توسعه یک رویکرد هم افزایی فرهنگی برای مدیریت بین المللی منابع انسانی

This paper offers international human resource (IHR) professionals guidelines how to decide which IHRM approach to choose. In choosing among an adaptive, exportive, or integrated IHR approach, IHR managers may want to consider three decision criteria, e.g. forces for global integration and local adaptation, the cultural component of HRM, and the power dynamics within the MNC. To develop an organization that values cultural differences, IHR professionals may choose a culturally synergistic approach to IHRM. This approach has the potential of designing new combinations of HRM practices and simultaneously attends to the three decision criteria. A large U.S. based company acquired several years ago a small, successful Belgian company. While headquarters (HQ) initially managed the merger in a very decentralized approach, they recently moved towards a more centralized approach. It was the strong belief of the company’s president that the global world has no geographical boundaries, which led to the implementation of several uniform policies, not only in the core domain of R&D but also, in the area of human resource management (HRM). An example here was the corporate message that turnover in the Belgian plant was too low. It was HQ’s belief that a dynamic and result-oriented company has a turnover of approximately 15%. Because turnover in the Belgian affiliate was even lower than 5%, the Belgian HR department was informed about the following decision. They had to work out a performance appraisal system with forced choice to weed out the bad performers. All employees had to be evaluated during the following year and the evaluation scores needed to reflect a Gauss curve. Those employees who had the lowest scores were presented with a choice: improve or be fired. The Belgian HR team hired a consultancy organization to implement the appraisal process. The results of this international HR decision were anxiety among most of the Belgian employees, an intensification of rumors and an increase in uncertainty about the position of the Belgian unit within the whole company. This story indicates one of the major questions of international HRM: when to impose HR policies and when to adapt them to the local context? The story further illustrates the negative consequences when HQ doesn’t consider the cultural component of a HR practice or when they are not sensitive to the power position of an affiliate. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to provide HR practitioners with guidelines of how to decide when to adapt and when to impose, as well as how to implement a culturally synergistic approach. We develop these guidelines by first synthesizing the different theoretical models of strategic international HRM. From these models, three different approaches to IHRM can be identified: an exportive, an adaptive and an integrative approach. We discuss these three options, with its different advantages and disadvantages. To decide which IHRM approach to choose, we present three criteria that drive the decision: local versus global forces, the cultural component of HRM practices, and power dynamics. We discuss why and how these three criteria may help the decision making process and then apply them as guidelines to the Belgian case. In the second part of the paper, we introduce a culturally synergistic approach to IHRM. Based upon the models of cultural synergy Adler 1997 and Hoecklin 1995 and problem solving (Schein, 1999), we first discuss how this approach has the potential of designing new combinations of HRM practices instead of only transferring best practices from HQ to affiliates and vice versa. We further develop this IHRM approach by identifying its different steps and formulating guidelines of implementation. A culturally synergistic approach offers the potential of considering simultaneously the need for global integration, the cultural embeddedness of HRM practices and the importance of the affiliates’ power and autonomy. Its purpose is to support IHR managers in developing an organization that values differences.

The purpose of this paper was to offer IHR professionals insights and guidelines of how to decide on an IHRM policy. Following the SIHR models, IHR professionals have the options of an exportive, and adaptive and an integrative IHR approach. The three main criteria that can help making the decision are an assessment of the local and global forces, the cultural component of HR practices and the power dynamics within the MNC. As forces for global integration and local adaptation are simultaneously present, the result may be a mix of the three IHR approaches across different tasks, affiliates and employee groups. Besides an exportive, adaptive and integrative IHR approach, IHR professionals may want to consider a culturally synergistic approach to IHRM. A culturally synergistic approach has the ambition to design new HR practices by recognizing and transcending the individual cultures. It therefore goes beyond an integrated approach which refers only to a global diffusion of best practices and not to a new combination. The advantage of a culturally synergistic model lies in simultaneously considering the need for global coordination, the recognition of the cultural embeddedness of HRM, and the importance of power and autonomy of the local affiliates. Global coordination can be ensured by taking the need for an integrated IHRM practice as a starting point and by evaluating at the end whether or not the chosen solution can serve as the integrated IHRM practice. However, coordination and control in this case does not mean that HQ itself can decide on the type of HR practice. Instead, coordination in a culturally synergistic approach consists of a feedback and monitoring process. The second criterion, the cultural component of HRM practices, is surely recognized because the approach consists of exploring best practices of different cultures, trying to understand how these practices lead to the desired outcome and then trying to create new alternatives by blending and combining practices. And finally, the approach stresses as much as possible a jointly decision making process with equal power as an important condition for stimulating synergies. By choosing this approach, HR managers may become actively involved in developing an organization that values cultural differences and in guiding their organization toward a more inclusive worldview.