INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

International Human Resource Management

Abstract

This paper provides exploratory analysis of the human resource management processes and practices in Indonesia. Indonesia is a young country and even the idea of a single nation encompassing all of its territory is barely a century old. The word Indonesia itself was little known until the 1920s, when colonial subjects of the Dutch East Indies seized on it as the name for the independent nation they dreamed of. Their dream was realized in 1949 after a long, hard battle to throw off colonial rule. Since then independent Indonesia's growing pains have encompassed rebellions, religious strife, three decades of military dictatorship, and much bloodshed, extremes of wealth and poverty, and expansionist adventures into neighboring territories. Today, economic development has come a long way and Indonesia is maturing as a multi - party democracy, though not without its problem areas.

International Human Resource Management

Introduction

Before Indonesia, there was the Dutch East Indies —itself an idea that mutated repeatedly over three centuries as hundreds of disparate island states came one by one under the umbrella of a colonial administration. And before that, there were thousands of islands with connections of commerce and culture, some of which were sometimes grouped together under the same ruler, while others were often not even united within themselves.

Discussion

Multiculturalism

Indonesia is a country of literally hundreds of cultures. Every One of its 700 plus languages denotes, at least to some extent, a different culture. They range from the matrilineal Minangkabau of Sumatra and the artistic, Hindu Balinese, to the seafaring Bugis and buffalo sacrificing Toraja of Sulawesi and Papua's penis gourd wearing Dani, to name hut a few. Indonesia's island nature and rugged, mountainous terrain have meant that groups of people have often developed in near isolation from each oilier, resulting in an extraordinary diI1rentiation of culture and language across the archipelago.

Even in densely populated Java there are distinct groups, such as the Badui, who withdrew to the western highlands as Islam spread through the island and have had little contact with outsiders.

The notion that all these peoples could form one nation is a relatively young one, originating in the later part of the Dutch colonial era. Indonesia's 20th-century founding fathers knew that ha country of such diverse culture and religion was to hold together, it needed special handling. They fostered Indonesian nationalism and a national language (Bahasa Indonesia, spoken today by almost all Indonesians but the mother tongue for only about 20% of them).

They rejected ideas that Indonesia Should be a federal republic (potentially centrifugal), or a state subject to the law of Islam, even though this is the religion of' the great majority. Today most Indonesian citizens (with the chief exceptions of many Papuans and some Acehnese) are firmly committed to the idea of Indonesia, even it' there is a lingering feeling that in some ways the country is a Javanese empire.

In terms of broad racia1' distinctions, the great majority of Indonesians are Austronesian — that is, they are ...