International and Comparative Human Resource Management

International Human Resource Management has been defined as HRM issues, functions, policies and practices that result from the strategic activities of MNEs. International Human Resource Management deals principally with issues and problems associated with the globalization of capitalism. It involves the same elements as domestic HRM but is more complex to manage, in terms of the diversity of national contexts and types of workers. The emphasis is on the MNCs’ ability to attract, develop and deploy talented employees in a multinational setting and to get them to work effectively despite differences in culture, language and locations. International HRM tends to mitigate the impact of national culture and national employment practice against corporate culture and practices. Comparative Human Resource Management, on the other hand, is a systematic method of investigation that seeks to explain the patterns and variations encountered in cross-national HRM rather than simply describe HRM institutions and practices in Continue reading

Career Counselling in Organizations

Career counselling is a process whereby an employee is guided by a manager in performance-related behavior. The employee is unable to perform the job satisfactorily. His work behavior is inconsistent with the work environment and organizational culture. It is manifested in fighting, stealing, unexcused lateness and absence.  Career counselling involves guiding of employee by a manager to overcome performance problems. The problem is desire-created based on unwillingness. Career counselling involves the following steps: Identification of the performance problem – The reason for poor performance should be identified. Specific job behavior should be objectively documented in terms of date, time, and what happened. The manager should have good listening skills to uncover the reason for performance problem. The manager should focus on job performance problems only, not the employee as a person. He should treat the employee objectively, fairly and equitably.  Make sure the employee owns up the problem – The Continue reading

Memorandum of Association of a Company

The Memorandum of Association is the charter of the company, and provides the foundation on  which the structure of the company is built. It defines the scope of the company’s activities as well as its  relation with the outside world. Section 2(28)of the Companies Act defines a Memorandum as “the memorandum of association  of a company as originally framed or as altered from time to time in pursuance of any previous Company  Laws or of this Act”. Section 13 of the Act specifies the contents of the memorandum. The importance of the Memorandum is that it lays down the ambit of the powers of the company,  the area within which the company can operate and beyond which it cannot go.  The purpose of the Memorandum is to enable the shareholders, creditors and those who deal with  the company to know what is its permitted range of enterprise. The Memorandum of Continue reading

Case Study: Cisco Systems Inc.’s ERP Implementation

Introduction Cisco Systems, Inc. is a big player in the Internet technologies field, manufacturing their primary product – the router. Two Stanford computer scientists founded the company in 1984, unbelievably by 1997, Cisco became a fortune 500 company and in the following year Cisco’s market capitalization was over $100 billion dollars.  With the gigantic growth experienced Cisco needed to look into their future regarding their existing Enterprise Resource Planning package. Unreliability and common outages brought into question the validity of trying to enlarge the current system to meet the Cisco’s constantly growing needs. The current system was a UNIX-based software package that supported financial, manufacturing, and order-entry systems.  An upgrade was made available to Cisco, but would be a fix that offered more reliability and redundancy without maintainability or room for growth.  The management structure in 1993 provided that each functional business unit make its own decisions regarding the future of their IT Continue reading

New Trade Theory of International Trade

New Trade Theory  of International Trade  takes a different approach from the Ricardian and the Heckscher-Ohlin models on why countries engage in international trade. Both Ricardo and Heckscher assumed constant returns to scale where to them if all factors of production are doubled then output will also double. But a firm or industry may have increasing returns to scale or economies of scale in way that when all factors of production are doubled, output more than doubles which will necessitate a bigger market and thus forcing firms to engage in international trade where there is a larger market. The New Trade Theorist noted that the bigger the size of a firm or industry the more the efficiency of its operations in that the the cost per unit of output falls as a firm or industry increases output. The increase in output must however be met with an increase in the Continue reading

Perspectives on Industrial Relations

Industrial relations is a set of phenomena operating both within and outside the workplace, concerned with determining and regulating the employment relationship. Scholars have described three major theoretical perspectives or frameworks, that contrast in their understanding and analysis of workplace relations. The three important perspectives on industrial relations are generally known as Unitarism, Pluralism and Marxism. Each offers a particular perception of workplace relations and will therefore interpret such events as workplace conflict, the role of unions and job regulation differently. The three major perspectives on Industrial Relations are; 1. Unitary Perspective In unitarism, the organization is perceived as an integrated and harmonious system, viewed as one happy family. A core assumption of unitary approach is that management and staff, and all members of the organization share the same objectives, interests and purposes; thus working together, hand-in-hand, towards the shared mutual goals. Furthermore, unitarism has a paternalistic approach where it Continue reading