HRM PRACTICES

HRM Practices

Standardization of HRM Practices in MNCs

Introduction

Every organization has human resource management to make sure that they manage their human resources in the best possible manner. Apart from the degree of the resources of any organization and its size, the business/organization prospers and strives for its survival because of the performance and capabilities of its employees. In order to make the most of those performances and capabilities, certain activities are important in the organizations. These activities can be given any formal name such as human resources, human development or human resource management or not.

HRM (human resource management) function comprises a number of different activities and among all of these different activities; the most significant one is “human resources”. Human resources are all about staffing need of the organization: to hire employees permanently or on contract bases, engaging and educating the workers, ensuring they are high performers. HRM activities also include dealing with different approaches for providing employee benefits and compensations, managing records of employee and personnel policies (Becker, 2001). The HRM practices are continuously being standardized by the multinational organizations with relevance to the emerging global trends in the international business market. The core focus of this paper is to discuss the ways in which the HRM practices are being standardized by the multinational organizations.

Discussion

“Ohmae (1989) viewed the world as becoming a global market shaped by global technologies and global products with an increasing homogenization of cultures.” It is very obvious that the international business trends have changed and these multinational organizations have started to standardize their human resource management practices in order to cope with the global business trends of the domain of human resource management. The following is the discussion based on the most important aspect on the basis of which multinational organizations standardize their HRM practices. It is also observed that the main aim of multinational organizations in the current business environment is to focus on the sustainability of the organizations in the business organizations.

Sustainability integrates today the strategic agenda of most multinationals. However, research from the Center for Global Leadership in Sustainability, business school IMD, shows that few companies have been devoted entirely to this strategy - which means that the alignment remains “trapped” in various business units resistant, as Finance, Sales and Marketing and, interestingly, the Human Resources area too.

Multinational Companies sometimes struggle to transform the multiple facets of sustainability in strategic growth and competitive advantage. This mainly happens because managers have fixed mindsets, or short-term, highly influenced by the context of business - and also by their own standards of behavior. Corporations can also lack of values, knowledge and skills systems, plus the absence of a supportive culture that allows them to leverage the strategy in a better way (Boxall, 2003). However, experience tells that HR of multinational companies have varying degrees of involvement in strategic implementation. So there is some danger of business discussions summarize the “lowest common denominator”. In fact, the primary issue is that, with the inclusion of non-strategic ...