SHR081-6 International and Comparative Human Resource Management Assignment Sample
ASSESSMENT TWO AND ANALYZING THE HR ISSUES IN THE CASE STUDY
Introduction
Human capital is a unique resource to the organization and helps the organization shape its business objectives following the skills and capabilities of individual and leadership direction to keep the organization competitive in market operation. Expatriates are the organizational resource that has the capability to engage and resolve issues flexibly and enhance the organizational productivity as well as firmly reflect the organizational objectives in a foreign land. In this report, the organizational issues and operatives to train and develop expatriates for the foreign assignments and challenges faced by South Korean expatriates in the Indian context with recommendations will be elaborated on briefly.
Case study analysis
1. Challenges faced by a South Korean expatriate in India
It needs to be opined that in the present era, many expatriates face multiple challenges in foreign countries if these issues may not be resolved then it may affect the success of expatriate assignments. In addition to that, in this case, Yeong-jin Lee, who was the operating manager in a South Korean multinational organization, faces multiple challenges in India which harmed the expatriate activities of the person in India. Nowadays, expatriate failure may be considered one of the most burning issues for Multinational organizations while proper expatriate selection, training and development play a critical role in ensuring expatriate success (Haile and White, 2019). In this section, the expatriate challenges of Young-jin Lee in India will be described in brief.
Lack of knowledge of Indian social, religious and cultural customs
It needs to be mentioned that every expatriate needs to know about the culture of Host Country Nationals (HCNs) or else it may create many problems to do cross-cultural adjustment in the country. In this case, Yeong-jin Lee was not able to do proper cross-cultural adjustment which has created many serious challenges for the expatriate in India. According to the case study, the expatriate did not have proper knowledge about Indian culture which indicates that the expatriate did not receive prep cross-cultural training, Along with that, one of the main advantages of receiving effective cross-cultural training is stat it plays a crucial role in identifying the cultural nuances of the country effectively. It is also found that there is a relationship between cultural adaptability a cross-cultural adjustment which indicates the performance of an expatriate. It is one of the main duties of an expatriate to identify the proper way of cross-cultural adjustment and apart from that the expatriate needs to find the cultural differences and national values of HCNs (Liao et al., 2021). Additionally, in this case, Yeong-jin Lee ignored that which created several challenges for the expatriate to understand the national cultural and social values of India.
According to this case study, the expatriate has done the activities as an operational manager in a multicultural context as the person was not able to understand the national culture of India for that reason Yeong-jin Lee has faced stress issues while working in this environment. It is also found that the society and religious context of South Korea are different from India which indicates that there is a huge requirement for cross-cultural adjustment to adapt to the culture of India. Analysing the case study, it is also found that South Korean culture is mainly based on a Confucian cluster and one of the main features of the cluster is that the people of the country always prefer to work together and there is a strong influence of family bonds. On the contrary, Indian culture belongs to Southern Asian culture which is also based on collectivism and a low level of stress has been observed in the culture of India (Groutsis et al., 2017). Analyzing the difference between these cultures it is found there is little difference in the culture of these countries as both countries prefer to work in growth, however, due to the huge change in social and religious customs the expatriates faced multiple difficulties in India.
Due to huge changes in a social and religious context, the working environment of India is also different from the South Korean working environment and these changes in the working environment were not sustainable for expatriates. In India, the host office also misunderstands the capabilities of Yeong-jin Lee as an operational manager for the company which also enhances the stress level of the expatriate. It is also found that the expatriate was not prepared to work in a multicultural environment as the different cultural background and linguistic context of India was not easy to handle. A journal also states that cultural barriers may be considered one of the main reasons which created several challenges for expatriates and due to these cultural barriers an expatriate may not be able to adapt to the new cultural environment in the HCNs (Sharma and Dahiya, 2017). In addition to that, if the challenges of the expatriate may not be resolved then it may create multiple hindrances to the personal life and professional career of the expatriate in the Host country (Saxena and Safi, 2022). According to the Hindu culture, there is a huge influence on Diwali, Holi, and Ram Navami in India while other religions such as Muslim and Christian have their cultural festival which denotes that India is a multi-religious country. Moreover, without proper cross-cultural training, it is extremely difficult to adapt and sustain in a multicultural context and the lack of knowledge in cultural adaptability is the main issue of Yeong-jin Lee.
Negotiation challenges
It needs to be mentioned that the expatriate also did not have negotiation skills for a multicultural context and due to lack of negotiation skills, it is immensely difficult for the person to ensure the success of the multicultural project. Additionally, the South Korean company needs to provide proper training in cross-cultural negotiation, as a result, the expatriate was unable to negotiate with labourers which have failed in expatriate projects in India. In addition to that, the expatriate also experienced several challenges while working in different linguistics contexts which denoted that Yeong-jin Lee was unable to learn the logical language of India. Furthermore, most expatriates in the world also face struggling to learn the local language of HCNs and the changing working environment has also been a huge change for expatriates (Zhang et al., 2018). It will be helpful if the expatriate would develop proper negotiation skills according to the cultural and social context of India, however, due to a lack of local knowledge of Indian culture and society, the expatriate couldn’t improve their negotiation skill. Having poor negotiation skills the expatriate was faced with challenges to coordinate with labourers and colleagues of the company which has harmed the expatriate’s activities of the person.
Fear and frustration with Indian culture
It may be argued that the expatriate faced multiple stress issues as it was extremely challenging for Yeong-jin Lee to adopt the Indian culture. Additionally, the cross-cultural training which was received by the expatriate was not appropriate, for that reason, the fear of the Indian culture of the expatriate has increased day by day. Due to extreme levels of fear and frustration the performance of expatriates has dropped, as a result, the deadlines were not connected which harmed the entire expatriate activities of the South Korean organization in India. On a broader note, there is a huge importance of cross-cultural training (CCT) in reducing the stress level of expatriates in a foreign land by providing the proper knowledge of expatriate adjustment which improves the expatriate performance as well (Polay, 2020). In addition, if the expatriate will not be able to adjust to Indian culture then the fear and stress level will be more increase and that also affects the productivity of expatriates in India. Moreover, the prime duty of an expatriate is to maintain a professional attitude in an expatriate country even if due to fear of Indian culture Yeong-jin Lee was not able to maintain a proper professional attitude in India.
Challenges faced by the family members of the expatriate
The family members of Yeong-jin Lee also experienced multiple challenges in India as the wife of the expatriate was unable to adjust to the diverse cultural environment of the country. Additionally, the family also plays a crucial role for every expatriate as in this case, the family member of the expatriate such as the wife of Yeong-jin Lee felt extremely nervous and isolated too. According to a journal, it needs to be pointed out that there is a huge effect of the family adjustment on the optimum success of an expatriate (Erogul, M.S. and Rahman, 2017). Additionally, sometimes, an expatriate may ex-pat without family, however, in this case, Yeong-jin Lee ex-pat with family, and for that reason, the discomfort level of the familiarity of the expatriate in India has affected the performance of the expatriate activities. There is a huge difference in language between India and South Korea as Hindi is mostly spoken in major parts of India while Korea is the national and official language of South Korea. The wife of the expatriate also suffers from the massive difference in Foods as the choices and tastes of foods are different in India which has created multiple adjustment problems for the wife of Yeong-jin Lee. Cultural adjustment is a degree of psychological or mental comfort level which every expatriate wants to feel or achieve in a diverse cultural context while these cultural adjustments always invite many new experiences and changes as well (Sterle et al., 2018). The wife of the expatriate also needed to acquire proper knowledge of Indian culture and language to deal with cultural and language diversity in India as the openness of mind will be helpful for the person to cope with these issues.
2. Evaluation of MNC’s effort on ensuring successful selection, training, adjustment and completion of expatriate assignments in the Indian context
Expatriates are generally migrant workers, professional or skilled employees who are assigned to take the role in different countries for Multinational Companies (MNC) to fulfil organizational objectives abroad. Human Resource Management (HRM) has the responsibility to train, develop and prepare the employees for expatriate assignments abroad which relies on the employee skill of adaptation and available resources to prepare the expatriate and family with cultural sensitivity for enabling individuals to cope with the diverse cultural workforce. Knowledge sharing is important to improve the organizational performance through cooperation where spillover of knowledge has the potential to damage the expatriates’ move to a foreign land and triggered by the cultural difference with the employees (Ali et al., 2019). The HRM activity is wide to develop a successful expatriate for organizational sustainability and long term objectives. Economic globalization and emerging technology have made the world a global village where MNCs are sending expatriates to strengthen the foreign operation through expatriates’ skills and abilities and generate a positive profit margin from a foreign operation. However, the motivational cultural intelligence influences the cross-cultural adjustment within the work structure while the cultural distance is low, generally beginning of new foreign assignments (Setti et al., 2020). Pre-departure training program for the expatriates’ families is essential to ensure effective job engagement abroad as well as social engagement through increased cultural intelligence and support from organizational resources and logistics for successful completion of organizational business objectives. Additionally, the expatriate management cycle is crucial for HRM strategy to conceptualize the work function of individual expatriates through the selection, training, assignment and repatriation phase for a successful foreign operation (Wegener, 2020).
Selection
Selection is the primary phase where employees are selected based on their skill, abilities, job role, experience and organizational requirements to select an employee for the designated job role. Expatriates are selected based on work functionality, skills, abilities and adaptability as well as other known factors related to organizational business operation along with fluent communication, interoperability, emotional intelligence and behavioural traits. On a specific note, openness, emotional stability, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and compound personality traits are effective to determine the success rate of expatriates (Ones et al., 2018). The selection of expatriates is the process of accumulation of information for evaluating the credibility of the individual employee to become highly effective in foreign operations and organizational need to deliver business responsiveness through employee skills and expertise. It comprises the educating of individuals and evaluating the individual potential to properly engage and resolve the complexity of foreign operations. On the other hand, the personal characteristics of individuals have a significant impact in handling overseas operations and are briefly acknowledged as self-orientation, willingness to communicate, relationship development, cognitive ability, perceptual ability, cultural toughness and coping ability. These characteristics are briefly reviewed and judged as the parameter to select a foreign expatriate.
The other skills and abilities are global curiosity, cultural adaptability, emotional intelligence, multilingual skills, leadership, patience, interoperability and flexibility which are the determining factors to select a successful expatriate. The success of an expatriate largely depends upon the perceived skillset, cross-cultural competencies and personality traits (Refer to Appendix 1). On a specific note, organizational effectiveness in performance depends on employee work satisfaction where expatriates have bestowed the responsibility to adjust the culture and flexibly interoperate to direct, motivate and drive the organizational resources for organizational business vision and mission (Aziz et al., 2019).
Training
Training is the viral phase of expatriate management which is coordinated through the Human Resource (HR) department to effectively align the expatriate on the overseas responsibility to collaborate and improve productivity. Training is basically of two types of categories as hard skill training and soft skill training where hard training refers to the skills in the area of technology to flexibly operate the business function and make progress in the organizational market competitiveness. On the contrary, soft skill training is critical for employee adaptability in a foreign country which includes basics of language orientation, and acknowledgement of the foreign cultural philosophies, habits, beliefs and practices. It helps individuals to accommodate themselves to positively deal with overseas responsibilities to drive the organizational objectives and achieve success in terms of business proficiency, sustainability and profit margin. However, a centralized training program for the expatriate has the potential to leverage and transfer specific knowledge and abilities abroad for the sake of organizational effectiveness (Patel et al., 2022). The MNCs need to focus on the strategic expatriation process involved in specific pre-departure and post-departure cross-cultural training, and practical support for the expatriate and family for a successful expatriate strategy (Tahir, 2018).
The expatriate process is cyclically evolved starting from the section, preparation and orientation through training, adjustment, performance management, compensation and rewards with a robust repatriation strategy. Here, the case study depicts issues of an expatriate as well as spouse and children that are experiencing the situation of cultural and social isolation along with several barriers such as communication gap, dynamic anxiety resistance, stress and adjustability. MNCs effectively coordinate the term of expatriates with the training of both hard and soft skills to enable individuals to take the reins of the organization abroad and manage the deficiencies to critically implement the business responsiveness in delivering market demand. The South Korean expatriate faced issues in Indian assignment largely due to a lack of cognizance of social, cultural and religious norms, costumes and practices, engaging with diverse cultural groups, changing work structures and mounting pressure in implementing the centralized directive in India. Moreover, the expatriation management is subdivided into strategic consulting, immigration and relocation which is driven by cooperation rather than competition (Pichard, 2021).
Adjustment
Adjustment is another crucial factor for the expatriates to effectively align individuals in the context of foreign nations to adopt and reflect the business process with gained knowledge and practices of organizational culture, national culture and business scope. The average employee issue and challenge as well as the satisfaction of work are commonly addressed through the degree of adaptability by the expatriate who followed and enveloped through the expatriate life cycle (Refer to Appendix 2). The degree of adjustment remains multidimensional where the expatriate level of learning and adaptabilities are depends on several factors comprising work-related factors, non-work-related factors, organizational culture and national culture. The work-related factors are company objectives, selection method and cross-cultural training whereas the non-work-related factors included the expatriate manager’ previous assignment, experience, behaviour and psychological factors. Furthermore, the cognizance of organizational culture includes work values, leadership style and management approach as well as the national culture with nature of the society, influence of religion, and individualism vs. collectivism defines the success ratio of the expatriate. The tolerance of ambiguity refers to the expatriate’s cognitive response to the diverse range which is detrimental to expatriate performance and involved with effective information processing to construct positive personality traits influencing the emotion, perception, motivation and attitudes (Albrecht
Adjustment by expatriates is a critical aspect for individuals and significant for the successful completion of the expatriate and as in the case study the expatriates are facing issues and uncertainty over the organizational objective as well as a social and psychological dilemma. The cultural competency, communication skills, and interoperability ensure the employee effectiveness abroad where employees gain insight to organize and direct the workforce for adequate move to engage in market transactions. On a contradictory note, adjustment by expatriate families is quite vast where it reflects the cultural philosophy, differences in national culture, family psychology and stress literature which have to be assessed and supported for prospective expatriate management (Sterle et al., 2018).
Completion of the expatriate assignment
Successful completion of expatriation id highly depends on the expatriate’s adjustment and cultural flexibility in the host country where organizational support positively mediates the job completion and satisfaction. Moreover, the assignment completion is directly influenced by the job satisfaction and work-life balance of the individual expatriate which is also aligned with perceived organizational support (Sokro et al., 2021). The completion of expatriate assignments is quite helpful for the employee with lucrative compensation and payments along with international recognition and work experience. It also required the engagement of the HRM team to coordinate the repatriation program for the expatriates from foreign land which included the emotional, cultural and social stability after return to the home country. The completion of an expatriate assignment in the host country is highly dependent on the expatriate’s performance, business progress and strategic achievement of business goals. However, the successful completion collaborates through employee skills of time management, critical analysis, and negotiation skill, cross-cultural competency, decision making, employee engagement, motivation, vision and leadership.
The HR strategy also differs in the successful completion of the expatriate assignments where to extend or truncate the assignment for the individual expatriate depending on the business situation and organizational long term mission in the foreign country. The international HRM pays high attention to expatriate management which helps in accommodating the expatriate social and cultural balance with the work-life in foreign countries as well as a home country before and after expatriation. Global work arrangements are redefined against the contemporary practice of global staffing for organizational business efficiency through proper job alignment of individuals in a national and international business context and job role. The integrative approach of HRM coordinates the expatriate management cycle treated from selection and ends with successful repatriation for the expatriate as well as family (Collings and Isichei, 2018).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it may be concluded that the HRM strategy critically supports the organizational business objective through proper alignment of human resources with job roles and responsibilities depending on skill set and capabilities. The expatriate is chosen to effectively engage and foster the business function in a foreign nation where the expatriate management cycle accompanies selection, training, adjustment and completion for managing expatriate work-life balance. Cultural competency, communication effectiveness, interoperability, openness, emotional stability and adaptability have been the helpful aspects for expatriates to successfully engage and resolve organizational issues in the host country.
Recommendations
The recommendations for managing expatriate assignments are follows:-
- The MNC should consolidate the performance measurement systems to assess the employee potential for expatriation
- The company should engage in 360-degree feedback process for the employees to reflect openness, cultural sensitivity, emotional stability, personality traits and communication efficiency to engage the HR in selection of expatriate
- The company should develop an integrated training session both for employees and his family to culturally adapt to foreign nationals while on expatriation
- The company should adopt technological emergence in the training and development phase to keep the focus on soft skills for engaging with diverse cultural employees with social and religious customs to keep the relationship professional and intact for the long term
The above recommendations are useful for expatriate management through HRM practice by MNCs where the consolidated framework of performance measurement helps the HRM management to assess the individual capabilities of the expatriate program. The 360-degree feedback process for employee engagement is preferable and helpful to acknowledge the individual potential in cultural competence, communication, individual affinity, belief, and practice with emotional stability and personality traits for viability in expatriate mission.
References
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