Managing Human Resources (Distance- Semester I)

Answer

Recruiting employees for an oversea operation by the human resource management of the organization amounts to international human resource management by the organization. International human resource management refers to issues of human resource management arising from the internationalization of human resource management strategies, policies and practices of organizations in response to their internationalization process (Harzing, Pinnington, 2010). Expatriates are the main focus of international human resource management as they define the success rate of the organization in the host country by building up subsidiaries in the host country. Consequently, the multinational organization needs to employ certain strategies to ensure proper selection of expatriates during the recruitment process to enhance the success rate of the organization (Harzing, Pinnington, 2010). This document seeks to explore the strategies human resource management of an organization recruiting employees for an overseas operation may implement to reduce the risk of expatriate failure and enhance success rate.

Expatriates are more familiar with methods and techniques of management of the organization than the local employees hence posit a better chance to guarantee a good job performance than the locals. Therefore, the company would ensure themselves against failure by recruiting expatriates to conduct business abroad and focus on strategies that would help reduce the risk of expatriate failure (Minter, 2011). Expatriate failure refers to the return of an expatriate to the home country before the international assignment is finished due to prolongation of the international assignment or poor job performance. Expatriate Failure is not only costly to the organization but also to the individual expatriate because of the direct and indirect costs involved. Consequently, the organization should ensure address the causes of expatriate failure right from staffing stage (Minter, 2011).

The organization should implement strategies that ensure alleviation of Expatriates’ Culture Shock. Culture shock refers to a psychological and social process in which expatriates find a clash of their home culture with that of the host country and become homesick, confounded, depressed, irritable, stressed and furious. This may reduce the job performance of the expatriate leading to increased risk of expatriate failure (Furham, 2012). Culture shock involves four stages namely; Honeymoon, culture shock, adjustment, and mastery. At the honeymoon stage, expatriates may feel curious, excited about the host country as they get into a totally new environment. This is followed by the culture shock stage in which the expatriate are overtaken by a sense of disappointment, frustration, confusion and anxiety due to a clash of life styles, beliefs, values and customs between the two countries. Adjustment is the third stage, and it involves the expatriates´ recovery process through learning the new norms and approaches of doing things in accordance with the new culture (Okpara, Kabongo, 2011). Mastery is the final stage of expatriates' culture shock, and it involves the adaptation of the expatriate to the new culture and norms enabling them to get along well with the locals. As mentioned above, expatriates’ culture shock increases the risk of expatriate failure by promoting poor job performance. Therefore, alleviating culture shock is a critical strategy for a successful international assignment. This can be achieved through recruitment of people who have certain required personal characteristics by testing expatriates’ cross-cultural suitability. Notably personal characteristics are critical predictors of expatriate’s success in the international assignment. The evaluation of a candidate’s personal characteristics can be done through formal interviews or standard tests. Besides, the organization should implement the strategies posited by the three theories of expatriate selection namely; Tung’s Findings, Mendenhall and Oddou's Dimension Framework and Ronen’s Model.

Strategies from Tung’s Findings

Another strategy the organization needs to implement is the Technical Competence on the Job strategy to ensure quality performance by focusing on the technical and managerial competences in the recruitment process. This can be achieved by considering the candidate’s ability to perform the relevant tasks while emphasizing on job-related knowledge and skills (Tung, Verbeke, 2010). Therefore, technical competence is an essential selection criterion that can significantly enhance success rate and reduce the risk of expatriates’ failure caused by poor job performance. The company may use the past performance record of internally recruited candidates to evaluate his/her suitability for the international assignment.

Besides, the organization should consider cultural variables during the recruitment process. For instance, cultural novelty is an environmental variable that posits a gap of differences in culture between the host country and the home. Notably, different countries have different cultural values and beliefs that hosted individuals may find clashing with their home culture (Okpara, Kabongo, 2011). High degree of dissimilarity between cultures, increases the risk of a clash of different behaviors, values, and norms. As discussed above, this clash can negatively impact on the organization by reducing the performance of expatriates leading to high risk of expatriate failure. Consequently, the organization should recruit expatriates who have a vast knowledge of the culture of the host country. Notably, this can also be achieved through internally organized training programs for qualified expatriates to equip them with this knowledge so that they be aware of the host country's culture before traveling abroad for the business assignment. Besides, other environmental variables such as assignment duration certainty and favorable living conditions are crucial determinants of expatriates’ job performance (Okpara, Kabongo, 2011). Therefore, the organization should be sure to discuss these aspects with the candidates during the recruitment process and select individuals who display the highest confidence in task completion within the expected duration and satisfied with the living conditions in the new environment. This strategy can be implemented through one-on-one interviews with the candidates. Besides environmental variables, the organization should consider the family situation of the candidate (Tung, Verbeke, 2010). Notably, the inability of the expatriate’s family to adjustment to the new environment is a significant cause of expatriate failure. Past research studies posit that the adjustment of the expatriate is closely and positively related to the adjustment of the spouse (Gupta, Banerjee, Gaur, 2012). Therefore, the organization should consider spouse’s opinion on the international assignment during the recruitment process. This can be achieved by having the spouses of the candidates for the international assignment fill questionnaires that seek their opinion on the international assignment before recruitment is done.

Strategies from Mendenhall and Oddou's Dimension Framework

Moreover, the organization should use the self-oriented dimension of the candidates to select a suitable expatriate. This dimension involves self-preservation, self-enjoyment, and mental hygiene of the candidate (Bird, Mendenhall, Stevens, Oddou, 2010). This can be achieved by conducting psychometric tests to screen out unqualified candidates. This dimension will ensure that the recruited expatriates are socially and mentally fit for the assignment hence lowering the risk of expatriate failure due to mental conditions. The organization should also implement the Perceptual Dimension of the candidates to ascertain their adaptability to the host country. This dimension measures the understanding of the expatriate on the difference in the way of thinking and behavior between the host country and the home country. This dimension can be achieved through evaluation of the expatriate’s perceptual ability using psychological tests (Strubler, Park, Agarwal, 2011). Also, the organization may obtain this information on this dimension from the candidate’s superiors. This dimension is critical in selecting candidates with high level of adaptability to the host country hence help reduce the risk of expatriate failure due to culture shock discussed above.

The Others-Oriented Dimension is a strategy that is focused on how the expatriates get along with locals and their willingness to communicate with the locals. The organization should implement this strategy in the recruitment process through psychological tests of the candidates to ensure that expatriates with more interactions with the locals are selected for the international assignment. This is because the more the interactions with the locals, the more the culture shock is alleviated hence, the lower the risk of expatriate failure (Bird, Mendenhall, Stevens, Oddou, 2010). Notably, the locals can be of significant help in solving many difficulties encountered by expatriates in the host country. Moreover, the organization should implement the Cultural-Toughness Dimension strategy to ascertain the ability of the expatriates to understand the political, legal, socioeconomic and business aspects of the culture of the host country (Strubler, Park, Agarwal, 2011). This dimension can be implemented using semi-structured interviews to evaluate the expatriates on their understanding of the differences between political, legal, socioeconomic and business culture of the host country and that of their home country and how the expatriates would adapt themselves to the host’s political, legal, socioeconomic and business culture. This is critical in ensuring that the expatriates comply with the government policies of the host country hence reduce the risk of expatriate failure.

Strategies from Ronen’s Model

 Relational dimension is critical to the success of an expatriate abroad, and the organization should implement this strategy in the recruitment process (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). This dimension refers to personal characteristics with a focus on the tolerance for ambiguity, non-judgementalism, cultural empathy and low ethnocentrism, behavioral flexibility and interpersonal and communication skills (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012).

• Tolerance for ambiguity involves the ability of the expatriate to endure uncertainty while in a new country, and be able to keep calm in stressful situations (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). This is important in reducing culture shock that would lead to poor performance thereby increasing the risk of expatriate failure.
• Non-judgementalism involve the ability of the expatriates to deal with different cultures and situations without a biased attitude (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). This will help promote expatriate-locals relation as it enables the expatriates to assimilate appropriate ideas and opinions from local employees.
• Cultural empathy, on the other hand, refers to the capacity of expatriates to be interested and mindful of people from cultures and imagine how they think, feel, and act (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). This is will also help in reducing culture shock that would lead to poor performance as discussed above.
• Behavioral flexibility is critical for the expatriates’ success in the international assignment. It involves the ability of the expatriates to change their behavior and adapt to the different situations in the host country (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). Notably, expatriates need to react flexibly to changes in the new environment to ensure good job performance other than holding onto the tradition of the home country.

• Interpersonal and Communication skills refer to the ability of the expatriate to relate well to others. Include communication skills that will be significant for the success of the expatriate as the language of the host country may be different from that of the home country (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). Consequently, the organization should evaluate the communication skills of the candidates and focus on the language proficiency of the expatriates on the host country's language. Notably, expatriates with high proficiency in the local languages of the host country will interact readily with the host nationals hence effectively reduce culture shock.

Notably, these qualities are performance oriented and would significantly reduce the risk of expatriate failure while enhancing success rates (Peltokorpi, Froese, 2012). Therefore, the organization should implement the relational dimension during the recruitment process to ensure selection of a befitting candidate for the international assignment.

In conclusion, the expatriate failure is costly to both the organization and the individuals involved. Therefore, the human resource management of the organization recruiting candidates for overseas assignment must ensure reduced risk of expatriate failure by implementing relevant strategies during the recruitment process. Notably, the three famous theories of expatriate selection; Tung’s Findings, Mendenhall and Oddou's Dimension Framework and Ronen’s Model; provide critical strategies that the human resource management of the organization can implement to reduce the risk of expatriates failure. Notably, all the theories emphasize on strategies that are focused on the technical competence of the expatriates and those that can be implemented to reduce culture shock.