BUSM4554 Article Analysis - Assignment Solution

Article 1: Managing talent in emerging economy multinationals: Integrating strategic management and human resource management (Total word count: ~300 words)

No.	Question
1	Meyer & Xin (2017) have explained the challenges faced by Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) for attracting, developing and retaining talents that lead the international operations. The authors have proposed to integrate the strategic management and HRM perspectives through research for advancing and enhancing the relevance of both perspectives. The authors have drawn upon research questions How can home-country leaders with minimal cross-cultural experience manage employees and other stakeholders in a foreign cultural context? How can home country managers of EMNEs lead acquired businesses and effectuate reverse knowledge sharing? How can local talents as subsidiary leaders enable the mutual knowledge sharing with HQ while keeping the subsidiary on a profitable growth path? How can local talents engage with HQ in an emerging economy when they are not part of the in-group of corporate decision-making? Which personal characteristics enable local talent to engage with the superiors based in an emerging economy? How does the effectiveness of talent management practices vary across EMNEs subsidiaries pursuing different strategic objectives?
2	The authors have used inductive research approach in addressing the above research questions. At first, the case research into strategies used by EMNEs have been discussed by conducting interviews with several executives in North America and Europe. Then, case discussions are done with senior executives of EMNEs followed by five in-depth interviews using Skype with executives working outside Chinese MNEs. All of the interviews allowed authors to gain rich understanding of the concerns of managers working in EMNEs. The results are provided in discussion form for each of the research questions above while future research hints are also provided in the research. The authors have used several prior researches to support their results.
3	The authors used recent studies for gaining solid insights into the strategies and motivations of the EMNEs, but it still didn’t explore how the companies overcome the obstacles faced during strategy implementation related to how people are managed in their recently established MNEs. Hence, the conclusions obtained by the researchers are open to be challenged. The researchers have drawn future research possibilities that includes research to be conducted on cross-cultural experience, talent management, managing globally mobile talents and diversity of corporate leadership.

Article 2: Is workplace flexibility good policy? Evaluating the efficacy of age management strategies for older women workers (Total word count: ~300 words)

No.	Question
1	Earl & Taylor (2015) have discussed the importance of workplace flexibility by discussing the issues including aging workforce. Since a limited growing literature on managers’ attitude towards the flexibility, aging population and aging workforce is available, so the research has presented a valuable insight into the efficacy of managers in managing the aging workforce. Following research questions have been developed by the researchers: What do managers understand flexibility mean? How do the managers implement flexible working environment? What are benefits and costs of flexibility for organization and for the older women workers? The authors argued that for managing ageing workforce and for prolonging their working lives, innovation and willingness of line managers is crucial. It was also found that HR managers in Australia lack gender consciousness while managing the ageing workforce. It was also argued that HR managers in Australia do not consider individual differences (like gender disparity or age disparity) that leads to uneven distribution of workforce as these are overlooked in the organization.
2	In order to find supportive arguments for answering the above research questions, the researchers undertook 58 telephonic interviews from HR directors and managers in 2011 and 2012. Out of these 58 interviews, 19 were taken from financial services sector, 17 were from public sectors and 22 from university education sector. Additionally, for capturing broader perspective on the issues related to policy implementation faced by female employees, 39 interviews were taken from key external stakeholders that represented trade unions, advocacy groups and industry bodies. The authors finely coded the interviews in order to gather enough evidence for/against the research questions. The findings suggested that flexibility within workforce enables the organizations for retaining its ageing women workers and aid them in prolonging their working lives.
3	The study failed to acknowledge the detrimental effect of the poorly implemented flexible working environment on the overall ability of older women workers to prolong their working career. The study was also centred on older women workers that made it difficult to make comparisons with older men. Moreover, the study is based on three industry sectors, so the findings cannot be applied generally to all the industries. Other limitations include the use of telephone interviews instead of face-to-face interviews and self-reporting by HR managers and stakeholders.