Expatriate Management in Hostile Environments Assignment Sample

Critical Evaluation of HRM Challenges and Issues

As the case study depicts, there have been chalked out a list of challenging parts of human resource management in the case. The case study revolves around the concept of internationalization of human resources and other business practices. The focus area of work has been the management of human resources and expatriates in the organization in different parts of the globe. The discussion of Eric and the storyline provided in relation to Eric and Fred leads to an understanding of the gaps in the practical approach of expatriate management and activities.

According to Faeth and Kittler (2020), managing human resources as expatriates is a challenging factor for both the home country and the host country. The process of expatriate constitutes various challenges at the level of pre-departure, post-departure, and also during the assignment. The study chalks out the gap in the cross-cultural differences arising in the place as highlighted by Eric. The adaption of the cross-cultural approach is the most vital yet demanded practice in the field of expatriate management and adjustment of the personnel in the host country and workplace (Sit 2017). Cross-cultural competence development is perilous for the effective functioning in the organizational situation which has its dependence on the staffing approach followed by the firm viz. ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric, etc. type of the approach (Desai 2019).

In addition to this, as supported by Aswathappa and Dash (2020), one of the major challenging factors in human resource management involves the creation of ease in the global redistribution and relocation of work due to changing organizational design. As illustrated by Eric’s viewpoint in the study, the organization utilizes the third-country nationals (TCNs) as well in addition to the home/ parent and host country nationals. Hence, the involvement of multinational and multicultural human resources and expatriates have become a significant yet challenging phase of internationalization of the businesses.

Eric, in the description of the study, has made a major focus on efficient training and practices to be followed. The most challenging factor in the study is the duration of international assignments to the ex-pats. It has been a familiar concept that expatriates suffer a high inconvenience in adaption and compliance with the international or host country market and environment. It is hence important for an organization to have a clear understanding of the culture, laws, and governing activities in the host country for the sake of expatriate’s ease of living and accommodation in the host culture till the span of the assignment. In addition to this, as suggested by Eric in the study, a focus must be on the provision of short-term assignments to expatriates for the content and comfort of doing business in the host environment to resist the experience of a culture shock to expatriate (Okpara and Kabongo 2017).

Likewise, the discussion of the managerial capabilities of Eric and Fred on the training of expatriates has provided an understanding of an additional challenge in the field of international human resource management. Objecting the training of the expatriates at the pre-departure and post-departure level both is crucial for the optimum success of the assignment and hence the expatriate’s, eventually leading to the organizational profitability. The challenging area of training the expatriates raises the bar for analysis of training needs, training effectiveness, and provision of quality training to expatriates by their line managers (Feng 2020) to provide quality, efficient, and usable practices of training at the real event and thus remove the financial and compensational disadvantages, operational deficiencies, etc. expected to be occurring at the level of the ineffectiveness of the expatriates on assignment.

To conclude, the case study has been helpful in the identification of a variety of challenges and issues in the process of expatriation and international human resource management that needs to be worked on and monitored to remove the deficient areas of business.

References for Expatriate Management in Hostile Environments

Aswathappa, K., and Dash, S. (2020). International Human Resource Management. McGraw-Hill Education.

Desai, M. D. 2019. Study on international staffing approaches and pre-departure training. Journal of the Gujarat Research Society, 21(11), pp. 512-517.

Faeth, P. C., and Kittler, M. G. (2020). Expatriate management in hostile environments from a multi-stakeholder perspective: A systematic review. Journal of Global Mobility, 8(1), pp. 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1108/JGM-07-2019-0035.

Feng, X. 2020. Managerial challenges faced by Goldman Sachs: From a perspective of human resource management. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Publications, 3(1), pp. 10-17.

Okpara, J. O., and Kabongo, J. D. 2017. The effect of cross-cultural training on expatriates’ adjustment. Journal of Management Development, 36(9), pp. 1114-1124. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd-09-2016-0166.

Sit, A., Mak, A., and Neil, J. T. 2017. Does cross-cultural training in tertiary education enhance cross-cultural adjustment? A systematic review. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 57, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.01.001

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