International HR

Eric Christopher, Associate Director for Global HR Development at Tex-Mark, was sitting in his car in an early-morning traffic jam. He had thought that by leaving his home at 7.00 a.m. he would have been ahead of the heavy commuter traffic into San Anto- nio’s city center. The explanation for the long queue was announced by the radio traffic service. A large portable crane, used to set up concrete barriers around roadworks, had overturned, and inbound and outbound traffic would be at a dead stop for at least an hour. Eric had ended up at Tex-Mark, a computer input-output manufacturer and supplier, through an indirect career route. Brought up in the Hill Country Vil- lage district of San Antonio, Eric had graduated from Churchill High School and Baylor University in Waco, Texas with a major in History and a minor in Spanish. His maternal grandmother lived in Tennessee but was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Eric had spent several summers while in high school and at university backpacking around Europe. His facility for languages was impressive and he had an excellent working use of Spanish, French, Ital- ian, and German. He could converse in Cantonese, as the result of working in a noodle restaurant during uni- versity, and had started a tutorial course in Mandarin last fall. Upon graduation, Eric backpacked around Europe and South America until his money ran out. Return- ing to Dallas he took a ticketing job with SouthWest Airlines and was quickly moved to the training unit. After four successful years at SouthWest, he was contacted by a headhunter about a position as Global Development Assistant with Tex-Mark. The prom- ised combination of global travel, more money, and a return to San Antonio proved irresistible, and now Eric had been with Tex-Mark for five years. His career progress to date was outstanding, despite the extra workload self-imposed by undertaking MBA studies at UT, San Antonio as a part-time student. Tex-Mark had started out as a ‘spin-off’ firm from IME Computers in the late 1970s. Patents, combined with an excellence in engineering, an outstanding insti- tutional sales staff and cost-sensitive production and pricing all combined to make Tex-Mark a major force in the printer and optical scanner industry. Tex-Mark inherited a production facility in San Antonio from IME, but the company also had international production facilities operating in three countries: Monterrey, Mex- ico, Leith, Scotland and, more recently, Jaipur, India. A major new facility was planned to start production in Wuhu, China late next year. Research and new product development activities were split between the home offices in San Antonio, a printer center in Durham, North Carolina and an opti- cal research ‘center of excellence’ in Edinburgh, Scot- land. Major sales, distribution and customer service centers had recently expanded into Asia and were now located in Rheims in France; Memphis, Tennes- see; Sydney, Australia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Hong Kong; and Tel Aviv, Israel. Faced with the long delay, Eric turned the radio volume down, turned up the air conditioning and tele- phoned his office on his hands-free car phone to advise them of his situation. Fortunately, his personal assistant was already at work, so Eric was able to rearrange his schedule. He asked that the 10.30 meeting with Fred Banks, a plant engineer recently repatriated from Jai- pur, be pushed back an hour. His major concern was a teleconference meeting at 2.00 with his director, who was currently visiting the sales center in Memphis, and the other four members of the executive career development team in San Antonio. The general topic was a review and evaluation of training and develop- ment strategies for expatriate professionals and man- agers resulting from Tex-Mark’s growth and the new production shift to Asia. Eric had indirectly heard that Juanita Roberto, the Vice President for HR, wanted costs cut and her delegates on the team would be pushing for streamlined (Eric had mentally translated