International HR Management | Assignment Help
Introduction:
After reaching to a global scale, company may be bound to utilize numerous resources and opportunities associated with global presence. The opportunities can be explored and obtained through employing balance between centralized integration and local adaptation approaches in by human resource management functions. When companies achieve global scale then they should not be unperturbed but they may have many opportunities to avail by carrying global scale. The basic purpose of exploring this issue is to see what companies are doing and what they should do about international Human Resource Management after reaching to global level.
In fact, international Human Resource Management helps to avail opportunities such as adapt to local market differences, exploit global economies of scale, exploit economies of global scope, tap into the best locations for activities and resources, and maximiser knowledge and experience transfer between locations. This issue of exploring the opportunities can minimise the weaknesses of a global company and strengthen its operations in a big way. In this report, it has been discussed that what the major obstacles and challenges associated to these opportunities as well as how centralised integration and local adaption supports to exploit all these opportunities to make a company, a top level company of the globe. There are several examples of huge companies such as Pepsi, Coke, Microsoft, HP, Dell and Motorola to understand the statement in a very obvious and straightforward mode.
Global Presence
It has been argued that world’s economies are increasingly integrating into one global economy, and the competitive pressures to establish and maintain a global presence and the opportunities that abound therein have taken on great importance. The geographic dispersion, multiculturalism, different legal and social systems, and the cross-border movement of capital , goods, services and people that the international firm faces adds a need for competency and sensitivity is not found in the domestic firm. Now the question is what local firms expect from foreign corporations? The development of domestic industries through the potential positive consequence of multinational corporations’ (MNCs) activities, notably via the avenues of transfer of technological and management expertise and sustained economic growth, are among the foremost expectations. Social and economic development depends on several factors, such as investments from the private and public sector in education, health, safety, infrastructure, and technological innovation, and private companies. MNCs as well as local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have a crucial role to play in this regard. However, having companies set up in a given area in itself is not a guarantee for fostering development.
The global scope of business activity has expanded dramatically since the 1970s. Since then not only has the scope increased but also firms has increase their international operations in a number of ways. The global presence of a firm looks at the whole world as one market. But as per the experience of global MNEs, running a global company is more complicated than managing a multinational or international firm.
How global presence of a firm can help to achieve global economies of scale and to exploit of global scope:
In case of global presence, it’s very important for a firm to achieve economies of scale. Now the question is how a firm can achieve global economies of scale to exploit economies of global scope? To review and understand the ways of reaching at global scale, it is needed to align the direction, direction of a company can only be observed by reviewing its objectives, mission and vision statements. Firstly, companies achieve their vision and mission like they first accomplish national economies of scale and then they expand their business in other countries and markets by availing different expertise and knowledge of the world level technicians, scientists, experts, managers and skilled workers. Companies do not attain global level very effortlessly; they have to pass through different stages and challenges to come up to global levels (ref). The global scale is only possible when they plan, target and subsequently desire to acquire top ranking.
They can exploit the opportunity of getting global scale by getting cheap labor, technology, low shipment cost, and other expenditures by finding low production countries of the world.
There are three things involved in the production or cost of production. For example, if you produce electricity by purchasing material such as furnace oil in bulk, cheap labor and low overheads so that you can reduce the average production’ cost and attain the global economies of scope.
For example, Man diesel and Power management utilized both centralizes and local adaptation approach to minimize labour cost in host countries and in Germany. They use both key experts from head office and general managers from the host companies to run and manage operations in all the countries of the world as per their International HR policy (ref). Local people are working as general managers in the power stations to perform normal and basic HR functions and keep updating to the key Personnel in the head office. If head office finds any problem in the operations of any subsidiary then they guide from technical and management perspective to local management of Man Power Management (ref).
When companies achieve economies of scale then they can come up strongly to market its products all over the world. The more companies market product as per local adaptation the more they get customers and increase sales in a great way. When the revenue achieves then companies achieve economies of scope. After reaching at the economies of scope, there is no going back, it means companies rarely get losses at that level. The looses of these companies are not pure losses but they consider less profits from previous to current yeas as a loss for the company. For example, Nestle earns a lot of profits last year suppose $10 billions but this year they earned $5 billion, so reduction in profit is the loss of Nestle.
In short, companies reach economies of global scope by leveraging their market power and by providing coordinated services. There are challenges that hinder global organizations greatly which are as follows:
- Need for central coordination
- Being locally responsive
EXPLOITING ECONOMIES OF GLOBAL SCALE
The basic idea of achieving economies of scale is same as when more units of a good or a service can be produced on a larger scale, yet with (on average) less input costs, economies of scale (ES) are said to be achieved. Alternatively, this means that as a company grows and production units increase, a company will have a better chance to decrease its costs. According to theory, economic growth may be achieved when economies of scale are realized (ref).
For example-When a company buys inputs in bulk – for example, potatoes used to make French fries at a fast food chain – it can take advantage of volume discounts. (In turn, the farmer who sold the potatoes could also be achieving ES if the farm has lowered its average input costs through, for example, buying fertilizer in bulk at a volume discount.
Some researchers argued that global presence automatically expands and enhances operations and assets of the company. With large sales volume, a company can achieve economies of scale and sales can be increased by efficient marketing and production strategies as per the situation and condition. These strategies are made by efficient professionals from the head quarters or from the local associated branches and offices where the same country employees also operate.