Running Head : TOYOTA ASSIGNMENT

Culture Shock and International Human Resource Practices: Toyota

Culture Shock and International Human Resource Practices: Toyota

Introduction

Toyota is one of the world's most successful organizations in terms of its efficiency in reduction and human resource management. Toyota follows effective leadership in the organization to motivate, influence, direct and guide employees towards the long term vision of the company. The corporate and business strategy of Toyota revolves around a long term vision to achieve sustainable competitive advantage over major competitors operating in the market. The major competitors of the company are Ford Motors, General Motors, Fiat, and Nissan Motors. Toyota's management approach or the Toyota's Way aims towards long term organizational success. This has significantly focused upon Just in time production where it focuses upon continuous improvement and total quality management in its business methods. The long term efficiency and performance of Toyota focuses upon having efficient human resource that can minimize wastage as well as costs and, therefore, lead to greater efficiency in the competitive environment. However, the employees of Toyota working in India have demonstrated a fall in performance and it is assumed that this is the result of culture shock. Toyota is a multinational corporation that engages in the creation, production and sale of vehicles mainly cars, trucks and parts. Today, all successful organizations, should focus on their business activities and processes for achieving maximum performance. Toyota has been successful in managing its business successfully due to intense competition in the global market through its efficient business strategy. To deal with the challenging and dynamic international environment, organizations like Toyota emphasize upon their production system efficiency and human resource development so that both can be integrated to achieve organizational success.

Research Question

In this study, we will analyze and evaluate effective recruitment practices for international managers. The organization selected for this study is Toyota, a company that has extensive operations in several international markets. The impact of culture and the adverse effects of culture shock on global teams will also be investigated and reviewed extensively in this paper. The effective expatriate training methods will be identified and analyzed for achieving efficiency and effectiveness of human resource in the international markets.

Discussion

Toyota has expanded business operations and has factories in many countries where it manufactures and assembles vehicles for their local markets. The company has successfully established assembly plants in Japan, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, South Africa, France, Brazil, U.K, U.S, Egypt, Vietnam, Russia, Mexico, Poland, Pakistan, Argentina, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines (Toyota's 21st Century Diversity Strategy, 2005). Toyota has developed Toyota Production System (TPS) which was originally called Just in time production, where it organizes and manages the business activities of the automobile manufacturer so that the company can achieve organizational effectiveness through efficiency and continuous improvements in its systems.

The core objective of this system is to reduce wastage (called Muda) and inconsistencies (called Mura) through the adoption of a designed system where production is smooth and disruptions and faults are minimal. There are mainly six types of ...