Ethnocentric Approach In Human Resource Management

In the modern business organization, for a corporation to be able to manage and develop human assets is always the major goal in their human resource management. Human resource management (HRM) is to deal with the relationship of the employee with the organization. Where the basic of HRM consists of recruitment, selection, training and development, performance appraisal, compensation and labor relations (J.B Cullen & K.P Parboteeah, 2008). As the emphasizing to the globalizing world economy, building on internationally experienced management talent. As a company entering international arena, complexity comes in where mixture of workers from different nationalities, national culture and business cultures. This is where the importance on expatriate

This is where staffing policy comes as it involves in selecting individuals that have the required skill. While on the other level, it acts as a tool for developing and promoting the desired corporate culture (E.H.Schein, 1985). Ethnocentric approach is more of international strategic as it focuses on overcomes lack of qualified managers in host nation, unified culture and helps in transfer core competencies to a foreign subsidiary in transferring the appropriate managers. While the geocentric approach focus on global standardization and transnational whereby it able to exploit the use of human resource efficiently and to build up a strong culture and informal management network. With ethnocentric policy, the expatriates are all home-country nationals which are being transferred abroad. While geocentric approach, the expatriates not necessarily to be home-country nationals as the firm do not base transfer decisions on nationality. From here we can see that there’s a prominent issue in the context of international staffing which is expatriate failure (S.Black, M.Mendenhall and G.Oddou, 1991). Expatriates failure represents the failure of the firm’s selection policies to reveal those individual who will not thrive abroad (M.G, Harvey, 1983). The consequences include premature return from a foreign posting and high resignation rates on expatriates resign from their company at about twice the

In the early 1990s, Shell finds that it is difficult to recruit key personnel for foreign posting. As result, the company has interview more than 200 expatriate employees and their spouses to determine the reason. According to the survey, found that there are 5 issue that affect great on the decision for the employee to accept an international assignment, which is: to be separate from their children during their secondary education; harm done to the spouse’s career and employment; fail to recognize and involve a spouse in the relocation decision; fail to provide adequate information and assistance regarding relocation; and health issues. From the interview, the basic reason of the rejection of international assignment most concern is on the family aspect but not individual. To deal with this issue, Shell has implemented a number of programs which aids with expatriate children education which often providing grants by sending to private schools in the host country. Besides that helping spouses with their career is more of a vexing issue, but Shell set up a spouse employment center to address the problem where it provides career counseling and