovered that these colleagues had their appointments sanctioned by the government and that none of them was competent in the oil industry (Rennie & McGee, 2012). From a personal stance, these gaps were sufficient to make the international assignment for this employee a demanding task.
What the Employee Should Have Done
To bridge these gaps, the employee had several options for courses of action in preparing for the new international assignment. One of the options she had was to consider the impact the assignment would have on her family before deciding to take on the assignment. In particular, the employee could have declined to take the international assignment on the grounds of lack of sufficient preparedness and family concerns. The implication of such move would be that the company would deem refusal as unprofessional and acceptable. Cho, Hutchings, and Marchant (2013) aver that the concerns of spousal and familial non-adjustment and lack of company support are genuine reasons for employees to decline taking on international assignments. As for the employee in question, she lacked company’s support in terms of sufficient briefing and training. Furthermore, though her husband and children were ready and willing to relocate alongside her, challenges of schooling for the children and government-initiated complexities in visa procedures for the husband became principal impediments to successful adjustment. The other action that the employee could have taken before taking the international assignment was to ask the company to sponsor pre-departure cross-cultural training. Preparing for this kind of training ought to have been the company’s obligation in the first place as Kangas (2012) sustains. Even so, the employee could have underlined the importance of the training and thus insist on going through it. Sharma, Bhatt, and Singh (2014) suggest that the provision of pre-departure cross-cultural training is one area multinational corporations demonstrate weakness, leading to poor expatriate employee outcomes. The company discussed in the case study appears to be one of these MNCs. The third thing that the employee should have done was to study the history of the host nation before making a decision. According to Moulik and Mazumdar (2012), gathering background information about the host nation provides insights about factors such as future career directions and family stability, which are fundamental to expatriate employee satisfaction in international assignments on foreign soils.
What the Employee Should Have Done Differently
Now that the employee decided to take on the international task, there are some things the employee could do differently to be successful in the new position. Firstly, the employee could have embraced a strong sense of self. As realized from class discussions, such a sense of self promotes healthy narcissism, along with allowing for interaction with people from other cultures without fearing the loss of self-identity. Furthermore, a strong sense of self enhances self-reflection and self-confidence that an expatriate employee needs in proactive, independent functioning abroad (Menipaz & Menipaz, 2011). Thus, upon accepting the international assignment, the employee in the case study should have embraced a strong sense of self for her to operate successfully in the new IHRM environment in North America. Secondly, the employee should have developed a sense of humor when operating with the locally recruited staffs who were strongly affiliated with the host nation’s government. Doing this would help the employee to build healthy relationships and recapture the sense of perspective, which would be foundational to buffering potential uncertainties, confusion, and frustration (Rainoldi & Gölzner, 2014). Thirdly, the employee in the case study should have appraised her interpersonal skills and her ability to be uncertainty tolerant, together with considering health and residence issues. Interpersonal skills are essential to relationship building, coordination improvement, conflict resolution, knowledge transfer facilitation, and need satisfaction in international assignments (Rennie & McGee, 2012).
What the Company Should Have Done
The company should have realized the need to incorporate language programs in their career development policies as they are indispensable to helping the expatriate workers to learn foreign languages. In essence, the language training programs would prepare the employee involved in getting acquainted with Arabic, thus adapting with ease in the Muslim North African nation that was predominantly Arabic-speaking. In the context of international human resources management, language differences have the potential of creating misunderstandings. They can also cause the need for localization and translation and threaten the reliability of performance appraisals (Collings, Wood, & Caligiuri, 2014; Treven, 2001). In our class discussion regarding working in an IHRM environment, we established that linguistic ability specifies the eagerness and willingness of an expatriate employee to communicate and connect with host citizens. The second thing that the company should have done was to organize and offer all-around training that covered all areas of employment for expropriates. Such training, coupled with the provision of satisfactory briefing and compensation, would be sufficient in preparing the employee for the new tasks abroad. Treven (2001) supports this point by mentioning that identifying managers with a global potential would mean nothing if such managers are not provided with the right training focusing on international business practices. The company should also have restructured its career dev...