Managing the global workforce: Challenges and strategies

563

456

We argue that many MNCs continue to underestimate the complexities involved in global staffing and that organisations and academics must take a more strategic view of staffing arrangements in an international context. We suggest that the context for the management and handling of the international assignment has altered significantly, leading in some quarters to a fundamental reassessment of the contribution of, and prospects for, the international assignment as conventionally understood. We explore a variety of supply side issues, cost issues, demand side issues and career issues as triggers to this reassessment. Alongside the conventional expatriate assignment, we point to the emergence of a portfolio of alternatives to the traditional international assignment including short-term assignments, commuter assignments, international business travel and virtual assignments. In the context of these developments, we argue that a standardised approach to international assignments is untenable and that it is essential to develop HR policies and procedures that reflect differences in the various forms of emerging alternative international assignment and their associated complexities. Here recruitment and selection, training, reward, and occupational health and safety issues and implications are all explored.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Alternative Forms Of International Assignmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Changing patterns of global staffing in the multinational enterprise: Challenges to the conventional expatriate assignment and emerging alternatives

Collings

Scullion

Morley

2007

563

456

“…Since abilities are always linked to a specific domain of human functioning, which may or may not be related to the core activities of an organization, the value of particular abilities varies depending on the organization at hand. Nevertheless, in the HRM literature, it is often assumed that organizations, regardless of their strategic direction, implement talent-identification with the main goal of detecting those individuals that are capable of taking on senior jobs with broad responsibilities and are therefore seen as future leaders (ChamorroPremuzic & Furnham, 2010;Guo, 2003, Roberts, Kossek & Ozeki, 1998, Smith & Victorson, 2012. In accordance with Gagné (2009) and Buckingham and Clifton (2001), we argue that exceptional ability can occur in a multitude of domains, of which leadership is only one.…”

Section: Defining Talentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multidisciplinary review into the definition, operationalization, and measurement of talent

Nijs

Gallardo-Gallardo

Dries

et al. 2014

199

191

Organizations report great difficulty in measuring talent accurately, reflecting the lack of theoretical foundations for talent-identification in the HRM literature. This multidisciplinary review aims to contribute to the establishment of a stronger theoretical basis for talent-management by presenting a conceptual framework of talent in which the definition, operationalization and measurement of talent and its relation to excellent performance is clarified. We systematically introduce 11propositions into the framework, building on fragmented insights from the literature-from the fields of HRM, gifted education, positive psychology, and vocational psychology respectively-that will guide readers in understanding and applying the proposed framework. Starting from the HRM perspective on talent, we systematically incorporate insights from the divergent literature streams, which counteract some of the limitations inherent to the HRM literature and therefore can help establish better conceptual foundations for talent-management. The relationship between talent and excellent performance functions as a general framework within which issues of predictive and construct validity are addressed, across 11 research propositions. With the future research directions, we shed light on how talent-management scholars might further capitalize on the cross-fertilization between insights from different disciplines so as to gradually establish the theoretical foundations needed to transform talent-management into a legitimate field of academic study. By discussing managerial implications in the concluding part, we provide practical guidelines for designing talent-identification practices grounded in sound theory. Search StrategyTo achieve a comprehensive multidisciplinary review of the literature on talentwhich could account for the evolutions within the field-we used 1993 as the starting point of our literature search, thus covering insights developed over the last twenty years. We took four different steps to establish the final body of peer-reviewed, academic articles considered in this review.Step 1: Clarifying the Talent ConstructIn order to find those articles that would be most informative for achieving conceptual clarity about talent, we first developed a general working definition of TALENT: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY REVIEW 3 talent based on the meaning contemporary English dictionaries ascribe to the term (Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries & González-Cruz, 2013). In the English language, talent is commonly understood as corresponding to an above-average ability that makes the individuals who possess, detect, develop, and deploy it, perform excellently in a given performance domain (Gagné, 2004;Tansley, 2011).Step 2: Selecting Search Terms We started our search by tracking articles that had 'talent' in their titles. As we were interested in talent and talent-identification in the context of the business world, specifically, we selected Business Source Premier as the database of departure. The use of talent as a search term resulted ...

“…Multinational companies are especially concerned with how they will assure themselves of future leaders capable of understanding and managing complex operations flung across the world and serving diverse markets, so they have developed competence models to describe what those leaders will need to be able to do, and talent review, succession planning, and executive development programs to maintain the supply Becker et al, 2004: 2 Resultant from the greater diversity of markets MNEs now operate in, new technologies, and increased emphasis on innovation, the old expatriate model (primarily using parent country nationals [PCNs]) is no longer sufficient due to talent shortages and the view that organizations need to move away from an ethnocentric, headquarters mindset (Roberts, Kossek & Ozeki, 1998). Talent is now far more mobile with competition for talent between employers shifting from national to regional and global levels (Sparrow et al, 2004) with learning transfer increasingly important (McDonnell, Gunnigle & Lavelle, in press).…”

Section: Global Talent Management Operationalizedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing tomorrow's leaders—Evidence of global talent management in multinational enterprises

McDonnell

Lamare

Gunnigle

et al. 2010

185

148

Organizations are becoming relentless in managing and developing their key talent. This is a view, however, largely based on anecdote rather than reliable empirical evidence. Utilizing data from 260 multinational enterprises (MNEs), this paper helps redress this deficit.Specifically, this paper explores the extent to which MNEs engage in global talent management (GTM) and deciphers some of the factors which may explain the use and non-use of GTM practices. In so doing, we find that although a significant number of MNEs have systems and mechanisms in place to strategically identify and develop their talent many more seemingly adopt an ad hoc or haphazard approach. For instance, less than half of all MNEs have both global succession planning and formal management development programs for their high-potentials. Consequently it seems that there is a considerable distance yet to be travelled to arrive at a universal appreciation of the need to strategically manage one's key employees.We find the size of the MNE has a significant effect on GTM system usage -larger MNEs are more likely to undertake GTM. Other significant, positive influences include whether products or services are standardized regionally or globally, and if the MNE has a global human resources policy formation body. Of considerable interest is the finding that MNEs operating in the low tech/low cost sectors are significantly more likely to have formal global systems to identify and develop high-potentials.