Strategic international human resource management: Choices and consequences in multinational people management, second edition, by S. J. Perkins and S. M. Shortland. London: Kogan page, 2006. 258 pages. $55.00 (paperback)
✍ Scribed by Russell Korte
- Book ID
- 102255950
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 226 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1044-8004
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✦ Synopsis
In this second edition of Strategic International Human Resource Management, Perkins and Shortland skillfully guide readers through the complex world of strategically managing an organization' s human resources in a multinational context. They cover the complexity of managing the employment system as a subsystem of larger business, national, and cultural systems. Drawing from the vast scholarship of psychology and organization science, as well as the richness of their experiences in practice, they examine human resource management (HRM) functions and practices from multiple theoretical frameworks and empirical studies.
The HRM functions examined in this book include managing employee performance in a multicultural environment, training and development, sourcing employees, managing employee relationships, and compensation practices. Not only is managing diverse groups of people a complex challenge, but the multinational context hosts a variety of organizational designs and cultural variables, along with various organizational perspectives and strategic intentions driving the efforts to manage people around the world.
The authors describe various categories of employees in the employment system, among them expatriates, inpatriates, local nationals, and third-country nationals. They also describe other stakeholders, such as investors, local communities, families of employees, and governments, rounding out the interdependent populations involved with multinational organizations. These groups function within different structures of multinational organizations having different operational foci and practices for sourcing talent, knowledge management, and reward systems.
The authors categorize organizations as decentralized federations, coordinated federations, centralized hubs, and synthesized transnationals based on the type of operational focus, resourcing practices, knowledge management, and reward structures they primarily use. From the descriptions of these structures, Perkins and Shortland imply a loose developmental scheme ranging from the opportunistic and locally focused practices of decentralized federations to the respectful, collaborative practices of synthesized transnationals.