GLOBAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

1) Q 2002, 2006, 2008) A trend among many international companies has been a replacement of expatriates in foreign subsidiaries with local managers. What implications might this have for control? 2) Q 2003, 2007) What are the factors which may affect the compensation package of expatriates? 3) Q 2005) Discuss some of the major reasons why expatriate assignments fail. What can be done to ensure success? 4) Q 2004) The role of expatriate managers in the success of multinational companies is critical. Yet most multinationals fail to use their expatriates well (Anonymous Expatriate Manager) Discuss, illustrating your answer with examples of why the career development of expatriates can be such a problem for both companies and the expatriates.

INTRODUCTION
The world is becoming more and more global and to be successful, many companies have to compete on the global playing field. This is due to the fact that costs associated with the development and marketing of new products are too great to be amortized only over one market and production costs can be cheaper elsewhere around the world. This globalization of companies is making it more important than ever to understand how multinational enterprises can operate more effectively. One major component of this understanding is the field of human resource management (HRM), and in particular, the field of international human resource management (IHRM; Schuler, Dowling & De Cieri, 1993). According to Harvey and Moeller (2009) there are currently 850,000 subsidiaries of multinational corporations operating globally. Furthermore, 65 per cent of MNCs surveyed in a GMAC global relocation survey are expecting expatriate manager numbers to rise steadily over the next decade (Harvey & Moeller, 2009). Expatriate managers continue to be a viable means for exercising control over foreign operations and they can therefore have a direct impact on organizational performance. This, together with the underlined fact about the growth in the expatriate cadre worldwide, makes it of highly interest to examine the HRM process of international assignments. Furthermore, an international assignment is the single more powerful experience in shaping the perspective and capabilities of effective global leaders. People are the key to success; they are the ones behind the strategy. However, an international assignment is also the single most expensive per-person investment that a company makes in globalizing their people (Black, Gregersen, Mendenhall, & Stroh, 1999).

GLOBALIZATION: It is the process of integrating world economies; growth in the functional integration of national economies.

INTERNATIONAL HRM It is the process of procuring, allocating and effectively using HR in a multinational organization in a way in which work organisations deal with people management issues occurring in more than one national context.