case study on international hrm

International HRM Case Study: Apple Inc.

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Apple HRM Case Study: Abstract

Apple’s hrm, apple’s experience in international hrm: case study, apple human resource management: conclusion.

International human resource management has become a necessary undertaking in many multinational corporations. Globalization, a major driver of international trade, is one of the factors behind this development. Success in international ventures is significantly driven by the input of expatriates or international assignees.

In this paper, some issues relating to these assignees were highlighted. They include such issues as the various aspects of pre-departure training, recruitment, and selection criteria. Staffing strategies were also reviewed in this study. The author of this paper proposed a system of measuring return on international assignments.

The topics mentioned above were analyzed in the context of Apple Inc., a top ranking multinational corporation. The success of this organization is one of the reasons why it was selected for this study.

Key words: International human resource management, international assignees, multinational corporations, Apple Inc.

In the recent past, there has been an increase in the number of multinational corporations operating in the world. Such companies are heavily investing in the global market. A number of factors have influenced the growth of these organizations.

They include dynamics of international trade, amalgamation of the financial markets, and human migration. Other factors include speedy movement of capital as a result of globalization. All these factors have facilitated trade on the international arena.

Human resource management entails the activities carried out by organizations to effectively utilize their human resource. Consequently, effective human resource management at the global level is a major determinant of success in international trade.

Human resource development at the international level has largely focused on the formulation of effective and highly skilled workforce. By doing this, individual employees and the organization at large can realize their ultimate goals of serving customers.

Apple Inc. is a competitive global company in the communications and electronics industry. It is a leading designer, manufacturer, and marketer of communications and media devices.

It is also involved in the manufacture and distribution of digital music players and portable computers. The company has operations in different parts of the world. It has an elaborate international human resource management system.

The current study addresses the element of international human resource management with regards to Apple Inc. Various aspects related to management of personnel in this organization are reviewed.

They include, among others, training of employees, deployment across the world, and return on investment. The author of this paper holds that effective management of human resource at Apple Inc. has contributed to the success of the organization.

Components of Pre-Departure Training

Overview. According to Avril and Magnini (2007), pre-departure training provides expatriates with the knowledge and skills required to survive following their immediate arrival at the destined country of work. Essentially, employees going to work in another country require information on various aspects of the host nation before they leave home.

Some of the things they need to know include the culture and customs of the host country. They also need to be aware of the language and dress code appropriate to the new environment. In addition, international assignees need information on business etiquette in the new country (Avril & Magnini, 2007).

Information on verbal and non-verbal communication, taboos, rules, decision-making techniques, and business management structures should be provided to international employees during pre-departure training.

Culture and customs of the new country. Training on host country’s customs is essential in ensuring that the expatriates adapt to the local culture. It is noted that business operations would be negatively affected if the behavior patterns of the new employees conflict with the cultural expectations in the host country.

For instance, a US citizen working for Apple Inc. may be deployed to Saudi Arabia. Such an employee should be aware of how Saudi nationals regard alcohol. In addition, female employees would be expected to conform to the societal expectations with regards to their dress code.

Language. Language is an essential component of communication in international business. Expatriates and inpatriates require more than just basic knowledge on the host country’s language for effective execution of their assignments. In addition, they should be aware of non-verbal communication techniques. Such awareness would facilitate communication in foreign countries.

Business etiquette in the new environment. Business etiquette may vary between countries. In some parts of the world, governments regulate business policies. For instance, such elements as tax policies, power distance, and human resource management may differ from one country to the other (Katz & Seifer, 1996).

An expatriate manager at Apple Inc. would be required to understand the variation of such policies. Failure to comply with the new rules and regulations would most likely jeopardize the operations of the corporation in the host market.

Business management structures and decision-making techniques. Different countries adopt different approaches in relation to business structures and decision-making techniques. For instance, decision making in high-power distance cultures differs with that in low-power distance communities.

As such, a manager working for Apple’s branch in Korea should be aware of the best approach to adopt in directing employees. The same applies to a German employee working in Africa, where decisions usually come from the top management.

Rationale for Utilizing the Pre-Departure Training Components

Managers are expected to effectively handle employees from different cultural backgrounds. The ability of such managers as far as the employees are concerned affects the profitability of the company. People from different countries express their nationality and dress codes differently.

The approach used by international assignees when dealing with certain problems may also differ. Such issues as the need to interpret actions and comments, predict behaviors, and resolve conflicts may arise. As a result, focusing on the various components of pre-departure training would harmonize Apple’s operations with the reality in the host country.

Performance Assessment among Expatriates

Introducing assessment. Assessing the performance of expatriates is a major element in international human resource management. The performance can be reviewed using a number of criteria. Such criteria include determining strategy implementation and attainment of competitive advantage.

According to Caligiuri (1997), there are three criteria commonly used in evaluating expatriates. They include completion of foreign assignments, performance on the foreign assignment, and cross-cultural adjustment. The criteria apply to all employees irrespective of the operations of a particular organization.

Completion of foreign assignments. It is an important behavioral measurement. It is used in reviewing the results of tasks assigned to foreign employees. Success under this criterion is determined by the ability of the employee to complete their assignment without seeking for transfer to another country (Caligiuri, 1997).

Premature termination translates to failure in relation to the performance of the expatriate. In most cases, premature termination occurs when the expatriate requests for transfer to home country before completion of the assignment. The assignee may also be requested to return home before they have completed their work.

Cross-cultural adjustment. Adjustment to foreign culture also determines the success of the assignee (Caligiuri, 1997). Inability to adjust to the host country means failure in the assignment. Successful adjustment indicates that the employee is psychologically comfortable working and living in the new country.

Adjusted assignees are comfortable with the local culture. On their part, maladjusted employees find it hard to survive in the new environment. The failed employees may prematurely terminate their assignments (Suutari & Brewster, 2000).

Performance on the foreign assignment. Multinational corporations expect their employees to adjust culturally and remain in their foreign posts. In addition, the expatriates are expected to successfully execute their assignments. According to Caligiuri (1997), a large number of maladjusted foreign employees fail to achieve the envisaged outcomes in their work.

There are various measures of performance with regards to foreign assignments. They include establishing working relationships with the locals. Others include transfer of information and the language and cultural proficiency of the foreign employee (Caligiuri, 1997). The measures are in relation to the benefits of expatriates to the multinational corporation.

Recruitment and Selection Strategy for Apple Inc.’s International Assignments

According to Suutari and Brewster (2000), international assignments entail three discrete phases. The first is the pre-assignment stage. It involves the selection and preparation of employees for deployment.

The second is the ‘actual’ assignment. It involves the ‘actual’ stay of the expatriate in the new country. The last is the post-assignment stage. It is also commonly known as repatriation.

Recruitment and selection of expatriates is a multifaceted process. It takes into account both personal characteristics and interpersonal skills. Caligiuri (1997) postulates that most international organizations use knowledge of company systems and technical competencies in the selection process.

The strategy is the most suitable recruitment and selection criteria for Apple Inc. It is noted that measuring relevant cross-cultural and interpersonal abilities is a difficult task for many organizations. In addition, most expatriate postings rely on personal recommendations.

Such recommendations are derived from either line managers or specialist personnel (Suutari & Brewster, 2000). As such, Apple should rely on the proposed recruitment and selection policy. The strategy would reduce chances of failure in the assigned job.

Staffing Alternatives for Foreign Operations

There are several approaches used in resolving the issue of human resource in relation to international assignments. The strategies include ethnocentric and polycentric staffing approaches. Others are regiocentric and geocentric staffing strategies (Dowling, Welch & Schuler, 2004).

The ethnocentric approach involves filling all the key positions in the organization with local experts. The polycentric approach, on the other hand, proposes the use of host country’s nationals in managing subsidiaries. However, in this approach, key positions in the corporation’s headquarters are held by nationals of the parent country (Dowling et al., 2004).

The regiocentric approach is a mixed staffing strategy. Here, executives are transferred between regions. Operations of the company are divided according to geographical regions.

Apple should adopt the geocentric policy to address its staffing needs. The approach disregards the nationality and location of the candidate. It is appropriate for Apple Inc. since the corporation has a vast international experience and a global structure that is well developed.

Importance of a High Quality Mentoring System for International Assignees

Mentorship refers to a form of developmental relationship. In this case, an experienced employed assists less experienced members of staff in performing their tasks. The mentors can function as guides in the exploration of career interests. They provide support to international assignees deployed by multinational organizations.

Mentoring systems for expatriates can be formal or informal. The former describes established procedures and specified targets. The latter, on the other hand, is initiated whenever the assignees seek advice from their superiors or from external professionals.

A high quality mentoring system is very important to any multinational organization. It determines the success or failure of foreign employees. In most cases, the programs provide the management with an opportunity to support the assignees.

The support is especially important during departure or repatriation phases of the assignment. As such, the programs are powerful means of strategically retaining valuable employees with international experience.

High quality mentoring programs also help the employees to adjust to their new environment. It improves their productivity and overall performance in their new posts.

In addition, the programs provide continuous communication on changes in the company and the state of affairs back at home. As a result, the expatriates can effectively cope with transfers, expatriation, and repatriation.

The current global economic meltdown has led to cost constraints in most organizations. As such, it is important for organizations to have the right people at the right place. High quality mentorship programs are very essential in the management of talent and employees.

To this end, Apple Inc. employees should always have a mentor irrespective of their position in the foreign country. The mentors should supervise the assignee with a view to support their development.

They should assist the new employee for a given period of time. Prior to the assignment, the employee must undergo an extensive pre-departure training. The training will help them settle down in the host country.

Measuring Return on Investment in International Assignments

Every business undertaking requires a mechanism to determine its subsequent return on investment. The same applies to international assignments in multinational organizations. The companies should analyze the profitability or importance of international assignments to the parent organization.

Studies conducted with the aim of measuring return on investment with regards to international human resource have focused on numerical results of foreign deployments. In most cases, the costs and returns associated with the investment are used to determine its profitability (Caligiuri, 1997).

To determine Apple Inc.’s return on investment, one should take into consideration a number of factors. The various aspects of international human resource management would help in assessing the profitability of foreign employees. The factors include identification of the assignment’s purposes, cross-cultural training costs (Dowling et al., 2004), and compensation.

In addition, performance management and repatriation outcomes should be factored in. Calculation of return on investment would eventually be ascertained by analyzing the financial and non-financial costs and benefits of the venture. The costs and benefits are then linked to the expenditure incurred with regards to the assignment.

International human resource management differs with domestic management of employees in several ways. Managing employees at the international level is characterized by different labor markets, varying management practices, and dynamic labor laws. Economic and other cultural barriers make international management of human resource a complex affair.

Managing international employees may differ from one organization to the other. However, according to this author, the underlying principles are similar in all organizations. As a result, effective management of assignees and their related assignments is a major determinant of the success of these international ventures.

Avril, A., & Magnini, V. (2007). A holistic approach to expatriate successes. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 19 (1), 53-64.

Caligiuri, P. (1997). Assessing expatriate success: Beyond just “being there”. New Approaches to Employee Management, 4 (1), 117-140.

Dowling, P., Welch, D., & Schuler, R. (2004). International human resource management: Managing people in a multicultural context (4th ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Southwestern College Publishing.

Katz, J., & Seifer, D. (1996). It is a different world out there: Planning for expatriate success through selection, pre-departure training, and on-site socialization. Human Resource Planning, 19 (2), 32-47.

Suutari, V., & Brewster, C. (2000). Making their own way: International experience through self-initiated foreign assignments. Journal of World Business, 35 (4), 417-436.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, managing global hrm integration in international expansion: the case of geely cross-border acquisition.

Publication date: 31 August 2022

Teaching notes

Learning outcomes.

This case was designed for use at the undergraduate and MBA level in human resource management and international business. Upon completion of the case study discussion and assignments, students will be able to: (1) understand human resource management in multinational corporations and the importance of cross-cultural management and human resource integration in acquisitions; (2) understand the challenges and solutions faced by multinational corporations in the process of expansion; (3) analysis of what characteristics should be considered in CEO selection for managing a newly acquired company; and (4) analyze how to better promote global human resource management from the dimensions of localized HRM system reform and human resource structure reconstruction.

Case overview/synopsis

After a long period of negotiation, exploration, suspension and restart, Geely Group finally acquired 49.9% of the shares of DRB’s Proton Holding and 51% of the shares of the luxury car brand, Lotus Group. On the afternoon of May 24, Geely Holding Group held an acquisition signing ceremony with the Malaysia DRB-HICOM Berhad (hereinafter referred to as DRB). Geely’s commercial territory now extended into Southeast Asia, and its product spectrum increased to luxury sports cars.However, the completion of the acquisition did not mean peace of mind. On the contrary, Geely still faced a series of challenges because of differences in cultural background. The national cultures of the two countries (China and Malaysia) were very different, and so were the values of the two enterprises. Facing the challenges of promoting global human resource integration, Geely needs to make a fundamental decision on the HRM mode in the new-acquired company. Should Geely transplant its own management practice into the Proton, or adopt localized HRM philosophy? Which kind of global HRM practice would be more effective for supporting the new-acquired company developments in the future? In the post-acquisition management, how to better realize the global human resources integration become a key problem faced by Geely.

Complexity academic level

This case was designed for use at the undergraduate and MBA level in human resource management and international business.

Supplementary materials

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

Subject code

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

• Human resource management
• Corporate culture
• Globalization
• Cross-border acquisition
• Global human resource management
• Culture difference
• Localization of HRM
• Auto company

Acknowledgements

Disclaimer. This case is written solely for educational purposes and is not intended to represent successful or unsuccessful managerial decision-making. The author/s may have disguised names; financial and other recognizable information to protect confidentiality.

Xie, Z. , Wei, M. , Ding, X. and Thomson, S.B. (2022), "Managing global HRM integration in international expansion: the case of Geely cross-border acquisition", , Vol. 12 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-10-2021-0362

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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The Global Human Resource Management Casebook

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The third edition of The Global Human Resource Management Casebook provides a wide range of international teaching cases exploring contemporary human resource management (HRM) challenges. Each case focuses primarily on one country and illustrates a critical HRM issue confronting managers and HRM practitioners. This real-world application provides students of HRM with a unique opportunity to examine how key HRM theories and ideas translate into practice.

The case studies emphasize the national and cultural contexts of HRM, providing readers with a global understanding of HRM practices like recruitment, reward systems, diversity, and inclusion, as well as recent developments including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working, sustainability, and digital transformation. In this edition, the editors and authors have made significant updates to reflect recent developments in the field and cover a broader range of countries. The authors also delve into new industries including consulting, energy, healthcare, IT, and education. With 31 international cases followed by further reading and learning resources, this extensive collection is an invaluable resource for any student seeking to explore contemporary HRM on a global basis.

The most pressing challenges of international HR (and how to solve them)

The best strategies for overcoming these common challenges.

PUBLISHED ON

August 18, 2022

As a growing number of companies look to hire internationally, human resource management can quickly become complicated. Several countries, including Italy, Australia, The United Kingdom, Canada, and Indonesia, increased their international hiring rate since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic . As companies look to source employees from a global pool of talent, effective human resource management becomes increasingly important. 

Interested in Oyster but want more information about how the platform works? This product overview should help.

Handling human resource management is always challenging, and adding an international layer only increases the complexity of operations—from maintaining legal compliance to navigating cultural barriers of a diverse team. It’s essential to be informed about the challenges of managing a global workforce before making your first international hire. 

In this article, you’ll learn about the top challenges that international human resource managers can expect and the best strategies to address them. 

International human resource management

International human resource management involves creating strategies for the effective management of employees to benefit an organization. It serves an important role in maximizing the employee experience to improve employee performance and serve broader company objectives. 

International human resource management oversees several important business functions, including:

• Selecting, recruiting, and onboarding global employees;
• Policies for time off, compensation, and benefits;
• Establishing and maintaining company culture;
• Opportunities for professional development and training;
• And the legal compliance of an organization’s human resource policies.

Juggling all the different facets of an employee’s experience is no easy task, and working across borders only adds an extra layer of complication. Anyone tasked with international human resource management must navigate several unique challenges of working at a global scale in a remote environment.

Top international HR challenges

These are the most prominent challenges for managing human resources for international, distributed teams.

Managing different cultures

International teams represent a diversity of cultures. This diversity can be greatly beneficial, offering a dynamic work environment that promotes different perspectives, creative problem solving, and greater employee engagement. 

However, international human resource management departments must overcome several cultural challenges for companies to reap these benefits. HR managers must consider a company’s policies in the context of all the cultures represented by its personnel. 

Building a cohesive company culture becomes more challenging as global teams increase in diversity. For example, language barriers can make it harder for employees to communicate across teams, hindering important opportunities for collaboration. 

Meanwhile, cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings and alienation if not appropriately taken into consideration. Different cultural perspectives can also make it harder to build a set of shared norms and values. Working in a remote environment only amplifies these challenges. 

Overcoming distance

International human resource managers must also consider the geographic constraints of managing a global team. Setting regular meetings and promoting inter-team collaboration across international borders creates its own set of challenges. 

Companies need to leverage their resources and technologies to overcome time zone differences , foster relationships, and offer consistent professional development opportunities to unite their global workforce. 

Geographic distance can also create disparities in access to leadership. For example, HR managers must consider how a company’s high-level strategy is shared and communicated with everyone if the C-suite executives are all based in one region or country.

Ensuring legal compliance

International teams must remain compliant with all the local labor laws and regulations of the countries represented in their workforce. Local culture plays an important role in dictating legal labor requirements and norms. 

Navigating these different requirements while building cohesive company-wide policies is an important challenge for international HR managers. 

Legal compliance is an ongoing area of development as local laws can change from year to year whenever new legislation is passed. International HR managers must be able to keep up with these changes and adapt as needed. Lack of awareness or training can lead companies to violate regulations by accident—a financially and reputationally costly mistake. 

Ways to address the most pressing international HR challenges

Companies must develop strategies to overcome these challenges in order to remain legally compliant and attract top talent globally. 

Remain up to date on local laws

Before hiring employees in a new country, set aside time to research the local and federal labor laws. This will ensure you are aware of any adjustments you may need to make to company policies before you onboard any new employees.

Staying ahead of the curve with legal compliance will reduce stress by a lot and pay off in the long run. Make sure to audit legal requirements to keep track of any changes that need to be made. 

Develop comprehensive training programs for employees

When employees come from different countries, there can be variations in skill and training that creates talent gaps across different offices or teams. Building a strong training program will level the playing field across borders, ensuring that all employees have access to the resources they need to be successful. 

A well-built training program begins during onboarding. During the first few weeks, companies should make sure all new hires are aligned on the company’s values, vision, and goals. 

Cultural training should take place early on and continue throughout an employee’s tenure to promote and facilitate inter-country collaboration. These trainings should educate employees on cultural differences, business etiquette, and boundaries they should consider when engaging with colleagues from other countries. Where applicable, companies can also provide resources to encourage language learning. 

Training can take place in person or virtually. Both formats offer their own set of benefits and challenges, so companies may also consider implementing a hybrid model. Offering different methods of training can cater to a diverse range of learning styles. Regardless, training programs should be interactive and engaging to be the most effective.

Providing the opportunity for ongoing training and skill development can increase employee retention. It can also attract top talent that are able to adapt to an evolving remote work environment. 

Maintain open lines of communication

In remote work environments, managers and leadership must take a proactive approach to fostering communication and building connections between team members. For international teams, it is also important to consider cultural differences that can impact communication styles.

There are many online resources and tools to foster collaboration across borders. For example, video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meets offer the ability to create face-to-face interaction in a remote work environment. Video calls provide the chance for employees to exchange non-verbal cues which can help build rapport. 

One significant challenge that remote employees face is isolation. Companies can proactively address this by offering time for employees to engage with each other in a live format. These efforts will be especially appreciated by extroverted employees that need this interaction to feel connected and productive. 

Project management tools, like Asana, and communication tools, like Slack, are equally important for promoting cross-team collaboration. They provide company-wide visibility into projects and conversations that impact multiple departments. Messaging platforms can also create a virtual office environment for casual “water cooler” conversations, offering a sense of spontaneity in employee interactions. 

Communication efforts can also overcome hierarchical barriers. Leadership should actively engage across departments and levels to foster connections and improve awareness of issues that impact their organization. Virtual Q&A sessions offer a formal way to address questions that many people may have, while 1:1s can offer a more personal way to engage with and mentor employees.

You may also consider the role of in-person events and activities. Even in a remote work environment, many companies choose to bring team members together during retreats or conferences. Depending on the size and geographic distribution of your company, this could include everyone or be team- or region-specific.

Receive regular feedback

Collecting employee feedback is the best way to evaluate your company’s HR policies and identify areas for improvement before they snowball into much larger, systemic issues. Surveys, polls, and 1:1s are effective ways to collect this information and should be leveraged to collect different types of feedback. 

Global HR managers should look to identify trends across geographic boundaries. Are there certain issues that impact employees in one region or country more than others? By adopting a geographic lens to evaluate data, companies can proactively address disparities in employee training and engagement.

The best way to receive continuous feedback is by promoting an open-door policy that encourages employees to bring up issues as they arise. Let employees know that it is ok to ask for help and show them that the company can and will offer needed support. By doing so, you can identify and resolve issues quickly. 

International human resource management 

When hiring internationally, you need to have a plan in place to create a work environment that supports remote work while remaining compliant with local legal requirements. All the added challenges can be overcome with some planning, and these efforts will benefit your company in the long run. 

About Oyster

Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.

Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.

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International HRM Case Study

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International HRM insights for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for future research and practice

• Published: 02 June 2020
• Volume 51 , pages 697–713, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• Paula Caligiuri 1 ,
• Helen De Cieri 2 ,
• Dana Minbaeva 3 ,
• Alain Verbeke 4 , 5 , 6 &
• Angelika Zimmermann 7  

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We show the relevance of extant international business (IB) research, and more specifically work on international human resources management (IHRM), to address COVID-19 pandemic challenges. Decision-makers in multinational enterprises have undertaken various types of actions to alleviate the impacts of the pandemic. In most cases these actions relate in some way to managing distance and to rethinking boundaries, whether at the macro- or firm-levels. Managing distance and rethinking boundaries have been the primary focus of much IB research since the IB field was established as a legitimate area of academic inquiry. The pandemic has led to increased cross-border distance problems (e.g., as the result of travel bans and reduced international mobility), and often also to new intra-firm distancing challenges imposed upon previously co-located employees. Prior IHRM research has highlighted the difficulties presented by distance, in terms of employee selection, training, support, health and safety, as well as leadership and virtual collaboration. Much of this thinking is applicable to solve pandemic-related distance challenges. The present, extreme cases of requisite physical distancing need not imply equivalent increases in psychological distance, and also offer firms some insight into the unanticipated benefits of a virtual workforce – a type of workforce that, quite possibly, will influence the ‘new normal’ of the post-COVID world. Extant IHRM research does offer actionable insight for today, but outstanding knowledge gaps remain. Looking ahead, we offer three domains for future IHRM research: managing under uncertainty, facilitating international and even global work, and redefining organizational performance.

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Introduction

COVID-19 altered every person’s reality overnight. Individuals, cities, economies, countries, and continents have experienced the shock of lockdown and the fear of unknowing. Managers have had to make many decisions in a very short period of time – decisions about who should stay at work and who should go home; how and where people could be moved into digital space; and what the priorities are and how those priorities can best be communicated to employees. In 2019, Ernst & Young surveyed 500 board members and chief executive officers (CEOs) globally and found that only 20% of the executives surveyed believed their companies were prepared to respond to a large adverse risk (EY, 2020 ). A few short months later, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis arrived and proved that their concerns were well founded. Concerns related to global supply chain vulnerabilities and financial resilience have come to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with significant strategic human talent concerns. BCG has called the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic a “people-based crisis.” We agree.

The Economist noted that just as the financial crisis in 2007–2009 highlighted the role of talented Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the role of Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs). They wrote:

“When the financial crisis rocked the business world in 2007–2009, boardrooms turned to corporate finance chiefs. A good CFO could save a company; a bad one might bury it. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a different challenge – and highlights the role of another corporate function, often unfairly dismissed as soft. Never before have more firms needed a hard-headed HR boss. The duties of chief people officers, as human-resources heads are sometimes called, look critical right now. They must keep employees healthy; maintain their morale; oversee a vast remote-working experiment; and, as firms retrench, consider whether, when and how to lay workers off. Their in-trays are bulging.” (The Economist, March 24th, 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed a massive number of employees, who were already facing stress from the health risk itself, to working from home. Compounding this stressor, many managers are now leading remote teams for the first time. This sudden change has exacerbated the challenges of collaborating and leading from a distance, challenges we in the field of international business (IB) understand well, but that have remained largely unaddressed in management practice. In 2018, RW3 surveyed 1620 employees from 90 countries regarding their experiences working on ‘global virtual teams’ in multinational enterprises (MNEs). While most of the respondents identified their work on global virtual teams as important for job success, only 22% received training on how best to work in their geographically distributed teams, 90% of which had two or more cultures represented. The picture is not much better at the leadership level. Among the virtual team leaders, only 15% described themselves as “very effective” with less than 20% receiving training on how to lead from a distance (RW3, 2018 ).

The field of IB has long accounted for the challenges associated with significant global threats and issues concerning geographical distance. From the lens of IB generally, and international human resource management (IHRM) specifically, we can recast the issues emerging from the current COVID-19 pandemic in terms of the existing academic knowledge base. By holding up this theoretical mirror, we can more clearly see the issues and offer insights to MNE managers facing challenges in leading their people through this crisis. In this Editorial, we will distil the knowledge and experience IB scholars, and more specifically IHRM, have accumulated over recent decades to offer some key learnings on managing people from a distance. Our accumulated body of knowledge in IHRM has helped us understand the challenges people face when placed in a wide range of MNE work arrangements, such as expatriate assignments, virtual international work, global project teams, and frequent international travel (Shaffer, Kraimer, Chen & Bolino, 2012 ). This academic knowledge is particularly useful for human resource managers today, as they face new challenges and difficult decisions during this pandemic.

The purpose of this Editorial is not to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature; rather, the goal is to select a few key themes and opportunities for ‘quick wins’ that could be immediately applied in MNE managerial practice. At the end of this Editorial, we go back to the academic literature and offer suggestions for future research in IHRM. These suggestions represent the topics where practice would be better served from a deeper knowledge base. Thus, our suggestions for future research in IHRM relate to the broader gaps in the IB literature that, if filled, could help answering the next ‘big questions’ in IB (Buckley, Doh, & Benischke, 2017 ).

Handling the COVID-19 crisis

Insights from ihrm’s selection, training, and employee support literature.

The field of IHRM has long understood that when employees are in novel or uncertain contexts, they experience stress (Anderzén & Arnetz, 1997 ; Richards, 1996 ; Stahl & Caligiuri, 2005 ). To respond to such stress, employees leverage their dispositional traits and coping responses (Shaffer, Harrison, Gregersen, Black, & Ferzandi, 2006 ; Stahl & Caligiuri, 2005 ). Stress affects employees’ ability to empathize with others, consider plausible alternatives, remain open-minded, engage in cognitively challenging tasks, and expand one’s experiences to learn and grow. As the literature suggests, when individuals encounter periods of stress and anxiety, they have a tendency to seek out and find comfort in the familiar, the people, places, and even food that are the most predictable; this is the reason there are expatriate communities, demographic faultlines, and comfort food in every culture around the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced tremendous novelty and uncertainty which is affecting the mental health of many people around the world (World Health Organization, 2020 ). Even as the health risks of the pandemic begin to wane in some countries and the probability of a vaccine appears high, the novel ways of working remotely and the fears around the global recession will continue to produce a state of uncertainty. In their stress-induced, cognitively reduced state, employees will have a particularly difficult time working effectively in different countries and with people from different cultures, especially in instances of high unfamiliarity. There is not enough bandwidth, so to speak, for even greater novelty and more uncertainty. Based on knowledge from the IHRM literature, a number of selection, training, and support practices can positively mitigate the concerns at hand.

IHRM has taught us that some people are naturally better than others at managing stress and uncertainty, enabling them to make better decisions and work more effectively across countries and cultures (Shaffer et al., 2006 ). Employees with a higher tolerance of ambiguity are less likely to experience the negative effects of stress caused by working in a context with greater uncertainty (Frone, 1990 ). Employees with resilience not only bounce back after stressful situations but also find positive meaning from them (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004 ). Likewise, employees with natural curiosity can adapt better to novel situations, thrive in situations of anxiety and uncertainty, and be more creative and open-minded (Hagtvedt, Dossinger, Harrison, & Huang, 2019 ; Kashdan, Sherman, Yarbro, & Funder, 2013 ).

During this period of global stress and uncertainty, organizations (and especially MNEs) should select for these three critical, cultural agility competencies: tolerance for ambiguity, resilience, and curiosity for all employees working multiculturally. Employees working, even virtually, with clients, vendors, or colleagues from different cultures will now, more than ever, need these competencies to be effective. Selection is key. Companies can also use this time to better assess their bench strength for culturally agile talent in order to understand who will be most effective in situations of growing novelty and uncertainty.

Research suggests that a state of anxiety fosters a natural desire for affiliation (Sarnoff & Zimbardo, 1961 ; Schachter, 1959 ), especially amongst those who are living the same anxiety-inducing experience (Gump & Kulik, 1997 ; Schachter, 1959 ). For global teams in MNEs that have existing familiarity, the COVID-19 pandemic offers an ideal time to foster cross-cultural team cohesion and to validate expectations of reliability since the health-related stress is present everywhere in the world. Training to support relationship formation would be well-received at this time when every team member, irrespective of country, is experiencing a similar stressor. The shared stress, anxiety, and frustrations can create ties that further bind already collegial global teams. This shared experience has the potential to enhance cohesion going forward.

For the many team members who have not yet received cross-cultural training on relationship formation across borders, any lessons learned through training, (if offered today) would land on fertile soil, because team members already have a shared “enemy” in COVID-19. This cross-cultural training in MNEs would help reduce ambiguity for cross-cultural differences by offering skill-building on how to collaborate across cultures; how to actively seek similarities with colleagues from different cultures; how to use technology inclusively; how to set team-level ground rules for communication and work-flow, and the like. This training could also help colleagues from different cultures become mindful of situations where they might be rushing to judgement because of their “reduced bandwidth” state. It could also teach them how to add respectful questioning into cross-cultural work groups to thwart the negative aspects of stereotypes.

Just as the shared stressful experience among colleagues can facilitate their emotional bonding, there are other HRM practices that would land well if offered in this current COVID-19 climate. For example, employees’ need for professional growth is likely to strengthen many employees’ desire to receive additional training. The psychology literature offers substantial evidence that one of our fundamental human motivators is the need for competence (Deci, Olafsen, & Ryan, 2017 ). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of professional stimulation while working from home is fostering more self-directed knowledge-seeking to satisfy the need to learn, grow, and demonstrate competence. For example, LinkedIn Learning courses have seen a threefold increase in usage since the start of stay-at-home orders (Forbes, 2020 ). With a growing interest in self-directed learning, companies should actively harness this time to invest in the skill development of employees. At a time when employees’ desire to learn, grow, and demonstrate competence is heightened, companies that offer access to, or reimburse, employees’ online training achieve a clear win–win; they increase talent capability and, concurrently, foster employee motivation.

In IHRM, we understand how an individual’s comfort or fit within a given environment can affect their success, and also that organizational support can positively affect adjustment in a novel environment (Takeuchi, Wang, Marinova, & Yao, 2009 ). Those who work on global cross-national teams in MNEs face health risks due to requirements to operate across time zones, with flexible schedules, and expectations of availability around the clock (Lirio, 2017 ). In the ambiguity of both global work and current COVID-19 pandemic, the issues for which support is needed will vary depending on the person’s work-life issues, but organizational support remains critical (Kraimer, Wayne, & Jaworski, 2001 ; Shaffer, Harrison, & Gilley, 1999 ). Companies should offer support practices to help mitigate stress such as webinars on resilience, tutorials on mindfulness (De Cieri, Shea, Cooper, and Oldenburg, 2019 ), employee assistance programs, and virtual counseling services. These stress-mitigating offerings would be particularly helpful for employees who engage in virtual work at the international level, as they face additional stress.

The world is experiencing a collective state of stress, but the global economy will not pause for employees requiring time to be ready to come out of their comfort zone to work again in different countries and with people from different cultures. More than ever, human resources managers in MNEs need to foster cohesion during this time of uncertainty by using the above selection, training, and support practices.

Insights from IHRM’s Management of Health and Safety

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought health and safety issues to center stage and has placed a spotlight on the role of the HRM function in managing the health and safety of the international workforce. While management researchers already know well that employees’ health and safety are linked to the demands (such as a heavy workload) and resources (such as a supportive manager) at work, the international HRM field offers specific learnings about managing health and safety for a spatially dispersed and mobile workforce. In IHRM, we understand the challenges of protecting employees, and their families, from injury and illness across national boundaries and in different work arrangements (Gannon & Paraskevas, 2019 ; Shaffer et al., 2012 ). Research in IHRM, alongside scholarship in fields such as health and psychology, has shown that globally mobile employees face specific job demands that can affect their health and safety (Anderzén & Arnetz, 1997 ; Druckman, Harber, Liu, & Quigley, 2014 ). Frequent travel, high workloads, long work hours, and job pressure lead to negative health consequences (Bader, 2015 ) and also negatively affect psychological well-being and family relationships (Jensen & Knudsen, 2017 ). We also know, however, that globally mobile work can be stimulating and rewarding in many positive ways (Ren, Yunlu, Shaffer, & Fodchuck, 2015 ).

During the pandemic, life has changed a lot for many who were international business travelers and globally mobile employees in MNEs; their current “grounding” may mean they are experiencing a sense of loss. Their frequent travel, hotel accommodation, and business dinners have been replaced by stay-at-home restrictions and virtual meetings. The stress caused by the demands of virtual global work is real; many employees are experiencing long work hours to accommodate time zones and performance challenges in less than ideal remote working conditions. These tangible work challenges all occur with the backdrop of job insecurity and future economic uncertainty. The changed work conditions during the pandemic present new challenges for employees’ health and safety.

Communication and support for health and safety

IHRM activities such as international family relocations provide a knowledge base that is of particular value in the pandemic because IHRM is more likely than other functional areas in the MNE or domestic HRM to deal with the interface between employees’ professional and private lives (Mayerhofer, Müller, & Schmidt, 2010 ). We know that understanding work-related demands and resources is important for all managers, and particularly for HR professionals, to support and maintain employees’ health and safety. Clear and consistent communication from managers and HR about health risks and available health resources is important. Research on managing expatriate assignments in MNEs shows that communication and support from managers is an important buffer against job stress experienced by employees (Kraimer, Bolino, & Mead, 2016 ; Stroppa & Spiess, 2011 ). This knowledge can be applied to the pandemic situation of working from home. For some people, social isolation as well as uncertainty about their health, job, and future will have a negative impact on their mental health. Any stigma linked to mental health might prevent some employees from seeking help, and MNE senior managers should therefore communicate with empathy, encourage wellness resources, and offer practical support for employees’ health and safety.

Flexible work arrangements

Many managers will be familiar with flexible work arrangements (FWAs) that formalize where, when, and how employees do their work (Chen & Fulmer, 2018 ). FWAs, such as flexible scheduling of work and working from home, have been shown to deliver positive benefits for employees’ health (e.g., Anderson, Kaplan & Vega, 2015 ). IHRM has unique insights into FWAs; for example, people working in global teams are accustomed to working from home and outside standard business hours. IHRM research has highlighted the importance of practices such as FWAs that help MNE employees to maintain their health and wellbeing to cope with the demands of working across geographical and temporal boundaries (Adamovic, 2018 ).

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many MNEs have been forced to rely on one type of FWA: employees working from home. This is a new challenge for many, including IHRM scholars and practitioners. A survey conducted with 800 global HR executives in March 2020 found that 88% of organizations had either encouraged or required employees to work from home during the COVID-19 crisis (Gartner, 2020 ). Because this shift has been involuntary, continues over a lengthy period, and requires entire households to be house-bound, there is more potential for employees to experience increased work hours, as well as increased work-life conflict. For employees who were globally mobile, and now find themselves working from home during the pandemic, the shift is particularly significant and borders between work and family may require re-negotiation and re-organization.

There are several specific ways by which managers and HR can help their employees to work from home in a safe and healthy manner. There are many simple and cost-effective ways to encourage healthy lifestyle habits. For example, encouraging healthy work practices such as working within regular hours and taking regular work-breaks will help employees to switch off from work (Adamovic, 2018 ; Chen & Fulmer, 2018 ). Communicating clearly and managing work expectations will help employees to maintain their family responsibilities. The pandemic offers an opportunity for managers to explore how to implement flexible work arrangements that can enhance the health and safety of employees well into the future, particularly that of globally mobile employees.

Over a decade ago, Collings, Scullion and Morley ( 2007 ) identified health and safety as an important area of IHRM practice and pointed out the implications of employee ill-health for organizational performance as well as for the employee and their family. Applying the insights from IHRM to the pandemic situation, managers should give priority to protecting and managing employee health and safety now and in the future. Overall, our goal for employees is not only to protect and manage their health and safety but to enhance positive outcomes such as thriving and engagement with their work.

Insights from International Leadership in MNEs

During this pandemic, leaders in MNEs have needed to make swift decisions with far-reaching consequences, communicate effectively to diverse stakeholders, manage resources judiciously, integrate organizational and local demands, and inspire expectations of reliability via authenticity. The competencies needed for leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic in general are mirroring the competencies of effective leaders in MNEs because the uncertainty, ambiguity, and importance of context are present in both leadership situations.

Those MNE leaders who succeed in situations of novelty typically command three cultural-agility related responses that they can leverage like tools in a toolbox (Caligiuri, 2012 ; Caligiuri & Tarique, 2016 ). First, they have the skills to adapt to the demands of the context when needed, relying on those familiar with the local context to influence key decisions. Second, they know how to integrate diverse perspectives and demands; even when the demands are conflicting, they can work to find an integrated solution. Third, they know when to provide direction , even if it is not welcome or popular. A leader’s ability to read the demands of the situation and respond, as needed, using the appropriate response out of the three alternatives above, are proving to be especially relevant during the pandemic.

Whether leaders in MNEs adapt to the demands of a situation by wearing a face mask in public during the COVID-19 pandemic, or follow to the tee other local public health recommendations affecting organizational functioning, they are acknowledging that they understand, appreciate, and are willing to abide by the norms of the situation. In some situations (but not all) adapting to the norms of the context will enable leaders to persuade, instill confidence, and influence those whose value system fosters certain behavioral expectations.

Integration

In some circumstances, adaptation is the wrong approach and MNE leaders need to integrate multiple, sometimes conflicting, perspectives to create a course of action. Leaders in MNEs do this when they integrate the cultures represented on their geographically distributed teams. During the COVID-19 crisis we are observing highly effective leaders use the same approach, balancing health demands to protect employees with urgent, firm-level requirements for economic performance.

In other situations, neither adaptation nor integration is the correct approach. In some cases, a leader will need to decide and “stick by it” – even when the decision is unwelcome or unpopular. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw this when business leaders quickly shifted operations, and made difficult decisions to close facilities, lay-off workers, or alter supply chains. In the international leadership context, we see this response used frequently in decisions involving safety standards, codes of conduct, quality standards, fiscal controls, corporate values, and codes of ethics.

During this COVID-19 crisis, we can observe a number of highly effective leaders, setting clear direction, and using their transparency and authenticity to effectively communicate the chosen course of action. These leaders are also acknowledging and communicating the trade-offs necessary to create plans that are responsive to public health concerns and economic imperatives. The ability to use effectively each of the three above responses is a hallmark of good leadership in complex MNEs. The leaders able to navigate the tensions among these three possible responses during the pandemic will likely also be the best MNE leaders going forward.

Insights from the Literature on Virtual International Collaboration

More suddenly and widely than ever experienced before, the COVID-19 crisis has moved collaborative work into the virtual sphere. Large sections of society now find themselves relying exclusively on virtual communication media to complete collaborative tasks. IHRM research teaches us a lot on how managers should support virtual collaborations to facilitate success during the current crisis and beyond. We do not know how long this virtual set-up, spanning the entire world will need to last, but now is a good time for managers to learn from mistakes or at least imperfections in this realm, and to strengthen the quality of virtual work for the future.

The current crisis sheds light on challenges of virtual collaboration that confirm long-standing research insights. For those who had not built strong working relationships before the crisis, working and managing at a distance and through virtual communication media has made it hard to maintain (and even more so to build) strong social ties and networks (Hansen & Lovas, 2004 ), realistic expectations of reliability (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006 ) and a team identity (Maznevski, Davison, & Jonsen, 2006 ), thus impeding a common understanding of norms, goals and tasks as well as effective communication and knowledge sharing (Cramton, 2001 ; Fulk, Monge, & Hollingshead, 2005 ). Research on global teams tells us that these challenges are amplified when working internationally in MNEs, where boundaries must be crossed between countries, regions, cultures, institutional contexts, firms, and firm units (see Zimmermann, 2011 ).

As we know from research in IHRM and other disciplines, virtual work also has potential benefits. It can, for example, attenuate the effects of obvious cultural differences in demeanors, reduce misunderstandings due to verbal language struggles and accents, create electronic trails that document decision making processes, and save on meeting time. Moreover, geographic distance is not always a measure of psychological distance, as virtual team members who communicate frequently and share a professional or personal identity can even feel closer to each other than people collaborating face-to-face (O’Leary, Wilson, & Metiu, 2014 ).

In the current crisis, managers have an exceptional opportunity to learn, or refine means of mitigating the challenges and realizing the potential of virtual working, which may not have been obvious before, in spite of much past work advocating the benefits of the virtual workplace (Illegems & Verbeke, 2003 ; Verbeke, Schulz, Greidanus, & Hambley, 2008 ). One prerequisite is to match the type of information and communications technology (ICT) with the focal task (Malhotra & Majchrzak, 2014 ). For example, asynchronous virtual communication can be most efficient for information gathering whilst regular face-to-face meetings (or in the current situation videoconferences) should be reserved for tasks such as problem solving and comprehensive decision-making that requires synchronous interactions (Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000 ).

Managers can further support effective virtual working through each stage of the human resource management process (Zimmermann, 2018 ). The requirement of working over distances should be included in job advertisement and assessment centers, not just for managers but also for technical staff, to attract and select employees who regard this as part of their professional identity (Zimmermann & Ravishankar, 2011 ). After recruitment, skills of virtual collaboration can be developed through formal training that covers ICT as well as intercultural knowledge and experiential exercises (Li, Mobley, & Kelly, 2013 ; Sit, Mak, & Heill, 2017 ). As mentioned, cross-cultural training is important for those who work virtually across countries, supporting cross-cultural relationship formation and teamworking skills. On the job, new recruits can early on be given the opportunity to work on virtual teams and visit remote offices to develop an awareness of different cultural and organizational contexts that may cause misunderstandings in the virtual collaboration. Rotational assignments and short-term projects abroad serve to enhance the collaboration in global virtual teams by allowing members to develop a better shared understanding of their tasks, goals, and social norms, and to build stronger social ties and a shared team identity (Zimmermann, 2018 ). For this purpose, the organizational design must allow for the movement of staff in all geographic directions.

Research on virtual collaboration also suggests what measures managers can take to alleviate obstacles to virtual work; to create a more positive work experience for employees; and to increase employees’ motivation to make good on their commitments in the team and the firm. First, managers can facilitate perceived proximity, by allowing employees to communicate frequently and share personal information with remote colleagues, including social media, to help identify personal similarities and to develop stronger relationships (O’Leary et al., 2014 ). Shared understanding, in turn, must be supported by defining strong shared goals, a clear communication structure, interaction rules, and team member roles (e.g. Earley & Peterson, 2004 ). To give virtual working skills the attention they deserve, managers should also include employees’ effort in virtual communication and teamwork as criteria for employee performance appraisals. The process of virtual working, not just its outcomes, should thus become relevant for rewards and promotion.

Research on MNE headquarters-subsidiary settings alerts us to additional challenges in managing virtual collaborations. In MNEs, employees at headquarters and subsidiaries often compete for interesting tasks and career prospects. Rather than prioritizing headquarters’ employees, senior MNE managers need to create a ‘combined career pyramid’ which balances the career aspirations of headquarters and subsidiary employees. This will help not only to motivate and commit employees at different locations, but also to break down collaboration barriers. For example, in offshoring settings, distributing widely the more attractive tasks and career paths across sites may help alleviate headquarters employees’ fears of contributing to the ‘offshoring’ of their own jobs. The wide distribution of attractive tasks and career paths will make them more willing to provide support to offshore colleagues, which can in turn reinforce offshore employees’ work motivation and affective and continuance commitment (Zimmermann & Ravishankar, 2016 ). Importantly, HR and general managers in the different MNE sites need to work together rather than in silos, so to co-design career paths and achieve better virtual collaboration.

In sum, research on virtual collaborations can teach managers much on how to handle the challenges and reap the benefits of collaborating at a distance, which the COVID-19 crisis has brought to the fore. To cope with virtual collaboration on a large-scale during this crisis, managers must develop and reward employees’ virtual collaboration skills, foster perceived proximity, and design ICT, work goals, and the communication structure in a way to foster collaboration. If managers now use the opportunity to take on these insights, they can build their firm’s capability of virtual working for the future. In the long run, virtual collaboration skills will become a more important part of employees’ professional identity. In an international setting, this also implies that managers in different MNE subsidiaries will need to collaborate to design career paths that balance the aspirations of employees at different sites and foster their motivation to work with each other.

Insights from Global Talent Management

The COVID-19 crisis has stretched organizational resources and has accentuated key organizational capabilities. The crisis has exposed ‘holes’ in supposed core competencies, both at the individual and collective levels, but it has also revealed new talents. In our conversations with managers 1 we consistently heard the message of some surprising performances, emerging stars, or someone who really showed their new side. These stars are not the usual, more gregarious, employees, but those who tend to be more reserved. This, more introverted group of employees now feels comfortable suggesting new ideas and proposals in the format of virtual meetings (see the benefits of virtual collaboration described in the previous section). The crisis had pushed MNEs to reconsider the key question as to whether they have the right people in the right places. Extant research on Global Talent Management (GTM) has become particularly salient in answering this question. In GTM we have long been arguing the necessity of establishing a differentiated HR architecture for managing talent globally (Minbaeva & Collings, 2013 ), starting with two key decisions around strategic positions and talent pool.

Strategic positions

The key point of departure is the focus on strategic positions (Becker & Huselid, 2006 ), especially those organizational roles that can have an above-average impact (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007 ). As Minbaeva and Collings ( 2013 ) explain, such positions: (1) relate to company strategy and have a direct impact on the effectiveness of strategy implementation; (2) exhibit high variability in the quality of the work completed by the various people occupying these positions; and (3) require unique, firm-specific know-how, tacit knowledge and industry experience that cannot be easily found in the external labor market (see also Evans, Pucik, & Björkman, 2011 ).

Becker et al. ( 2009 : 51) further explain that the process of identifying strategic positions begins with “the development of a clear statement of the firm’s strategic choice (how will we compete?) as well as the firm’s strategic capabilities (what must we do exceptionally well to win?).” The answers to these questions will be different after the crisis for each MNE. Hence, what are considered strategic positions must be re-evaluated. In doing so, managers may still be guided by the second and third elements listed above (high variability in performance and unique, firm-specific know how), but the first element may need to be reconsidered. In defining strategic positions, now and in the post-Corona crisis, the emphasis needs to shift from a static and reactive strategy implementation role towards a more agile understanding of positions that have a direct impact on how fast the company can change its direction and adapt to new situations.

Notably, the strategic positions will seldom be at the top of the MNE hierarchy. According to Mark Huselid: “the sorting and selection process used to choose senior executives is very extensive. Each step of this process is based on a variance-reduction system in which poor performers are sorted out or developed into good performers. However, at the bottom and middle of the organization, such variability can still exist.” 2 Again, the COVID-19 crisis revealed some unexpected and surprisingly key, pivotal positions.

Talent pool

In GTM, the next step entails the creation of a pool of high-potential talents who can occupy the strategically important positions (see for example Björkman, Ehrnrooth, Mäkelä, Smale, & Sumelius, 2013 ; Collings, Mellahi, & Cascio, 2019 ). Usually, nomination decisions are made by representatives of MNE subsidiaries or sub-units, and based on a combination of data on individuals’ competencies, past performance, and development potential (Fernandez-Araoz, Roscoe & Aramaki, 2017 ). In the future, the evaluation of potential should also include cultural agility competences as highlighted above: tolerance for ambiguity, resilience, and curiosity.

In the context of the current crisis, the talent pool is changing, expanding and being reconfigured. Handling the crisis has become an overnight stretch assignment and employees’ response to this stretch assignment has changed many MNEs’ perceptions of their talent pool. With the additional information on how well employees handled the crisis, variance across strategic positions has increased. 3 The current situation will test all previous decisions regarding the leadership pipeline and talent management such that, on the other side of the crisis, the high-potential pool may well consist of a different group of employees.

Prior research has shown the potential correlation between personalities and nominations to the talent pool. For example, Caligiuri ( 2006 ) has explained how different personality traits (e.g., extroversion) may be favored in global settings. Mellahi and Collings ( 2010 ) have argued that social and geographical distances may lead talented employees in foreign MNE subsidiaries to be in “blind spots” because they are less visible. In contrast, talent located at the headquarters may be more visible to – and more valued by – key decision makers in the MNE. The virtual reality imposed by COVID-19 has had a levelling effect. Introverts have been given an equal chance to participate in the virtual interactions and discussions. Everyone, regardless of location, has had equal access to decision-makers in virtual meetings, and has had an equal opportunity to contribute. The work reality fostered by the COVID-19 pandemic has helped to supersede structural, geographic, and social barriers that previously limited talent management decisions.

In sum, the insights from GTM are especially relevant for companies during the crisis period, and they will be even more relevant in the next stage – the Restart. 4 The crisis has redefined not just where we work but has altered the work we do and how we do it. 5 To succeed in the next ‘new normal’, MNE senior managers will need to revisit the prevailing definition of talent and their understanding how economic value is created.

Implications for IHRM research: looking beyond the pandemic

In the first part of this Editorial, we have drawn attention to several key insights from IHRM scholarship that provide the foundation for understanding, interpreting, and addressing COVID-19 related workplace challenges. The insights we have outlined could serve to guide senior MNE managers in HRM and beyond as they address novel, people-related challenges in their organizations. However, the pandemic has also highlighted some gaps in our research: answers to questions we wish we had in the academic literature but, to date, do not.

This section of our Editorial turns to recommendations for future IHRM scholarship in the post-pandemic reality. We think that novel and multidisciplinary research will be needed to address the context, processes, and outcomes of work post-pandemic. Below we focus especially on suggestions for research on: (1) how to manage with global uncertainty; (2) how to facilitate global work; and (3) how to redefine organizational performance.

Managing with Global Uncertainty

The concept of volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments has been recognized for some time (Schoemaker, Heaton, & Teece, 2018 ; Van Tulder, Verbeke, & Jankowska, 2019 ), yet the health and economic crises resulting from COVID-19 have given the concept further significance. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed extraordinary vulnerabilities arising from widespread global uncertainty. Uncertainty is no longer the context experienced by just senior MNE leaders involved in managing complex global supply chains, volatile financial markets, and unpredictable geopolitical relationships. Rather, uncertainty has become the context for numerous MNE employees who are working from home for the first time, experiencing job instability and financial insecurity, and worrying about their and their loved ones’ health and safety.

The context, as we know in IHRM, sets an important boundary condition in understanding the efficacy of our theories (e.g., Brewster, Mayrhofer & Smale, 2016 ; Cooke, 2018 ; Cooke, Wood, Wang, & Veen, 2020 ) and this context of uncertainty, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, cannot be ignored. Our view is that IHRM should explore new avenues of managing global uncertainty and that it can thereby contribute to answering some of the ‘big questions’ in IB (Buckley et al., 2017 ). While the context of uncertainty has created opportunities for many streams of IB research, we would like to focus on three key ones: leadership and talent management, collaborating under stress, and managing health and safety.

Leadership and talent management

The United States War College was the first institution to coin the term VUCA. For decades, military institutions globally have been developing leaders who could lead through a VUCA reality. Partnering with scholars from the military, future research in IB could advance how leadership styles and behaviors might need to vary during situations of high uncertainty, and how specific interventions might lead to vastly improved outcomes (Adler, Bliese, McGurk, Hoge, & Castro, 2009 ). This could be especially important when the high uncertainty context creates an emotional fear response, as we saw with some employees who were forced to work without adequate protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. If employees are sensing true fear, a leader’s role would be to help employees process the context, allowing the rational response to supplant the emotional response. Universally effective leadership skills might be in play during fear-inducing situations. However, given that both Geert Hofstede and the GLOBE study identified “uncertainty avoidance” as a primary cultural difference, culturally bound leadership styles might be warranted for situations of high uncertainty and fear. Future research should examine this further.

In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, members on a global team might be experiencing the same tangible level of uncertainty but might have vastly different reactions. Just as uncertainty might be experienced differently across cultures, so might the responses to fear, stress, and anxiety. Thus, future research should examine whether global leaders are able to identify (and respond effectively) across cultures. For example, the same leadership communication to address employees’ uncertainty might have differentially effective responses, depending on their cross-cultural context. IB scholars could partner with scholars in neuroscience to understand differences in cross-cultural emotional responses and how to recognize and address these in an international business context.

The ever-growing global uncertainty shapes assumptions beyond talent management, especially with respect to the choice of selection and performance criteria for an MNE’s talent pool. Despite recent advances in recognizing the importance of context (Vaiman, Sparrow, Schuler & Collings, 2018 ), the GTM research assumes that what makes talent a talent is universal across cultures and homogeneous for all MNE units. Contrary to this, Morris, Snell, & Björkman ( 2016 ) identified four types of human capital underlying the talent portfolio of MNEs and explained that different configurations of the talent portfolio tend to be emphasized in different contexts. Future research should examine whether different configurations of the talent portfolio should be emphasized in the context of global uncertainty, and whether different types of human capital could contribute differently to organizational resilience (see next section). In addition, as Minbaeva ( 2016 ) points out, what constitutes ‘talent’ in the fluid context of emerging economies and developing countries differs significantly from the definition of ‘talent’ in the (comparatively) stable environment of developed economies. Following the traditions of extreme context research (Hällgren, Rouleau & de Rond, 2018 ), GTM research needs to revisit its assumption that internal MNE talent systems function in a globally uniform way, using a single, standardized understanding of what good performance and high potential entail.

Collaborating under stress

The COVID-19 pandemic is a globally shared stress-producing experience which can, according to social psychology, foster a natural desire to connect with others (Gump & Kulik, 1997 ; Sarnoff & Zimbardo, 1961 ; Schachter, 1959 ). Future research should examine whether collaborating through the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened relationships among colleagues from different cultures or, had the opposite effect, by creating a greater emotional distance because the ability to support one another was limited to virtual interactions filtered through diverse cultural lenses. Delineating the circumstances under which fear facilitates cohesion (or division) among culturally diverse colleagues would be important for generating interventions.

IHRM has long understood that certain competencies affect success when working under stress in different countries and with people from different cultures (Shaffer et al., 2006 ). Future research should examine the extent to which this new way of collaborating under stress in a context of uncertainty will require additional competencies. In addition to competencies, future research should examine whether employees’ experiences have better prepared them to succeed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It might be the case that employees who have lived and worked abroad would be better able to collaborate effectively in a high-uncertainty environment.

Health and safety

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that managing employees’ health and safety is a key challenge for IHRM, and this is an important component of the grand challenge faced by MNEs in understanding how to deal with social responsibility (Buckley et al., 2017 ). However, IHRM scholars (and practitioners) are unlikely to command the entire reservoir of requisite knowledge to investigate all the mental, physiological, and even physical problems that employees may experience during and after the pandemic. As for other complex challenges, our understanding of health and safety issues would benefit greatly from multidisciplinary collaboration, particularly with scholars in fields such as health. For example, we could apply health-based knowledge about the long-term health consequences of risk exposure, to investigate the long-term consequences of travel bans and stay at home orders on employees’ mental health. IHRM scholars must also broaden their scope of attention. To date, IHRM scholars have largely focused on a narrow range of sub-clinical aspects of psychological well-being and adjustment. Yet, the extreme situation of the pandemic challenges us to support managers who are dealing with health matters that include serious outcomes among employees, including depression, substance abuse, or suicidal ideation, which are already well understood by health scholars. Future research should also give more attention to the positive aspects of global work. While most IHRM research has focused on global work as a context with negative consequences for health and safety, future research could investigate antecedents in global work that lead to positive outcomes such as thriving and resilience (Ren et al., 2015 ).

Facilitating Global Work

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified new ways that global work can be accomplished, encouraging us to rethink how MNEs use global teams and virtual collaboration and international assignments .

Global teams and virtual collaboration

For IHRM, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of how employees can work effectively across borders while remaining at home. The focus on global teams has become particularly salient. With employees sharing the same global stressor, future studies should examine whether their experience of getting through it together has fostered greater cohesion and, if so, whether those MNEs that have spent time to train their employees on cross-cultural virtual collaboration now have global teams with greater expectations of reliability among the members. Working from home has exposed employees’ full selves as conference calls are bringing colleagues into each other’s homes, possibly seeing each other’s pets, children, and home décor. Future studies should examine whether the COVID-19 pandemic has fostered greater global virtual team cohesion by providing visible evidence of each other’s true selves.

The crisis also offers a new opportunity to look at the fundamentals of virtual collaboration. IHRM researchers could use the current situation of large-scale virtual working as an ‘extreme case scenario’ to examine the extent to which virtual collaboration can be effective. They could ask whether the methods that we have derived from virtual collaborations amongst managers or technical experts (e.g., information systems engineers) suffice for achieving effective work in the types of collaborations that were previously not virtual, for example among administration staff inside the MNE.

Future research should thus use the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic to study those who are working from home for the first time. This group would uniquely enable us to examine the cross-national, generational, functional, etc. differences in predicting employees’ preferences for working from home in the future, post-pandemic. For example, are relationship-oriented or collectivist cultures more likely to want to return to the workplace? IHRM researchers can also use the extreme case scenario to study the pitfalls and levers of large-scale virtual conferences that have now been held for the first time. Whilst this type of research may bring to the surface new psychological and practical barriers to virtual collaboration, which set its boundaries, it also promises to show how virtual collaboration can be expanded both in scale and scope – to different types of work and forms of collaboration.

So far, insights into virtual collaboration have been gained in different academic disciplines that have largely operated as silos. Besides IHRM and IB, important findings on international or global virtual collaboration stem from the areas of information systems (IS) – which has studied dispersed IS collaborations for a long time – organizational studies, and strategic management. The last two areas have highlighted the role of the organizational and strategic contexts respectively. IHRM researchers, therefore, need to draw on insights from these disciplines to achieve a better understanding of virtual collaboration and practices in order to optimally support these.

International assignments

With countries’ borders closed for fear of the COVID-19 virus spreading further, the idea of an upward trajectory of international assignments seems highly unlikely. Assuming that fewer employees will be sent abroad to live and work in the context of international assignments, future research will need to investigate alternative control MNE mechanisms for subsidiaries, alternatives for developing future global leaders, and alternatives for addressing skill shortages in host countries. For example, could technology-driven control mechanisms successfully replace an expatriate leader sent from headquarters to oversee operations? Could domestic-based experiences in culturally diverse settings also foster cultural agility competencies the way a high-quality international assignment would? Could skills be taught to host country nationals through virtually means, so as to prepare them for anticipated skill shortages in host countries? With fewer expatriates living abroad, those who are sent abroad will need to achieve greater success faster than previous generations of expatriates did because the stakes, so to speak, will be higher. Speed of adjustment for those expatriates who are still going abroad will be of utmost importance.

The expatriate literature has evolved to understand cross-cultural adjustment as an idiosyncratic person–environment relationship based on how people uniquely experience living abroad (Haslberger, Brewster, & Hippler, 2013 ; Hippler, Caligiuri & Johnson, 2014 ). Various facets of the host country environment – when compared to the home country – are individually determined for their influence on an individual’s level of adjustment. For some, the change might be better or worse – or having no real effect. Future research should mirror the approach in the expatriate adjustment literature to determine who is best able to adjust to the various facets of this novel work environment and to what extent the support practices offered have fostered employee adjustment to various facets of work-life during these uncertain times. For example, some employees might have adjusted well to working from home – even preferred it. Others might adjust to working from home only after employer support practices were implemented, such as regular team meetings or training on how to work virtually. The experience of working from home during the pandemic could open new opportunities for IHRM research to examine flexible work arrangements for expatriates. While the IHRM literature has begun to examine flexible work arrangements in the context of global teams (Adamovic, 2018 ), there has been little attention to date to the FWAs used in other types of international work.

Rethinking how MNEs use global teams and virtual collaboration and international assignments , could constitute important elements in a reconfiguration of the IHRM function. There is an opportunity for IHRM research to collect relevant and useful evidence to facilitate global work in the future, by examining the role of the IHRM function during and after the crisis. Even large organizations with sophisticated pre-pandemic IHRM policies are likely to be re-writing the rules. For example, as travel restrictions ease, employers and individuals will make decisions about whether, when, and where they feel safe to travel. IHRM scholarship can offer an evidence-base for global mobility policies that will help employees to adjust to new ways of working in teams and the inevitable stress and uncertainty of post-pandemic travel.

Redefining Performance

Minbaeva and De Cieri ( 2015 ) wrote about the need for IHRM scholars to rethink their key dependent variable – organizational performance. They referred to enterprise resilience – the ability of an enterprise to respond or “bounce back” from shock events (e.g., Branzei & Abdelnour, 2010 ; De Cieri & Dowling, 2012 ) – as an important outcome variable for IHRM in the context of large-scale disasters. The COVID-19 crisis adds to the long list of shock events in the twenty-first century that have included terrorism, corporate scandals, the global financial crisis that began in 2007, natural disasters (e.g., the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004; the Icelandic volcano eruption in 2010), and environmental disasters (e.g., the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion off the US’s Gulf Coast) (Minbaeva & De Cieri, 2015 ). The global pandemic once again stresses the importance of understanding the role of IHRM in building enterprise resilience.

The crisis also brings home the point that sustainability, and more specifically organizations’ contributions to the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), should become a dependent variable in IHRM research. The UN’s 17 SDGs, adopted as a non-binding agreement in 2015 by 193 countries, are relevant not only to governments but also to all stakeholders in employment relationships (Fowler & Biekart, 2017 ; Sachs, 2015 ; UN General Assembly, 2015 ). These goals are part of the ‘big picture’ of global development, with environmental, humanitarian and economic implications. HRM scholars have been criticized for being slow to respond to these goals (Alzola, 2018 ).

As is the case with other environmental disasters today, the COVID-19 crisis has been directly linked to the unsustainable ways in which humans treat the world’s ecosystem (The Guardian, 2020 ; WWF, 2020 ). When seen through this (albeit debatable) lens, the COVID-19 crisis should alert us to the need to rethink our working practices to help address environmental sustainability. Unintentionally, IHRM research may in the past have contributed to environmentally unsustainable working practices, e.g., by promoting frequent international travel in instances where such travel could have been easily avoided and replaced by more environment-friendly modes of professional interaction. The current crisis now provides an opportunity for IHRM researchers to guide MNEs towards contributing to achieving the SDGs. They could do this especially by examining how virtual working can be optimized to reduce the extent of commuting and travel. In addition to examining the sustainability of global HR policy and practice, future research could address the SDGs with respect to global health and safety, e.g., by examining how global mobility practices integrate health and safety matters. Specific areas where the IHRM function could demonstrate its relevance might include management of risk exposure in MNE subsidiary locations and travel destinations, anticipative management of emergencies such as medical evacuations, and the reduction of work-related injuries and illnesses.

In the above exposé, we have outlined how IHRM researchers should use the current extreme scenario of virtual working to scrutinize the boundaries of effective virtual collaboration and find means to support it at a broader scale (without compromising on organizational effectiveness or employees’ mental health). During the ‘lockdown’, people have experienced improvements in air quality, noise levels and congestion, and have at the same time tested and practiced their virtual collaboration skills. Through this, many of us may have become more open to the idea of reducing unnecessary travel, which at a larger scale contributes to reducing the environmental destruction that has fed into the crisis itself. Even if unexpected barriers to virtual working surface, IHRM researchers may be more inclined than before to search for new avenues to capitalize on virtual working and to foster sustainable management practices in this realm.

Recognizing that much of the IHRM literature has focused on high-status professional employees, future research should give attention to the MNE’s entire workforce and beyond in the context of its CSR strategy, to address the needs of individuals for whom the pandemic has exacerbated conditions of insecurity, disempowerment and vulnerability. This is particularly important given that the SDGs highlight the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, and reduction of inequality, which are issues that will be exacerbated as we enter a likely post-pandemic global recession. IB needs to better understand the role of globalization from the perspective of job creation and job loss globally. Buckley et al. ( 2017 ) have identified the potential for IB scholars to collaborate with scholars in disciplines such as health economics and epidemiology to address grand challenges such as the impact of “poverty and child mortality, on local employees and subsidiaries” (p. 1055). We suggest that IHRM scholars have both a responsibility to join these conversations and an opportunity to contribute their insights about people in the global workforce.

Table  1 presents a summary of our suggestions for future IHRM scholarship, informed by our extant knowledge base, our direct learnings from responses to the pandemic and new questions raised by the pandemic as we enter into the post-pandemic ‘next normal’.

Buckley et al. ( 2017 ) have pointed out that a “narrow scope of research has potentially hindered IB scholars from studying more impactful research questions” (p. 1048). The same can be said of IHRM. Despite the intrinsic multi-disciplinary nature of the topics in which IHRM scholars are interested, there has been little cross-pollination of ideas and knowledge across disciplines (Andersson et al., 2019 ). The experience of the COVID-19 crisis has showed again that useful knowledge of IHRM, which could inform and support management practice, remains dispersed and fragmented. There are many reasons for this, yet we cannot answer the ‘big questions’ unless we share knowledge and collaborate in multidisciplinary research.

This Editorial has hopefully demonstrated that the most useful knowledge for management practice is derived from IHRM research with the following features: multidisciplinary in nature, multi-stakeholder oriented, multilevel, and methodologically pluralist. This is what the future of IHRM should look like, for it to perform a valuable role in IB scholarship (Buckley et al., 2017 ). The COVID-19 crisis, as a global shock, illustrates once again that IHRM researchers have an opportunity – but also the shared responsibility – to make a difference. They can do so by providing inspired responses, grounded in state-of-the-art scholarly work, to the grand challenges of our time.

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Paula Caligiuri

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Caligiuri, P., De Cieri, H., Minbaeva, D. et al. International HRM insights for navigating the COVID-19 pandemic: Implications for future research and practice. J Int Bus Stud 51 , 697–713 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-020-00335-9

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An Introduction to Human Resource Management

Student resources, case studies.

Case studies exploring fascinating additional case studies from the author demonstrating HRM in practice around the world. From the internal vs. external candidate debate to employer branding abroad, learn how companies of all sizes approach different aspects of HRM.

• The National Context of HRM – Country Profiles

The term Anglo-Saxon is often used to describe a particular institutional model and to distinguish a particular form of liberal, uncoordinated market economy. The UK is often held up as one such Anglo-Saxon economy. Since the 1980s, the UK has adopted the American free market model in applying supply-side macro-economic policies with a focus on producing shareholder value. However, whereas the U.S. is considered the exemplifier of the Anglo-Saxon model, Dicken (2007: 210) suggests that the UK occupies an intermediate position between the virtually pure market capitalism of the U.S. and the kind of social market capitalism practised in continental Europe. The UK remains more interventionist than the U.S. but has strongly adopted economic policies of privatization and deregulation, for example in relation to the labour market. This has led to the UK often being at odds with continental Europe over social policy and opting out of some of the social provisions of the EU.

The free market reliance on short-term investment capital and the imperative to seek high profits for shareholders is reflected in a short-term perspective in the area of employment leading to low levels of investment in human resources and low employee productivity rates compared to many leading economies. The Anglo-Saxon model also relies on competition by low-wage mass production, which in turn requires a flexible labour market and wage structure, supported by a liberal welfare state with low social benefits. Short-termism is also reflected in a lack of long-term investment in infrastructure, research and development and human capital, resulting in a skill deficit in the labour force. This is compounded by relatively unregulated labour market conditions which discourage the development of strong internal labour markets and of skills flexibility in favour of numerical flexibility and ‘hire and fire’ approaches to employment. In the absence of a coordinating role for the state, the industrial relations system is fragmented, uncoordinated and decentralized. Despite a strong trade union tradition, since the 1980s restrictions placed on union activity, particularly industrial action, the extent of coverage of collective bargaining and union membership, have declined significantly. However, union membership and presence are still strong in the public sector and certain private sector industries.

In line with the Anglo culture cluster identified by Hofstede, Tayeb (2005) describes UK culture as being highly individualistic and aggressive where autonomy, liberty and privacy are prized, yet where caring for one’s community is common and engagement in collective action (for example, in trade union activity) is accepted. The UK displays a low power distance, yet there is deference and acceptance of inequality, based on traditional class divisions. Tayeb (2005) further suggests that people tend to be characterized as conservative, represented by distrust and dislike of change and uncertainty, and reflected in a past orientation; and as reserved with a propensity towards self-control and self-discipline, honest, trustworthy and with high standards of conduct both for themselves and others, but insular with a dislike of ‘others’. This tends to be reflected in the evidence of discrimination among employees on the basis of age, socio-economic group, gender or ethnicity and in ethnocentric attitudes towards foreign counterparts. As well as being tenacious, the British tend to be pragmatic and flexible, with a willingness to bend the law when it does not suit them, albeit within a broad adherence to rules.

These cultural characteristics are translated into employment and management practice in a number of ways. Both inherent individuality and an acceptance of inequality/deference to authority are reflected in the derivation of job satisfaction from both a personal sense of achievement and a superior’s recognition of individual contribution. Leadership style is persuasive and negotiative and senior managers expect commitment, initiative, ownership, responsibility and honesty from their subordinates. However, a relatively relaxed approach and a willingness to work things out as one goes along lead to management in the UK often being described as ‘amateur’. The emphasis on autonomy and freedom in British society is reflected in the voluntarism at the heart of its industrial relations system and broad rejection of widespread state intervention in business activity. This voluntarism also reflects the relative comfort of the British with a minimal amount of rules and procedures, a trait of cultures who display low uncertainty avoidance. The separation of work and personal life evident in UK culture is reflected in the view that a job is a task to be performed impersonally and informs the approach to selection where an emphasis is placed on a pragmatic assessment of an individual’s potential to contribute to the tasks of the organization (by measuring their intelligence and skills) rather than person–group fit as in southern European countries. The class distinction in wider society is reflected within the workplace in the form of a hostile them-and-us attitude between management and labour.

Sweden is an exemplifier of the Nordic model both in respect of its institutional framework and its cultural roots. The Nordic model is characterized by a ‘universalist’ welfare state and has the economic objective of full employment. Similar to the Germanic model, the export-dependent, high-quality, high-skill industrial sector in Sweden is sustained by a financial system with neo-Keynesian macro-economic steering and long-term patient capital through state-financed cooperative loans. There is reliance on close collaboration between business, government and labour, most notably in sustaining a system of centralized bargaining between well-organized unions with high levels of membership and employer associations. This results in relatively high and equalizing ‘solidaristic’ wage structures that press firms into finding productivity gains in means other than wage cutting. The labour market is characterized by well-developed employment rights, high wages, high female labour force participation, widespread part-time work and a large public sector. Social partners are also involved in the development of wider social policy. Employment law and collective agreements provide relatively high job security which provides an incentive to invest in skills.

Jackson (2002, citing Furness and Tilton, 1979) suggests that economic and political democracy within the Swedish social democratic political model, stresses six fundamental values: equality, freedom, democracy, solidarity, security and efficiency. Jackson suggests that these values still predominate despite a move towards decreased state planning and welfare and towards more economic competition. In particular, there is a continued pressure from private sector firms to decentralize collective bargaining and calls for labour market deregulation along neo-liberal lines. Culturally, Jackson (2002) characterizes Swedes as ‘unemotionally practical, believing that problems can be solved rationally through the application of reason’, resulting in a uniquely sensible way of life which is calm and well ordered. Reflecting the moderate levels of individualism in Nordic cultures, extensive redistributive state intervention and high public spending are accepted as the basis for a just society free from the inequalities created by free market capitalism, despite this having driven taxation and social contributions to the highest level in Europe. In contrast with the individualism characteristic of Anglo cultures, which is often focused on competition and material achievement, ‘success’ in Swedish culture is connected to a person’s own self-development and self-dependency. Correspondingly, quality of life is important, and the achievement orientation of Swedes is often directed towards jobs which are developmental or that are intrinsically interesting. As such, the importance of work is seen to be relatively low, which Gannon et al. (1994) associate with an unwillingness of employees to do overtime and with excessive absenteeism and sick leave compared to other nations.

The low power distance in Swedish culture is reflective of a wider emphasis on equality manifest in complex systems of state welfare provision and relatively narrow income differentials across society. Within firms, the importance of equality and a low power distance is reflected in flatter organizational hierarchies, decentralized decision-making and a focus on team working. Egalitarianism in the workplace is viewed as a prerequisite for the operation of industrial democracy and co-determination precludes authoritarian management and a ‘them-and-us’ attitude. The majority of employees are members of independent trade unions, partly because trade unions play an important social role (for example, in administering unemployment benefit) but also because of the enshrinement of extensive consultation and representation rights for unions. Informal and consensual management predominates and decision-making and communication processes are often viewed as being lengthy, leading to accusations of indecisiveness. The high femininity associated with Swedish culture, along with other Nordic nations, is reflective of a high degree of equality between men and women.

Germany is both an exemplar of Rhenian capitalism (along with Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands) and of Hofstede’s Germanic cultural cluster. Within a high-value growth strategy, Rhenian capitalism, instead of relying solely on market mechanisms, enforces collectively imposed ‘beneficial constraints’ such as high wages set and imposed through collective bargaining which compel employers to seek efficiency through investment in technology and training, rather than in the degradation of terms and conditions of employment. For workers, lifelong employment, high wages, long-term career prospects and access to further training in case of technical change are important motives to continually update skills. The system of interdependency between employers and employees is institutionalized in the ‘social partnership’ between well-organized unions and employer associations which play a significant role in industrial regulation and coordinated wage bargaining. Due to relatively consensual industrial relations, firms can profit from an absence of industrial unrest which would be particularly harmful to a quality production strategy. At workplace level, statutory works councils have institutionalized forms of worker participation in the form of co-determination. Worker representatives can secure employment rights, mediate in case of grievances and codetermine technological change. The state has an accepted role in providing the needed infrastructure for business and social protection for workers.

The high uncertainty avoidance evident among the Germanic group is evident in the financial system. Rather than the short-term focus on shareholder value, the close relationship between organizations and banks results in patient long-term investment capital. Moreover, the German system is reflective of stable producer–supplier ties. This institutional framework tends to reflect the promotion of the collective good (‘Deutschland Inc.’).

Japan can be regarded as the archetypal development state in which the government’s economic role has been very different from that in most Western countries. Japan’s post-war economic development has been built on a long-term consensus between major interest groups on the need to create a dynamic national economy. Post-war Japanese economic development began with essential industries such as steel, electrical power and shipbuilding, followed by the progressive development of the automobile, electronic and petrochemical industries. In the process, Japan shifted from a low-value, low-skilled economy to a high-value, capital-intensive economy.

The Japanese model is reflective of Rhenian capitalism in that it is characterized by patient long-term investment capital, relatively consensual employment relations and stable producer–supplier ties. However, Japan represents an even more centralized economic system, a coordinated market economy where state direction strongly influences diverse economic activity within a broad stakeholder approach. Whilst there is relatively little state-owned enterprise in Japan and generally a much smaller public sector than in the West, the state plays an active role in guiding the operation of a highly competitive domestic market economy. Whilst market decisions are the right of private companies, there is close liaison with public agencies and banks hold a strong influence. Government guides economic activity through the power to provide or to withhold loans, grants, subsidies, licenses, tax concessions, government contracts and import permits. However, in contrast to Germany, state social policy is less well developed and there is greater acceptance of the role of the organization in meeting social and welfare needs. At the core of the Japanese model is a combination of government–industry cooperation and private sector coordination in the context of long-term relationships between firms and labour, between firms and banks, and between different firms. Collectivist values have produced cooperative industrial business arrangements in the form of  keiretsu  where formally independent organizations are closely tied together through cross-shareholdings, inter-organizational alliances, interlocking directorates and all kinds of informal coordination arrangements. There is a long-term focus based on the strategic allocation of ‘patient capital’ from banks as opposed to stock markets, not to achieve a high short-term return on investment, but to gain market share to maximize long-term returns. These attitudes, coupled with the view of the nation as a family, allow government to influence business, and businesses work hard not only for their own profits but also for national well-being.

The Japanese approach to industrial relations has, therefore, been described as  ‘ welfare corporatism ’ . This system is based on collaborative relationships of mutual interest between industrial actors – the state, employers and employees – reflecting the cultural influence of ‘Confucianism’. The values of Confucianism are particularly important to management practice, in particular the importance of interpersonal relationships, a respect for age and hierarchy, the need for harmony and the concept of ‘face’. In particular, this philosophy is reflected in the emphasis on cooperation and management by consensus, as opposed to individualism, and trade unions lack a strong political and social role. Strong leadership is, therefore, characterized as the ability to build consensus rather than assertiveness and quick decision-making. Employment management in Japan is characterized as ‘corporate paternalism’, which has been traditionally based on three key tenets: enterprise unionism for all employees; lifetime employment, with strong internal and high intra-firm mobility; a seniority system, involving advancement based on a combination of seniority and ability. The loyalty developed through an identification with their employers and a strong work ethic – the Japanese have a culture of long working hours and low take-up of holiday allocation – which characterizes Japanese workers has traditionally been repaid with job security, large investment in training, good benefits and comparatively high wages.

The organizing principle of Japanese society is a sense of group identity and of being part of a much wider community. Compared with western societies, Japan is a dense lattice-work of responsibilities and obligations within the family, the workplace, the school and the community. There is a strong emphasis in work processes on team working and competition between teams and work groups rather than within them. This family and team ethos is also important socially as work is a principal source of social networks and activity. However, this model of labour management tends to only characterize that which exists in large organizations for a core of workers. Outside of this core, there exists a peripheral workforce often made up of women, who have less job security and less access to such terms and conditions of employment. This partly reflects a rigid and traditional sexual division of labour. Hausmann et al. (2007) reported in a survey of the global gender gap (using an index based on female economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival) that Japan ranked 91st out of 128 countries – a very low ranking for a developed nation. Japan was ranked particularly low in the areas of political empowerment and economic attainment and opportunity.

China is unique in the global economy as representing a communist-capitalist system. An increasingly open capitalist system is combined with a highly centralized political system and planned economy in which state-owned enterprises still account for a substantial proportion of urban employment and industrial output. Given that China is the largest country on Earth, with a population of 1.3 billion people, it is unsurprising that it is a very diverse nation in terms of ethnicity, language and regional culture. Tayeb (2005) identifies, however, a number of common cultural threads through many of the values and attitudes held as a result of a long imperial history, the influence of Communism (since the 1920s), the predominance of the ‘Han’ ethnic group and the influence of the Confucian philosophy.

The shift to a social market economy from the late 1970s – including increasingly decentralized planning, the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the opening of trade doors to overseas investors – has led to changing employment practices. Yet, the influence of Confucianism and Communism remain strong, reflected in the continued influence of traditions in people management, such as a belief in a job for life ( fie fan wan ), the notion of eating out of one pot ( da you fan ) reflected in egalitarian payment systems and de-emphasized status differences, respect for elders ( chang bei ) manifest in access to senior positions on the basis of acquired wisdom, and hierarchically based, highly centralized enterprises. Labour law in China has, however, been subject to significant reform. For example, legislation passed in 1995 sought to outlaw child labour, to give workers greater freedom to choose jobs and receive minimum pay, to formalize redundancy arrangements, to limit working hours to 44 per week and an eight-hour working day, and to provide greater equal opportunities protection.

Management tends to be centralized, authoritarian, personalized, hierarchical and consensus-seeking (bargaining is central to decision-making), with a reliance on rules and procedures. This reflects authoritarian, yet paternalistic, state intervention, manifest in the notion of cradle-to-grave welfare ( danwei ). Despite no independent trade unions in China (the All China Federation of Trade Unions has traditionally acted as an agent of the state), trade union officials can still exert considerable pressure on managerial decision-making, reflecting the prior party structures which existed within every plant or firm. Local government has considerable power over internal HRM practices within firms, particularly worker mobility between companies or across regions, and has the ability to veto recruitment decisions. China has a largely unsophisticated legal system, a lack of technology and capital, underdeveloped infrastructure, a large population, low average education level, low to medium living standard and a short supply of local managerial and technical skills.

As well as the influence of Confucian values, as discussed for Japanese culture above, Tayeb (2005) notes that the yin and yang philosophy – the acceptance of the simultaneous existence of opposite values and beliefs within a person – is also influential as it shapes the acceptance of differences in behaviour dependent on specific circumstances and situations. For example, depending on the context, the Chinese can be either reserved, collectivist and long-term oriented or individualistic, expressive and short-term oriented. Given the huge changes in Chinese society that have taken place over the last decade or so, it is unsurprising that a distinction must be made between the attitudes to work and management of the older and younger generations. Older workers are not proactive or bold when making decisions and tend not to offer independent opinions in contrast to the more adaptable younger generation. However, older members expect younger members to respect them and age and seniority are accorded some priority in discussions and decisions.

Central to conducting business in China is the notion of  guanxi  – using extended family and other developed relationships and connections to gain cooperation and to get things done, along with a strong sense of personal loyalty (for example, to a senior manager). Broweays and Price (2008) suggest that guanxi is a reflection of the Confucian notions that individuals, as social beings, each have a place in a hierarchy of relationships and that their importance appears to have developed on a large scale as a way of dealing with state bureaucracy and to have flourished during the recent opening up of the Chinese market and consequent economic development. At the heart of guanxi is the moral and social obligation to help others within a network in order to maintain one’s dignity and that of others ( mianzi ). This is particularly important in China, as not doing so entails loss of face, prestige and reputation, all of which are central to one’s standing within society and organizations. The importance of maintaining face and consideration for the reputation of others means that direct criticism or confrontation in relation to work damages both the mianzi of the person who has made the criticism and that of the person criticized. Subsequently, trustworthiness and other people’s confidence are admired characteristics in Chinese culture, ensuring that transactions made between people in close relationships do not need to be made in contractual form. Guanxi goes further than simply network, to the granting of favours and the expectation of such favours in return, eventually. The development of a strong network of guanxi is often the preoccupation of Chinese managers, rather than organizational goals and how to achieve them, and is viewed as the secret of business success. Given its importance, understanding guanxi is crucial for firms entering the Chinese market as the development of such networks is indispensable as a source of information and expertise, and as a way of developing relationships, finding business partners and eventually new deals. For Western firms, this often means maintaining good relations with customers and suppliers, local authorities, financial institutions and tax offices.

• Tesco and International Employee Relations

Tesco and international employee relations*

The supermarket chain Tesco is the largest private sector employer in the UK with over 280,000 staff. Their corporate website sums up their approach to the marketplace by stating that ‘our success depends on people: the people who shop with us and the people who work with us…. If our customers like what we offer, they are more likely to come back and shop with us again. If the Tesco team find what we do rewarding, they are more likely to go that extra mile to help our customers’. In relation to employment, their central value is ‘treat people as we like to be treated’, a statement reflected in a set of core beliefs:

• Work as a team.
• Trust and respect each other.
• Listen, support and say thank you.
• Share knowledge and experience.
• ... so we can enjoy our work.

Commensurately, Tesco’s corporate website claims that they ‘offer a market-leading package of pay and benefits’ such as childcare vouchers and two share schemes, rewarding staff for their hard work and commitment with free Tesco shares as well as an award-winning pension scheme. Tesco also have numerous mechanisms through which employees can share their views – such as staff question time sessions and employee feedback surveys – and promote strong internal labour markets.

Most significantly, Tesco in the UK reports having a good relationship with its ‘union partner’ – the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW). The TESCO/USDAW partnership is the biggest single trade union agreement in the private sector and has contributed significantly to the good employment practice in Tesco and serves as recognition among senior management that employee involvement and participation in decision-making can contribute to the achievement of strategic goals.

In 2006, Tesco entered the American marketplace, opening supermarkets under the name ‘Fresh and Easy’. Given its reputation in the UK for good employee relations and corporate responsibility, The United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union (UFCW) – the counterpart union to USDAW in the U.S. – had expected to enter into a similar partnership agreement to that which existed in the UK. However, in June 2008, the UFCW published a report entitled’ the Two Faces of Tesco’ to ‘tell British investors, politicians, employees and shoppers why we think that the Tesco they know and admire as a business, with a great track record on community and employee relations, can be a very different organisation when it operates away from British shores’. The report details how, in the eyes of the UFCW, Tesco has, ‘Instead of engaging positively with community partners, it refuses to meet with them. Instead of offering partnership, it accepts conflict. Instead of defending freedom of association, it actively pursues a policy to keep out trades unions’.

The primary concern of the union is that Tesco refuses to extend its principle of partnership to all of its employees outside the UK (UFCW also cite union avoidance activity in Thailand and Turkey) and claim that Tesco’s U.S. management refuses to even meet with the UFCW. In 2006 a job advertisement for the employee relations director listed ‘maintaining non-union status’ and ‘union avoidance activities’ among the post-holder’s responsibilities. Tesco later claimed that this advertisement had been a mistake.

• Why has Tesco chosen not to extend its domestic employee relations practice to workers outside of the UK?
• Given Tesco’s guiding strategic principles, what might be the implication s for business success in their U.S. ventures?

* www.tesco.com/talkingtesco/listening ;  www.ufcw.org , accessed on 11 March 2009.

Culture Clash at Oyamada Industries

Oyamada Industries is a Japanese multinational corporation that develops and produces a range of consumer electrical products including televisions, MP3 players and computer games consoles. It has recently moved into the personal computer market, producing a range of notebooks, PDAs and peripherals. It has 46 subsidiary operations worldwide (the majority of which are in South-East Asia) with approximately 8000 employees. In 2000, Oyamada opened a greenfield plant producing LCD and plasma televisions for the European market in Bremen, Germany. After an extensive decision-making process, Oyamada chose to site the plant in Bremen to benefit from the available skills in the local and national labour markets and because it felt that, within a European context, Germany would represent a good ‘cultural fit’ with the Oyamada approach to labour relations and production. This was based on an assumption of similar degrees of collectivism which contrasted with its principal alternative option of building a plant in England.

When the plant first opened, Oyamada Bremen had a workforce of 250 employees. All production workers at the plant were German and recruited primarily from the local labour market. Many workers had previously been employed at a recently closed German producer of electrical equipment for the automobile industry. Production at the plant is organised in a typically Japanese manner with self-managed and cross-functional teams responsible for particular aspects of production. While some line manager roles were filled by German workers with previous supervisory experience, the majority of these were filled by Japanese workers brought in from other Oyamada subsidiaries. Originally, all the senior managers at the plant were Japanese and had previously worked at other subsidiaries or at Oyamada headquarters in Kyoto. All research and development activity continues to be done at the company headquarters.

Over the 1990s, Oyamada saw significant growth in global market share in its core areas of operation. In particular, it saw its presence grow considerably in key markets in the USA and Western Europe. During much of this decade, the majority of its products were produced in its largest subsidiaries in other parts of South-East Asia, particularly in China. At the time of its opening, Bremen represented one of its largest investments outside of Asia. In all of its subsidiaries, Oyamada has sought to impose its core approach to HRM, albeit tailored to fit with local legal requirements. Senior managers take the perspective that organisational culture can override national cultural differences and, therefore, it has largely not responded to differences in cultural norms in its management style, approach to employee relations and the organisation of work. The reason for this is that senior management feel that the high levels of productivity which Oyamada achieves, particularly in comparison with its Western competitors, is partly a question of culture which reflects the inculcation of traditional Japanese values in its workers. For this reason, an exportive approach to HRM has been adopted, consistent with Oyamada’s global business strategy and tight HQ control over subsidiary decision-making and target-setting. Initial worker training was done by Japanese trainers from other subsidiaries or HQ who stayed on site for three months until the plant was up and running. Production supervisors go to Japan every six months to learn new techniques, to discuss developments and to disseminate these in the German plant. Some workers on highly specialised machinery spend some considerable time in Japan learning associated techniques, and this practice continues. There are, however, some areas of moderate local adaptation in labour management. In Japan, Oyamada would typically select school leavers to work as operators, whilst in Germany most were older workers with some experience, along with a handful of apprentices. School leavers in Germany were regarded as being unreliable and not ‘team players’, which could contribute to problems of absenteeism and a lack of work ethic.

Despite some reservations about the manner in which the dominant approach to HRM at Oyamada and the German principles of co-determination and works councils might work together, senior managers were initially surprised by the degree of cooperation in worker consultation (for example, over substantive issues of work design). After six months, however, the company was forced to recall a number of the televisions produced at Bremen because of a safety fault. Upon investigation, the production manager attributed the problem to having emanated from a single operator on a highly specialised piece of machinery having ‘informally’ trained a colleague to operate the machine, unbeknownst to management. Both workers were reprimanded but complained that workers should be trained across machinery rather than rigidly sticking to single areas of operation. Quality initiatives such as total quality management and quality circles were also blamed for the quality problems. These have been implemented wholesale in the German plant but are deemed to have been unsuccessful, not least because workers feel that they conflict with the role of the works council. Moreover, quality circles often take place outside of normal working hours and involvement is unpaid. Meetings are, therefore, poorly attended.

A subsequent decline in the demand for Oyamada televisions produced in Bremen also saw the need for the plant to cut costs in order to maintain the levels of efficiency demanded by headquarters. Senior managers decided that the only way to achieve this was to make a number of workers redundant. The quality problems also saw the escalation of a number of employee relations problems at the plant. The operation of the works council became more conflictual with managers and union representatives failing to come to an agreement over a range of issues. The HR director felt that the union was simply being obstructive and argumentative and wanted to punish management for the mistakes of workers. Markus Acher, the local union representative, responded by claiming that whilst Oyamada was happy to adhere to the fundamental principles of Japanese employment when it suited them, it rejected them where it acted to benefit workers (for example, in a strong commitment to long-term employment security). He also claimed that the company failed to understand the basic principles of German employment relations and simply wanted the union to be passive and for the works council to simply ‘rubber-stamp’ managerial decisions.

• Drawing on the typologies of cultural difference discussed in Chapter 5, discuss why Oyamada has experienced HR difficulties at its Bremen plant. Why might managers have assumed Germany to have been a good ‘fit’ for the company?
• Drawing on an understanding of Japanese and German employment relations, how might we account for the differences in opinion over the operation of the works council? How might the changed attitude of the Japanese senior managers towards the works council be explained?
• Why might the profile of the operator workforce in Germany represent a problem for the Japanese approach to HRM, compared to that which is found in many of Oyamada’s plants in Japan and South-East Asia?
• How might Oyamada have avoided the problems detailed in the case study? How might the company now address these problems?

2nd Edition

The Global Human Resource Management Casebook

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This casebook is a collection of international teaching cases focusing on contemporary human resource management issues. Each case centers primarily on one country and illustrates a significant challenge faced by managers and HR practitioners, helping students to understand how the issues they learn about in class play out in the real world. The cases emphasize the national and cultural contexts of HR management, providing readers with a global understanding of employee motivation, reward systems, recruitment and selection, career development, and more. In this edition, the editors and authors have made significant updates to reflect recent developments in the field and cover a broader range of countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. The authors also delve into new industries like food service, clothing manufacturing, and transportation as well as IT and academia. Recommendations for further reading and relevant videos provide readers with practical insights into the modern HRM field. With more than 30 cases followed by questions and tasks to encourage reflection, this is a valuable companion for any student of human resource management.

Table of Contents

Liza Castro Christiansen isan Associate Professor at Business Academy Aarhus, University of Applied Sciences, Denmark, and a Visiting Academic Fellow of the Doctoral Program at Henley Business School, UK. Michal Biron 　is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the MBA Program and the MBA Program for Not-for-Profit Organizations at the University of Haifa, Israel, and an affiliate of the HR Studies Department at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Elaine Farndale is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at The Pennsylvania State University, USA, and is affiliated with the HR Studies Department at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Bård Kuvaas is a Professor of Organizational Psychology and Associate Dean of the Doctoral Program at BI Norwegian School of Management, Norway.

Critics' Reviews

"The Global Human Resource Management Casebook is an excellent source of real-life case studies from organizations around the world, which will undoubtedly help students, scholars, and practitioners alike to better understand regional and national intricacies of managing human resources in the global context. Both the scope and the breadth of cases included, as well as their outstanding contributors, will ensure continued success of the book." Vlad Vaiman , California Lutheran University, USA "The casebook's first edition has been an invaluable resource for teaching and learning and this second edition is even more impressive. The wide-ranging global perspectives present real insight into the HR challenges organizations face around the world and emphasize unique context-driven issues in particular countries as well as more universal concerns that matter regardless of location. A notable array of international scholars, case questions, and teaching notes makes this an indispensable resource on global HR management." David G. Allen , Rutgers University, USA

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