International and Comparative Hrm Assignment Sample
Introduction
Organizations going through an international expansion strategy are expected to analyses the target market in detail. Employees working in an organization belong to a contrasting cultural background and for that purpose the prevalent culture of an international market needs to be analysed. On the basis of an analysis, business leaders are able to make informed decisions that help to achieve diversity in their organization.
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
Power Distance
In this dimension China scooted high which means that the concept of inequality is deeply embedded in their society. Hierarchy plays a crucial role in their organizational culture and every employee wants to be a part of the upper hierarchy suggesting that individuals are not satisfied with the job roles they are initially offered. Cotton et al. (2021) stated that “subordinate-superior” relationship is not that prominent and superiors practise power abuse upon the subordinate. There is a clear distinction between employees belonging to the upper hierarchy and the lower sections of the hierarchy. The difference is respected despite the prevalent power abuse and there is no defence for that. In contrast, the UK scores relatively low which means that equality is a crucial aspect of their work culture. Every individual irrespective of their job role is subjected to equal treatment and it keeps employees satisfied.
Individualism
China scores very low in this dimension and it indicates that their work culture is highly collectivist. Each organisation has a number of departments and they have a common aim to achieve. The departments work in collaboration with each other and they receive assistance from one another if an issue is faced. Group based activities are frequent in Chinese organisations and the entire group is appraised if they perform efficiently. As per views of Pang (2021), relationships shared with colleagues are considered to be cooperative in Chinese work culture and they are hostile towards “out-groups”. UK on the other hand has an individualistic work culture and it means that self accountability is a relevant aspect of their organisation. Each department has an objective to achieve and success of the organisation is dependent on that.
Masculinity
Both the countries score equally in this dimension suggesting that both UK and China are masculine in nature. As opinionated by Marginson and Yang (2022), when the culture of a country is considered to be masculine then individuals are very competitive and success oriented. Employees in UK and China are ready to sacrifice their leisure and enjoyment to achieve success. Leisure is not one of their priorities and they would work overtime to achieve business goals. For instance, migrant workers in China would leave their families behind for a prolonged period to earn livelihood. In addition to this employees focus on improving their skills as it is quintessential to achieve success in their society.
Uncertainty Avoidance
In terms of uncertainty avoidance both countries score low and it means that both work cultures deal with uncertainty in an identical manner. Based on opinions of Jung et al. (2021), an uncertain society is perceived to be pragmatic in nature and they are comfortable with the aspect of ambiguity. For instance the Chinese language can be difficult for Western people to follow because it is composed of ambiguous texts. Another feature about the uncertain society is that they are comfortable with traditional approaches and are not ready to accept abrupt changes to a system. It is advisable to follow an appraisal system that is prevalent in China otherwise employees would feel disoriented and turnover would go up simultaneously.
Long Term Orientation
China scores very high in long term orientation and it suggest that Chinese culture is highly pragmatic. Cheung et al. (2021) suggested that a pragmatic culture believes that truth is dependent on time and context. Unlike normative societies, a pragmatic culture will try to adapt to changed conditions if the outcomes of a change are frugal for the society. Lastly, individuals belonging to a pragmatic society are more likely to be inclined towards goals that bring long term outcomes. In contrast, UK is a normative society and they have an affinity towards traditional systems and are very sceptical about change. Individuals are more inclined towards short term goals as they want immediate results.
Indulgence
China scores low in this dimension and it means that Chinese culture is restrained. Societies which are considered to be restrained have an affinity towards cynicism and pessimism. As opinionated by Akel et al. (2021), a restrained society does not emphasise on leisure time and control their desires to achieve success. Being indulgent is considered to be a wrong deed in Chinese society. In contrast, the society of UK is highly indulgent and they are inclined towards personal comfort (Liu et al. 2021). Individuals would spend more time seeking leisure and would try keeping a balance between desire and effort. Indulgent societies have a tendency to accept other cultures and learn from them in order to improve their existing cultural traits.
Performance Appraisal Methods
Application of the Hofstede’s cultural dimension model has helped to identify the contrasting cultural factors between UK and China. On that basis, their appraisal systems could be critically analysed and validated. Kodi and Kumar (2021) stated that appraisal systems are aimed at enhancing the performance of employees and it is achieved by offering rewards that tend to keep employees motivated. The appraisal system is designed in such a way that performance of employees can be analysed and on that basis it is evaluated if an individual can be appraised or not (Fila and Wilson 2018). In UK, “Self appraisal” is crucial aspects of organisations where employees have an opportunity to self assess themselves. They look back at their performance and try identifying shortcomings so that overall performance can be improved. Based on opinions of Ullah et al. (2021), self appraisals are “lenient and biased” and usually they do not have any structured form. UK culture was identified to be highly individualistic and these self appraisals are important for employees who rely on self accountability. They are responsible for their own performance and are expected to improve themselves by analysing their own performance. In addition to this, “Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scale” (BARS) is also used by western organisations to measure the performance of employees. As per views of Matosas-López et al. (2019), BARS appraisal system is focused on quantitative and qualitative benefits of appraisal processes. The performance of an employee is compared with standard behavioural examples and they are anchored to numerical ratings. The BAR ratings are accompanied by statements that describe behaviours commonly exhibited by employees and the performance of an employee is measured against a predetermined standard. The predetermined standards signify an individual is feasible for a job role and level. It was already evaluated that UK world culture is masculine i.e. ambitious and success oriented. So employees try to behave according to the predetermined standards highlighted in a BARS assessment model. This format is popularly used in multinational organisations to eradicate scope of biases and to ensure fairness throughout an appraisal system. The standards are clearly set and the scope of feedback is better as managers can direct employees on how to improve their performance. Lastly there is an opportunity to constantly evaluate employee performance and on that basis motivational strategies are implemented to enhance employee retention. However there are major drawbacks to this system and difficulty to deliver “compensation and promotion” is one of them. As per Aljarrah (2021), the predetermined standards are difficult to design and it may vary for different organisations. Higher contribution is expected from managers and seniors which makes it challenging for Western organisations.
Chinese work culture was identified to be highly collectivist so every department works in collaboration with one another to achieve a common business goal. Employees in Chinese organisations are subjected to reviews by their managers and it serves as an important appraisal system. Managers evaluate the performance of employees constantly and it is considered to be a traditional and basic form of appraisal. Francis et al. (2021) informed that “employee ratings” are awarded to teams or programmes by supervisors and on that basis compensation or promotions are decided. Besides this, co-workers serve as a critical perspective to employee performance and they become effective evaluators of employee performance. Individuals take feedback from their colleagues to determine one’s ability to work in a group and shortcomings. Zhou (2021) suggested that “animosity or friendship” with the peer can lead to biases and the evaluations can be distorted. Subsequently employees tend to focus on customer or client revision and since they are external stakeholders, the scope of biases is nominal.
Focusing on cultural differences between the UK and China, it can be stated that companies operating in both countries need to first understand cultural requirements and make sure that they effectively take up strategies for improving their performance. Performance appraisal methods need to be different based on cultural diversity of different operating countries so that employees’ needs can be easily met and they take up activities effectively (Yang et al. 2021). Culture driven beliefs, values and perceptions greatly influence the behavioural pattern of employees which makes it important to frame performance appraisal methods based on their culture. Moreover, appraisal methods can be effective when they relate with cultural beliefs of employees and put a positive impact on their performance towards organisational goals.
Conclusion
Due to cultural differences, preferences of employees also differ and organisations need to treat the employees in an efficient manner otherwise the employee turnover would be increased abruptly. It is crucial to study the cultural differences and how it impacts the preferences of performance appraisal systems while expanding into a new market. In this study, as the HR director for a “leading global technology company” based in UK, an analysis of the cultural differences between the home country and target market is conducted. This technology company is planning to expand their operations in China and accordingly the cultural factors of China were to be compared with that of UK to understand the differences in performance appraisal system.
Recommendations
Focusing on the overall essay, it can be recommended that HR managers need to have a transparent implementation of performance appraisal methods so that employees of different cultures can get a detailed idea on how these can be implemented for better efficiency. Further, the recommendation can be extended to the implementation of training sessions that can be conducted in order to ensure that employees are well aware of their roles and responsibilities and get a better view of how performance can be enhanced. A constant performance monitoring process also needs to be installed that would help employees of multiple cultures keep a track of their progress with a detailed idea on how improvement can be done to overcome their weaknesses.
Reflective Log
This week, I learnt about basic concepts of human resource management activities and how important it is to maintain team collaboration among different employees. This week, I was introduced to module contents and syllabus that would be covered in relation to cultural diversity in workplace and HR management practices.
This week, along with the importance of maintaining HRM practices in organisations, I came across international HRM with different organisational examples. In this week, highlighting specific organisational examples, I learnt about comparative HRM which focused on maintaining collaboration across different countries and cultural diversities. Further, I learnt about how HR formulate policies for their businesses operating in different countries and communicate with employees belonging from multiple countries.
This week I learnt about different national cultures and how they have been affecting the perspective of employees working in different countries for that organisation. I came across aspects where I learnt about many national cultures affecting values, attitudes and behaviour of employees and how these have been impacting organisations implementing it in their international human resource practices.
This week specifically helped me to gain insights on how employees irrespective of their culture diversities needed to be given equal opportunities without any discrimination. Focusing on different legal implications of countries that companies operate in the international market, IHRM includes formulation of policies based on giving equal rights and opportunities to employees without any biases.
This week has focused on developing knowledge about international staffing and how HR have been using it in their recruiting process in other countries. Importance of international staffing along with factors affecting it have been focused on this week along with a critical analysis on how these can assist HR in understanding customer perspective.
Through our module, in this week, I have learnt about different motivating techniques that HR uses for encouraging performance enhancement among their employees. Further, this week lectures have also focused on how rewards in terms of extra pay and incentives and recognition have motivated employees to maintain cultural diversity in organisations thereby overcoming internal conflicts.
In continuation to previous week lectures, this week I also gained insights on different performance appraisal techniques that HR take up in developing cultural bonds among employees. This helps in developing a positive environment in the workplace where learning and sharing knowledge is easier leading to better performance management and enhancement.
This week was close to the lecture where we had focused on assignment 1 and thereby we did a quick recap of what we learnt throughout. This week we came across all module content following marking criteria of assignment 1 where I was told about academic writing techniques for this assignment.
This week, we had a group task with members belonging from different cultural backgrounds and most of the work was based on group discussion and interaction. In this week we came across practical experiences on how communication can be developed within a multicultural team along with effective performance management techniques. Collaboration, information sharing and teamwork are major concepts that have been emphasized on this week through group tasks.
Critical Reflection
Introduction
In week 9 I was entitled to work in a group project with other members from different cultural backgrounds which motivated me to improve my communication skills with them. I had to stress more on cultural diversity in my group so that interaction and sharing of information is effective along with communication mapping. Using Gibbs reflective cycle, I reflected on my learnings through different stages of experiences in this group activity. In group tasks, it is very much important to implement Gibbs reflective cycle as it helps in focusing on individual learning from one’s own experiences so that strengths and weaknesses can be easily evaluated.
Description
In this group task, my role was to record everyone’s performance and overall progress of the task on a daily basis. I had to maintain a transparent record of resources used by employees and how effective they were in carrying forward their responsibilities thereby adding value to team goals. In this context, it can be stated that I was responsible for giving daily updates to my leader so that they can easily strategize future direction for group tasks. Based on the opinion of Komori-Glatz (2018), focusing on team performance and individual contribution of team members were important for me to identify so that I can give feedback to them on areas that needed to be improved.
Feelings
Initially working in a group task was very much interesting for me as I had scope of learning new things from my experiences as well as from others. In our team we had members from different cultural backgrounds like indigenous communities, minorities, Asians and people from different religious backgrounds and working with them has made it much exciting for me to learn new skills. When we all started working for our responsibilities, I was very happy to maintain a transparent record of every detail. However, as complex strategies started to get implemented, I felt much stressed in segregating individual performance with team progress and therefore maintaining transparency was difficult. Slowly I started to grow sad on how my mistakes affected performance and appraisal of other members and therefore it led to more internal conflicts among multicultural team members.
Evaluation
My overall experience in this group task was average as there were both good and bad things that I witnessed in this overall task. The good thing about this group task was that I learnt many new things including my communication skills with people belonging to different cultures and transparent information sharing. It was through this project that I learnt to keep records of day to day progress with smooth, effective and transparent data storing and feedback. However, bad things that I experienced were that I started getting demotivated as I started making mistakes in complex group task activities. Based on the opinion of Sogancilar and Husniye (2018), I realised that because of my mistakes, the performance of other members started to get low which made me feel guilty. Along with it, I did not get into specific project activities to execute which gave me very little practical experience of how things were done.
Analysis
From my overall experience, I learnt that it is very much important to get trained well before getting directly engaged in group activities. As inspired by Poort et al. (2022), before taking record keeping responsibility, training and proper knowledge was needed so that I could handle complex activities effectively without affecting performance of other members. In addition to this, I realised that because of cultural differences, communication among team members was a major factor that hindered me from seeking help from others and increased internal conflicts.
Conclusion
As most members in the team I was working with belonged from different cultural backgrounds, communication with them was difficult for me. This could have been improved if I had been trained previously so that I could have made collaboration with all other members with effective interaction. Further, I also lacked information in dealing with complex group activities which make it difficult for me to keep proper records and updates. In order to overcome issues of miscommunication and internal conflicts in the team, I along with the team leader needed to set a common language and platform for communication that would make sharing of knowledge more transparent.
Action plan
If I had to work in a team where members belonged from multiple cultures, I would first try to set a common platform of communication and language so that transparency so that verbal interaction can be maintained. Seeking ideas from Goldstein and Gafni (2019), this would in first place help me to resolve all sorts of internal conflict and make each member dependent on others so that there is better collaboration. This would help them in working as a team by seeking each other’s help when needed.
References
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