روابط جهانی موثر در حال توسعه از طریق تأمین نیروی انسانی با مدیران: نقش اعتماد میان فردی

International human resource managers are progressively encountering new challenges pertinent to the manageability of multiculturalism when staffing global positions. The literature indicates that trust in the global organization context increases subsidiary acquiescence to and cooperation with the headquarters, making this concept an important component in developing inpatriates' relationships with the headquarters organization. The purpose of this article is to examine a range of antecedents to trust building, distinguish between two different types of trust, affective vs. competence-based, and examine key outcomes of inpatriates' trust building in global organizations. Reference point theory is used as the foundation for an analysis of the deliberate choice of the inpatriate manager and parent organization alike to adjust to new organizational conditions. In addition, it provides guidance in examining the effects of assignment longevity. The authors propose that through the development of competencies such as trust building, an organization is better able to implement global learning and talent management and in turn develop more effective and ongoing global relationships based on trust.

Effective global relationships rest on the ability of two or more organizations to share resources candidly. Global relationships, also known as inter-organizational relationships, include but are not limited to relational contracting, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and research and development consortia, serving purposes such as information processing, resource exchange, power relations, boundary penetrations, and sentimental attachments (Kenis and Knoke, 2002). The intricacy of global staffing unquestionably heightens the complexity of interaction and thus the difficulty in effectively socializing employees in global organizations. Harvey et al. (1999a) suggest that among other concerns, the issue of trust in inpatriate staffing (i.e., the relocation of foreign employees/managers to the parent country of the organization) must be examined to further our understanding of effective global relationship management (Harvey et al., 2000a and Harvey et al., 2005). Despite the identification and development of inpatriates as a viable staffing alternative in global organizations, there are limited theoretical and/or empirical findings of the processes, determinants and perceptions of trust formation between inpatriate managers and parent country/headquarters (HQ) management (Foss and Pedersen, 2004 and Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000). Robinson and Rousseau (1994) suggest that variation in the psychological contract on the part of the parent-country organization will decrease inpatriates' trust, satisfaction, performance and likely success in their critical dimension of global management. This leads to the question of how a global organization can be staffed with inpatriate managers while retaining diversity of perspective and at the same time integrating the inpatriate managers into the management team to proactively enhance the effectiveness of the global organization. In recent years, there has been a shift from simple to binary considerations of networking relationships, whereby the focus of researchers has shifted from the existence vs. non-existence of relationships to a deliberation of attributes such as the strength, longevity, commitment and content of any given relationship (Brass et al., 2004). Adding to it the issue of labor migration, research on effectively managing global relationships reaches a new level of complexity. Thus far, researchers have found strong support for four factors that contribute to the impact of the perception of trust and credibility of employees when staffing global organizations. They include: (1) the perceptions of knowledge and expertise, (2) openness, (3) honesty, and (4) concern and care within the relationship (Peters et al., 1997 and Wong and Boh, 2010). Despite these recent findings, the issue of trust within organizations with regard to inpatriates has been neglected. This creates a level of concern given global organizations' increased needs to staff and continuously manage inpatriate talent and calls for a detailed investigation of the phenomenon of trust among individual inpatriate constituents and their parent country counterparts. The dialog about the temporal perspectives of inpatriate staffing (i.e., short-term vs. long-term inpatriation) can shed further light on the issues of trust when staffing global organizations (for example, see Harvey, 1997, Harvey and Buckley, 1997 and Reiche, 2006). Comparing traditional (i.e., long-term) staffing with the more recent investigation of short-term staffing (Tahvanainen et al., 2005), we attempt to explore an organization's ability to manage multicultural diversity when staffing global organizations. Aside from considering longevity of the assignment, we will analyze the trust-building processes that occur in short-term vis-à-vis long-term inpatriation staffing options. Specifically, building on Whitener et al. (1998) we identify four antecedents of inpatriates' trust building with HQ staff, which include their initial interactions, expectations for reciprocation, perceived costs of unreciprocated exchanges, and perceived cultural novelty. We also discuss both affective and competence-based types of trust that inpatriates may develop (McAllister, 1995). Finally, we derive three distinct outcomes of inpatriates' trust building that may benefit both the organization (e.g., Hewett and Bearden, 2001) and the individual inpatriate (e.g., Bouty, 2000): organizational ability to better manage talent globally, inpatriates' ongoing commitment and loyalty, and inpatriates' career progression. The manuscript is divided into the following sections. First, the paper examines the shift from multinational to global strategy orientation and the resulting impact on staffing. Second, reference point theory is introduced, acting as a foundation for an analysis of the development of trust in/for inpatriate managers. Third, we theorize about how short- and long-term inpatriate staffing alternatives differ with regard to their trust-building processes at the HQ and we derive testable propositions. The key argument is that through staffing with inpatriate managers competencies such as trust building are developed. Moreover, global organizations are better able to implement global talent management and in turn develop more effective and ongoing global relationships based on trust.

Our arguments have several implications for HRM staffing and performance management. As organizations continue to globalize their operations, the demand for staffing the organization with highly skilled global managers will escalate. Presently, many organizations are experiencing a shortage of qualified managers to implement the global strategies of global organizations wanting to pre-empt the globalization trend (Farndale et al., 2010, Gregersen et al., 1998 and Tarique and Schuler, 2010). A relatively new pool of global talent, inpatriate managers, have been identified and tested by a limited number of global organizations. The value of staffing with inpatriate managers as human capital is their social knowledge of markets that could be targeted by global organizations in the future. While inpatriate managers can make a significant contribution to the expansion of global organizations particularly in emerging markets, it is necessary to understand the problems associated with their relocation to the HQ of a global organization. The sheer diversity of staffing the global organization with inpatriate talent is a potential problem related to their inclusion into the organization and the local environment. The differences among inpatriate groups require a well-articulated support system to be developed by the relocating global organization. This support system not only has to address inpatriates' relocation problems, but also needs to incorporate a support package for the inpatriate's family. Inpatriation may be one of the critical links in the globalization of an organization. Yet, without a concentrated effort on the part of the HQ management, inpatriates will experience significant stress and potential failure if they are not attended to by the human resource management system. These unique managers are sophisticated global cosmopolitans, but they still have the same human frailties as anyone being relocated to a culturally distant country. Key to staffing with inpatriates is also the selection of adequate managers that are to be inpatriated to the HQ organization. Given the salience of trust, the selection of candidates for international relocations in general and inpatriation in particular needs to move beyond the focus on technical skills that still dominates corporate practice (e.g., Harris and Brewster, 1999). For example, international human resource managers need to also assess candidates' abilities to develop close relationships with peers, and their cultural sensitivity towards cultural others. Our arguments further point to the need for assessing the performance and success of short-term and long-term inpatriates. One alternative would be to measure the extent to which inpatriates initiate cross-unit relationships between the HQ and the subsidiary (see Reiche et al., 2009), thereby strengthening global relationships within the organization. An indicator may be the increase in frequency of cross-unit communication. Moreover, given inpatriates' in-depth experiences in both the home- und the host-country organizations, inpatriate success will not be limited to the actual assignment. Rather, inpatriates are likely to continue to benefit the organization as a whole upon completion of their assignments, for example by continuing to diffuse tacit and strategic knowledge that is relevant for other parts of the organization. In this vein, recent evidence suggests that the social relationships inpatriates develop at the HQ will facilitate their long-term retention (Reiche et al., 2011). Implicit to this argument is that short-term inpatriates in particular may need to embark on repeated HQ relocations in order to maintain and renew their trust towards HQ staff. There are further implications for empirically testing our conceptual framework. First, researchers would need to apply a matched sample of short-term and long-term inpatriates employed in the same organizations to be able to compare their trust-building processes. Initial evidence suggests that organizations indeed employ both types of inpatriates simultaneously (Reiche, 2006). Second, given that our outcome dimensions are located at different levels of analysis the use of multi-level statistical analysis tools are necessary. Third, an adequate measure of interpersonal trust would require the collection of reciprocal data from both inpatriate managers and their HQ counterparts. In this regard, social network analysis (Wasserman and Faust, 1994) offers valuable insights for the resulting research design considerations. In sum, the role that trust plays in the relocation of inpatriate managers cannot be underestimated both from the organization perspective and that of the inpatriate manager. Given the perceptual problem of the inpatriate managers being ‘foreign’, a well articulated program by the organization will need to be provided for the local employees with insight as to the role the inpatriate manager will play in the global future of the organization. At the same time, inpatriate managers will have to be made aware of the potential resistance they may face from HQ personnel and can therefore be viewed as members of the ‘out group’. The continual necessity of reciprocally trusting relationships will make acceptance at the HQ a delicate goal to accomplish with the pivotal fulcrum being the success and improved performance to gain sustainable competitive advantage.