Review of Human Resource Management

International Human Resource Management (IHRM) can be delineated as a set of activities purposed at the management of organizational human resources at the global level to attain organizational aims and accomplish competitive advantage over rivals at national and global levels. It encompasses characteristic human resource management functions like training and development, recruitment and selection, as well as performance appraisal undertaken at the global level. So as to closely incorporate company operations across the globe, multinational corporations try to cultivate and instigate standardized human resource management practices by transmitting the practices being undertaken at the headquarters to subsidiaries situated overseas. Consequently, practices at the organization's subsidiary will have a close likeness and similitude to practices in the home nation (Potocnik et al., 2014). The organization selected is IBM, which operates at the United States in its host country and having a subsidiary in China. The two IHRM practices that will be discussed with respect to this organization is recruitment and selection and training and development. These IHRM practices have been selected because American multinational corporations, in this case IBM, are more often than not depicted as having comparatively standardized human resource management practices, with respect to training and recruitment. Recruitment and selection together with training and development are HR practices that have been selected with regard to IBM for the reason that it is imperative to integrate the needs of the subsidiary personnel in China for training and development. At the same time, it is also necessary to indicate the significance of localization and therefore giving significance to recruitment and selection of extremely competent personnel that can progress success of the company.

Recruitment and selection in the global context ought to be prudently and sensibly to make certain that the fitting candidates are positioned to international posts. If an organization fails to do so, it could signify a financial damage and inefficacious use of time, and at the same time placing the reputation of the organization at stake. There are ways in which IHRM practices ought to be performed so as to be effective. In accordance to Ozbilgin et al. (2014), in the initial phase, the organizations ought to ascertain the competencies of human resource managers that will be responsible for the global recruitment and selection. It is imperative for the organization to ensure that such managers have distinctive competencies such as cultural sensitivity and linguistic capabilities. Corporations with international staffing necessitate a more intricate global HR capability profile. Moreover, the advancement of global recruitment and selection abilities, for instance, skills, capabilities, attitudes and knowledge together with other individualities for efficacious work in international recruitment and selection is imperative. Multinational corporations with already advanced native HR department, more often than not, the challenges faced with regard to recruitment and selection are in relation to cross-cultural teamwork between headquarters and subsidiary. Imperatively, HR managers positioned at the head office require a close understanding of the organizational strategy to efficaciously design job allocations and make decisions concerning international selection and recruitment (Potocnik et al., 2014).

Recruitment practices are fundamental to appeal to the fitting talent in the largely competitive international market. In order to be effective, recruitment begins with job specification and examination to delineate a set of features and competencies necessitated to efficaciously perform in the accessible international post. This comprehensive job examination of the global post should also enlighten the approach to global staffing that the organization ought to adopt. It is important to take these factors into consideration when designing the recruitment strategy for the organization's global posts. The recruitment strategy's level of success will be reliant on the quality of the brand position of the employer. This implies that the organization has to develop a distinctive image which prospective job applicants value and relate to, and which is associated to the policies and values of the organization (Ozbilgin et al., 2014).

Training and development are part of the manner in which the multinational corporation builds and develops its stock of human capital. One of the key ways in attaining effective training and development is through the creation of individual schools that undertake in-house training. The manner in which a multinational entity anticipates and offers appropriate training for global assignments is a significant aspect. This is mirrored in the increased level of interest in, and the provision of training prior to departure to facilitate preparation of expatriates and also the accompanying relatives for the international assignment (Dowling et al., 2009). In accordance to Dowling et al. (2009), expatriates gain individual management development from the global posts. Such global assignment is perceived to be the training ground for the worldwide cadre. To a certain degree, international assignments accomplish teambuilding, training and development, through the exposure of personnel to different parts of the international organization. In turn, expatriates develop networks in the local nation that more often than not continue to be subsequent to the completion of the job posting.

In accordance to Gregerson et al. (1998), there are four approaches for developing global managers, which include the creation of diversified teams, training, international travel and international jobs. In particular, these approaches are in connection with expatriation management, especially assimilating global training and management improvement. Training purposes to enhance prevailing work abilities and behavior while on the other hand development purposes to augment abilities in association with a future job or assignment. International managers necessitate various abilities, knowledge specific to the industry and also individualities such as capability to cultivate subordinates and handle responsibility. These individualities and proficiencies are deemed significant and can be developed via efficacious international training and management advancement. International training takes into account training for worldwide assignments. According to Shen (2005), there are three wide-ranging kinds of international trainings in multinational corporations. These consist of preparatory training for expatriates, post-arrival training for expatriates, and training for host-country nationals and third-country nationals.

Constituents of efficacious pre-departure training programs include cultural awareness training, initial visits, language instruction and also help with practical everyday matters. To begin with, a cultural awareness training program that is comprehensively designed can be largely beneficial, as it endeavors to cultivate an appreciation of the culture of the host nation in order to ensure that expatriates behave accordingly. Devoid of a proper understanding of this culture, there is a likelihood of the expatriates experiencing challenges in the course of the international assignment. This sort of training encompasses environmental updating, and cultural orientation, culture assimilation, language training, sensitivity training as well as field experiences (Dowling et al., 2009). Language learning is also essential to facilitate the smooth transition into the new country without compromising the level of effectiveness. Another constituent is the provision of information that helps in relocation. In particular, practical assistance makes a significant addition toward the espousal of the expatriate to the new setting (Dowling et al., 2009).

International human resource management is significantly different from domestic human resource management and considered to be more challenging and hard to implement owing to macro environmental factors like political, socioeconomic and cultural. HR management in dissimilar cultures, economies, and lawful systems brings about a number of challenges. One of the key challenges is that HR professionals experience that their nationality, training and experience give rise to them making suppositions that are based on culture. For instance, in nations such as China, men and women characteristically receive dissimilar remuneration for doing similar work, yet owing to a lengthy period of cultural conditioning these women may not have the feeling that they are being treated without equity (Eroglu, 2014). Another challenge of IHRM encompasses being able to espouse hiring and retention approaches to be able to prepare for an altering workforce in the forthcoming periods. Cultural diversity together with demographic delineate the international workforce and therefore HR managers face the challenge of filling skills shortages, gaining market competences and procuring strategic assets.

IHRM also faces the challenge of preparing for the intricacies of recruiting, hiring, managing and assimilating a worldwide workforce. Creating an appeal to global talent necessitates staying well-informed and up-to-date of new approaches for obtaining and drawing in talent. Technologies like social media are vital for recruiting, however HR managers face the challenge of aligning such strategies with the business objectives of the organization. In addition, organizations are faced with the challenge of developing the ways to appraise skills across differing sources of talent and subsequently generating training programs to fill skills gaps once personnel are employed. There is also the significant challenge of managing and integrating employees from different cultures. The success of an organization's international growth is dependent on HR assimilating the workforce. HR-led teams need to examine the intricacies of bringing together workforces with more often than not different societal and business cultures. The challenge in IHRM takes into account collecting, examining and understanding all the cultural, market, and labor intricacies of operating in every market in order for the company to be able to forecast prospects and risks, ascertain when to enter or exit a market, and assimilate efficaciously into new local markets (SHRM Foundation, 2015).

Standardization of multinational corporations is delineated as standardization of foreign subsidiaries' management practices in the direction of practices in the headquarters. This can be perceived as a sensible management enterprise by MNCs to transmit their human resource management policies and practices to their global operations with the conviction that these standardized operations will generate the most ideal performance for both partners. On the other hand, localization takes into account the espousal by foreign subsidiaries of those management practices usually utilized by domestic corporations in the corresponding host nations. Essentially, this encompasses utilizing local managers to run the organization's business operations in the local environment instead of fully using expatriate managers from the parent company (Chen and Wilson, 2003). In the case of IBM having its headquarters in the United States and the subsidiary in China, then the IHRM practices should be localized. This is largely for the reason that there are significant differences between the two nations with respect to consumer tastes and preferences. In addition, this approach impacts the state's relations with overseas organizations trying to operate within their national boundaries. Moreover, localization is deemed as the ideal approach for IBM as it can be perceived as a methodical investment in the recruitment, development as well as retention of local personnel, which is a significant component in the globalization tactic of multinationals (Noruzi and Westover, 2009).

Customarily, multinational companies have lay more emphasis on formal, structural kinds of control. Basically, in this form, strategy is carried out through the factoring of work flows, the pronunciation of control by some mixture of specialization categorized by functional, international product partition, nationwide, regional partitions or matrix structures. In particular, structure gives rise to chain of command, functional power and progressively more prearranged job delineations, selection benchmarks, training criteria and compensable factors.HR activities act to execute prevailing structural systems of control. Moreover, communications and associations are formalized and arranged and sensible, unequivocal quantitative standards dictate and take over performance management systems (Dowling et al., 2008).

A substitute standpoint has emanated in reaction to perceived drawbacks in an over-dependence on administrative structural controls in coping with the major disparities in distance and individuals experienced in the far-flung activities and operations of multinational companies. The distinctive cultural interrelations and the relative and physical distances that categorized global operations may have surpassed the competencies of exclusively structural and formal kinds of control. In particular, a more cultural focus lays more emphasis on the group level potential of organizational culture, relaxed social practices, individual work systems and the investment in social capital to function as sources of more comprehensive and dexterous control in an intricate multi-product, multicultural setting. What is more, from an individual standpoint, a focus on persons, in contrast to jobs, their capabilities and skills, and the investment in human capital comes to be the focus of more personalized and tailored human resource practices and procedures (Dowling et al., 2008).

In the case of IBM having the parent company in the United States and the subsidiary being situated in China, it is imperative to take into consideration the intricacies associated to subsidiary directive, dependence on local or corporate technologies and competencies, in addition to the cultural distance that is existent between the organizational and host cultures. Bearing this in mind, the kind of control that the parent-company should exert on the subsidiary is cultural control. To begin with, in the contemporary, China is considered to have a more comprehensive and extensive level of technology compared to other nations in the world. In addition, there is a significant level of cultural distance between the Chinese ways of doing things in the work setting compared to that of the Western culture. Therefore, this implies that using a formal and structural control approach causes difficulties in the company's IHRM. This is moreover perceived to be the more fitting kind of control because it is a practice of socializing individuals in order for them to be able to share a mutual set of values as well as beliefs that subsequently fashion their behavior and viewpoints. In addition, it becomes possible to link the corporate culture together with the national culture and therefore decreasing the level of conflict. Therefore, it is imperative to have more modified human resource practices and procedures that are fitting to China. Therefore, in this case the formal controls that prevail in the parent-company in the United States will be existent, but they will not be the main source of control (Dowling et al., 2008).