Research Project - Week Two

Management and leadership are considered the most important variables in determining the amount of success that an organization is likely to enjoy. As such, it is always important for an organization to ensure that it hires the most suitable people to hold top management positions. As globalization continues to take root in modern organization, expatriate assignments are on the rise. This research project seeks to find out what factors really affect the success that a particular manager will attain.

The management dilemma here is whether a company should adopt an geocentric, ethnocentric, or polycentric approach when selecting staff. It will be important to find out the advantages and disadvantages of each staffing strategy as well as the applicability to the organization. The research will involve the analysis of the organization's operations to determine which of these three strategies will work best.

The research question here will be 'whether using local staff in international branches of the company will yield higher productivity than current levels'. The hypothesis formulated is that by using local staff a company is able to adapt better to the requirements of the local country.

In previous research, scholars have established that sending people to work in foreign countries could jeopardize the productivity of the company because such people take a while to settle into the company and adopt to the other country's culture. However, the use of staff from a company's country of origin is important in protecting the company's culture (Caligiuri et al, 2009). This way, the headquarters office is able to maintain control over the nature of operations in the branches. This is quite important in ensuring the services or products a company offers are standardized.

References

Caligiuri, P., Tarique, I., & Jacobs, R. (2009). Selection for international assignments. Human Resource Management Review, 19(3), 251-262.