使用引用的學(xué)術(shù)研究；分析和解釋佩恩公司面對的主要人力資源問題、困境和復(fù)雜性；作為一個結(jié)果，建立一個國際業(yè)務(wù)的決定。您可以專注于一個或兩個選定的問題進(jìn)行更深層次的分析�？粗�公司到目前為止的經(jīng)驗(yàn)，，并借鑒在該領(lǐng)域的研究，準(zhǔn)備董事會概述和論證，佩恩公司會為了實(shí)現(xiàn)其經(jīng)營戰(zhàn)略和建立長期競爭優(yōu)勢所需要的人力資源戰(zhàn)略的核心組件的聲明。

Using references to academic research; analyse and explain the main human resource issues, dilemmas and complexity facing Paine & Co; as a result of its decision to build an international presence. You may focus on one or two selected issues for deeper analysis.

Looking at the company's experience so far, and drawing on research in the field, prepare a statement for the board outlining and justifying the core components of the HR strategy that Paine & Co. will need in order to implement its business strategy and build long-term competitive advantage.

Does research into national cultures offer a useful means for analysing Paine & Co.'s new operational context? Outline and apply one of the main culturalist theories to this case - and discuss any limitations of these approaches, using examples from the case study.

Reflection:
You should add a section to your coursework that, in 200 words, explains how you improved your work when compared with the original submission, and what you did to respond to any feedback you received.

Question 1:

Introduction
The analysis of question 1 will start with a description of the approaches used in this assignment, follow by a description of the assignment case study which is Paine & Co. I will then provide an overview of the human resources issues, dilemmas and complexity highlighted by the case study in the context of International HRM and conduct deeper analysis on the topic of HR Strategic Planning.

Assignment Approach
Research was conducted through literature review using references from journal related to International HRM in general; and specifically in areas of strategic management, performance appraisal, staff retention and knowledge management.

Research was also conducted using references from books related to IHRM and cultures theory as well as using materials from relevant internet website. All of which are listed in the references section in the appendix.

Overview of the Case Study
The assignment task is concerning a case study of a company name Paine & Co; which started as an Information Technology consultancy company in 1973. It has since expanded internationally and currently the head quarter is located in London and it has two UK branches (London and Edinburg) and three international branch offices located in India, Frankfurt and Paris. Each of the branch offices have their own share of issue which will be further analyze in the subsequent section.

A review was conducted in spring 2008 and it was decided that international expansion was necessary to secure the firm's long term viability. The outcome of the review was to expand its presence in India, Germany and France and to establish international branch offices in Singapore, USA and in the next five years in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Overview of HR issues, dilemmas and complexity facing Paine & Co
From a macro view, International Human Resource Management (IHRM) is the process of strategizing and planning, procurement, allocation, development, retention and compensation for the optimize utilization of human resources in a multinational corporation. Paine & Co will need to manage all these issues and complexity.

Plessis (2010) noted that the International Human Resource (HR) manager will need to consider many aspects when working in a multi-national situation, including the culture of the people, laws of the country, expectations of pay and conditions of work for local and expatriate staff and to integrate these together into practices and procedures

By managing international human resources correctly, MNC can enable a business to compete more successfully in the world market place. (Plessis, 2010).

Human Resources Strategic Planning
Paine & Co currently operate its offices in a decentralized approach and there is no interchange of people between subsidiaries. Each office has discretion on hiring and other HR policies. This is perhaps one of the key challenges noted in the case study. Due to its strategic issue, or rather a lack of a sound strategy, Paine & Co conducted a review in 2008 to try to fix this issue.

As Paine & Co expands their international operations, they will need to identify and put in place a HR planning strategy which derives the best fit with regards to which IHRM activities of the parent country could and would be adopted worldwide. I will explore more on best fit in deeper analysis below.

International Recruitment, Selection and Development
As Paine & Co expands their international operations, they will need to manage the challenges of international recruitment, selection and development. Staff retention will also be a key issue which is link to compensation as well.

Edwards and Rees (2006) weight in on international managers selection and noted that MNC need to consider a wider scope of issue including the organization needs, the candidate's needs, the nature of the global and local pressures, the circumstances of the assignment and tailor their programme accordingly.

Tarique and Schuler (2010) noted that increasingly, the efforts of most IHRM staff is now being redirected toward managing talent on a global basis and MNC need to examine how IHRM activities of attraction, development, and retention work together in an international context.

They further noted that one of the key challenges for MNC is to establish a long-term global talent management (GTM) strategy which will take into consideration the laws, culture, society, politics, economy, and general environment of a particular location.

Paine & Co will need to establish such a GTM system that will enable it to address a more complex and diverse international operating environment while also anticipating the future concerns of varied stakeholders.

International Compensation and Performance Management
Paine & Co's compensation and benefits strategy relies on bonus system which makes up of 20 to 30% of annual remuneration. However the formula is based on assessment of the consultants' works on projects and this leads to discretionary element; with the final remuneration decision decided by the senior management. This system has also created internal politics resulting in confusion for the client.

Pay and conditions of employment are too important for MNC to standardise throughout all the offices. Although it is not easy to manage pay packages of staff in different international offices, who are all earning at different rates, employees are more likely to be more satisfied if they feel they are being paid what they are worth, especially those who are posted on an expatriate's package. (Plessis, 2010)

Festing et all (2007) summarized that compensation systems can support the corporate strategy and play a major role for MNC in realising competitive advantage and must be aligned with the corporate strategy (vertical fit) as well as with other HR practices in the MNC (horizontal fit). A high degree of transparency; fosters a feeling of equal treatment among the employees and a consistent compensation systems can facilitate the administration processes by increasing operational efficiencies.

Deeper analysis on HR Strategic Planning
We will continue our analysis of this case study by looking deeper into the issue of International Human Resource Strategic Planning. I will focus on the need for a holistic strategic approach, touching on best fit and will cover the discussion ranging from the form and structure of the MNC to the attitude of the international managers and lastly a discussion on global work values of MNCs.

For Paine & Co which is in IT service industry, its human resource strategy must achieve two somewhat conflicting strategic objectives.

First, it must integrate human resource policies and practices across a number of offices in different countries so as to achieve the corporate objectives and goal.

At the same time, its HRM policies must be sufficiently flexible to allow for significant differences in the type of HR policies and practices that are most effective in different business and cultural settings.

To achieve the above objective, we will need to firstly analyze the international human resource strategic planning in term of form and structure of the MNC.

Harzing and Ruysseveldt (2004) provided a summary of how Bartlett and Ghoshal (2000) typology of international firms distinguish four types of MNC's organization model and how it has changed over time from multi domestic organization model to International organization model and then to global organization model and finally to the transnational organization models.

Table : The means and ends of creating worldwide advantage
This framework provide a good starting point for the analysis of the strategic planning approach which can be apply at Paine & Co. Figure 3 indentify the characteristics of the transnational organization models in which expertise is spread throughout the organization and subsidiaries are involved in shared decision making.

Figure : The Transnational Firm - An Integrated Network.
In addition to form and structure of the organization, Paine & Co will need to consider the attitudes orientation of the international managers as this will have a major impact on the human resources strategic planning.

Harzing and Ruysseveldt (2004) using the Perlmutter (1969) international state of mind modal, summarized the implication of the headquarter orientation based on the attitudes of international manages using the table in Figure 1 below.

Using this modal, Paine & Co can be categorized as being polycentric or host-country oriented. This will result in varied and independent complexity of organization, relatively low authority decision-making in headquarters, limited communication flow between headquarters and branch offices, limited communication flow between branch offices, identification of nationality of host country and perpetuation of local nationality for key position in their own country.

Table : Perlmutter's HQ Orientation Model
I will end the analysis on HR strategic planning with a review of global work values, as communicating and defining the MNC work cultures may be perhaps of the most important strategic task for the international HR manager.

Rosenblatt (2011) proposed that the level of dissemination of global work values is related to the how MNC regulate and institutionalize these values within and between MNC. She further proposed that certain global work values (customer orientation, competitive performance orientation and openness to cultural diversity) transcend global work environment and cultural.

As such it is important for Paine & Co to also take notice that as it expand its business globally, it must learn to integrate diverse work system and advocate shared global work values to create an atmosphere where all employees are able to organize their activities to achieve the corporate goal.

Question 3:

Introduction
The analysis of question 3 will start with a description of the approaches used in this assignment follow by a definition of national cultures and a description of Paine & Co's new operation context. I will then provide an outline of Hofstede's cultural dimension and apply the 5 dimension to analyze this case study. In closing, I will discuss the limitations of the approach used in comparison with example from the case study.

Assignment Approach
The assignment approach used here is the same as for Question 1, with focus on using references from journal related to culturalist theories in general; and specifically in areas of IHRM, cross border organization and MNC structure.

Research was also conducted using references from books and from relevant internet website. All of which are listed in the references section in the appendix.

Definitions of National Cultures
Hosfstede (2005) defines cultures as the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another where else Tayeb (2005) define it as the historically evolved values, attitudes and meanings that are learned and shared by the members of community and which influence their material and non-material way of a life.

Different countries have different institutions: government, judicial and legal system, society, religious communities and cultures, given rise to the term of national cultures.

Paine & Co's New Operation Context
Paine & Co's new operation context will see the company embark on international expansion to service internationally-operating clients. It plans to expand its presence in India, expand the scale and range of its German operations, develop its French business and open new offices in USA, Singapore, and in the next five years in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

As Paine and Co venture into new countries, the understanding of the local cultures will help it to form better IHRM strategy and approaches.

Outline of culturalist theories.
In this section I will provide an outline of the culturalist theories using Hofstede's five cultural dimensions which is a model to measure the similarities and differences between national cultures.

Power Distance

This dimension refers to the extent in which the less powerful members of organizations accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.

Individualism/Collectivism

This refers to the degree in which individuals are integrated into groups. On the individualist side we find relationship between individuals is loose and on the collectivist side, we find individuals integrated into strong, cohesive groups.

Masculinity

Masculinity is related to the evidence that dissimilar societies cope differently with gender roles. In countries with a lower masculinity index (higher levels of femininity), life satisfaction of workers tends to take precedence over job success. ( Cagliano et all, 2010)

Uncertainty Avoidance

This deals with the group tolerance for uncertainty and is an indication as to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations.

Long-Term Orientation

Values associated with Long Term Orientation are thrift and perseverance; values associated with Short Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and protecting one's 'face'.

Application to Paine & Co
Hofstede's five cultural dimensions which measure the relative scoring for the country in which Paine & Co have an interest in, is provided below.

Table : Hofstede's Cultural Dimentions Summary
The item in yellow signify high comparison value where else those in blue signify lower comparison value.

Looking at this statistics we can see that each of the country Paine & Co will be operating in have very different national culture dimension. However there are also similarities noted from the data.

For example China has one of the highest power distance value.

In high-power distance cultural, power need less legitimization than in low-power distance societies; are more accustomed to centralized and paternal leadership and worker participation in decision processes is low ( Cagliano et all, 2010).

Another example is Singapore which has the lowest uncertainty avoidance index as compared with France will require different degrees of rules and control.

Limitations of culturalist theories approaches
Barinaga (2007) argue that national culture should not be treated as a predetermined template as it fails to consider the freedom individual has in defining national identity. The relevance of national culture lies not in it being conformed to in action, but in it being taken into account as an available resource for making sense of action.

Recent research conducted by Stelzl and Seligman (2009), demonstrated that people with dual ethnic identities associate distinct value systems with each identity.

The implication is that individuals may reflect different values in different situation and may not follow a national culture norm all the time.

Along the same line, in additional to individual, subgroup may exist at a national level, resulting in sub-cultures which may differ in values from the national cultures.

Applying this to Paine & Co, it is important to be aware that individual may differ from the norm of complying with the national cultures and it's important to take this into consideration when venturing to new country.

Reflection:

The whole experience of IHRM 109 and this assignment in particular have been a journey of discovery for me. Researching on the different aspect of IHRM has provided me with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the role of HR in determining the success of implementing and achieving the corporate objective and goal.

This course has provided me with invaluable insight into international staffing especially on expatriation recruitment and selection. Human resources performance management is another area which will have immediate and direct applicability for my current assignment.

Feedback which I received during the length of the course, especially the discussion held during the class and dialogue with fellow course mate during assignment research has taught me to analyze deeper and in a more structure