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Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 1

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 11

The issue of women in international expatriates

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International Human Resource Management: Women as International Expatriates

Most international corporations have become more global in their strategic response to the globalization of markets, which has led to the increase in demand for expatriate employees. In the current competition in the global market, it is important for companies to attract the best workforce that can help promote the best global knowledge as well as experience that will enhance intense competition and survival in the industry. Thus, it has become a necessity for international corporations to create and develop a pool of expatriates that help to manage their international operations. In the past, this group of international expatriates has most often excluded women from performing international assignments due to various beliefs (Adler, 1984). However, there is an increasing trend for the modern corporation that has forced management to re-establish their decisions, and the negative attitudes that exclude assigning women global assignments. Women have increasingly been allocated international managerial duties despite the fact that they are few in the mostly male dominated administrative corporate world. This issue has been examined by various studies that have aimed at finding out the barriers that have prevented women participation in global assignments. The most significant obstacle for the selection of women to international assignments was the reluctance from foreign companies due to the various perceptions from the headquarters of enterprises that discouraged the managers from choosing women. This essay, therefore, aims to examine success of female expatriates during International assignments.

The Process of Hiring International Employees

The process of hiring international expatriates describes how organizations can recruit or hire the right employees and associates for multinational corporations and those that expand to other countries in the globe. The process that requires the most appropriate planning and consideration. It involves several steps as described:

Job Analysis

Job analysis refers to in-depth review of the duties, knowledge, skills, capabilities, as well as personal characteristics that may be required for the success of a particular job position (Foskett, 2003). Job analysis offers job description information. In conducting job analysis, various steps need to be followed.

Collecting Information on the Job

The best place to start from is to develop an overall understanding of the job. This is the key importance that hiring is based. The analysis should review various requirements such as the duties and responsibilities attached to the job, their level and scope, the context of performance of the duties, the primary and minor activities required in performing the task as well as the level of responsibility, accountability as well as authority needed in performing the job (Foskett, 2003).

Listing the Critical Tasks and Essential Competencies

This involves preparing a list of vital competencies and tasks required for successful completion of the job. Recognize and choose the most significant competencies that are needed to enhance high performance. Distinguish characteristics between average and high performers (Foskett, 2003). A position should not have more than 6 to 10 competencies and there should be a clear understanding that all competencies may be critical but they all cannot be critical. Therefore, familiarization with various skills and competencies is important.

Identify Target Performance Level

The target levels describe the various characteristics that show high performers. A target level that is demonstrated by performers at all times should be selected. Inappropriately high performance level should not be chosen as setting it too high can result to disqualification of everyone. Therefore, the emphasis is to focus on the reality or practical situations not ideals. The minimum accepted level of the job should also be selected (Mateso et al., 2010).

Required Experience, Training, Education and Special Considerations

Analyse the final competencies, skills, knowledge as well as the abilities that are required and review the methods that they are acquired such as education, training, experience and volunteers. It is important to review the background of high performing employees on this position. An appropriate qualification procedure and requirements should be considered that are not too high or too low (Mateso et al., 2010). This is to avoid eliminating many qualified people too early and time wasting in case too many applicants turn up.

Special considerations such as criminal records, compliance with government regulations, physical requirements and occupational certifications should be determined here.

Review and Finalize

This is the final stage of the job analysis process. Therefore, a final review to ensure the process is standard and valid is done. Review of critical competencies, skills, behaviour, qualifications and special considerations is completed. These values are now supplemented to job descriptions and the applicant packages and advertisements used to determine the most appropriate evaluation method of hiring (Rau & Adams, 2015).

Reasons for International Assignments

International assignments refer to the sending of employees of an organization abroad for a given period due to several businesses as well as market driven reasons. Due to various hardships that may be related to international assignments, many multinational corporations insist on employing the use of expatriates (Adler, 1985). Some of these experts are mainly women and the various reasons for the multinational agencies to have international assignments include organizational development, managerial development as well as position filling.

Administrative Development

Employees can be required to move to other regions of the world where the organization is based to be trained and developed to enable them to help in creating shared corporate values of the organization across its operations (Adler, 1994). Therefore, managerial development is essential for the individual expatriate development and improvement of their values as well as competence, and this can be achieved effectively through international assignments. Similarly, career development through international assignments can be seen as a motivational factor among the various employees in an organization including women.

Position Filling

International assignments can be used to fill positions when there are no suitable employees with the necessary skills to fill particular positions in a given host country. This reason can be ranked as the most prevalent reason why international assignments are done. Most organizations in the developed world are driven by the costs of staff instead of staff availability that is a significant factor in the profitability of most multinational agencies (Caligiuri & Tung, 1999).

Organizational Development

International organizations aim to develop their operations through improving their structures as well as the knowledge of the company through international assignments (Janssens, Cappellen, & Zanoni, 2006). This development through knowledge and experienced are established at the company level before they are transferred to various business locations through practices and procedures, which are implemented at the foreign subsidiaries of the enterprise. This results in the development and improvement of various organizational capabilities are hence enabling a corporation to compete effectively in the global markets (Lapinoja, 2012).Similarly, staff mobility helps ion the development of an international corporate culture as well as the cross-fertilization of ideas and practices. International assignments contribute to familiarize the workforce with more than a single operation hence enabling them to have a broader perspective in solving issues and decision-making.

The Selection Criteria that is used to Select most International Expatriates

The expatriate selection process usually involves the following process where employees are chosen through considering some reasons such as technical competencies, personal relations with other employees on the job, family situations as well as the ability to adapt with various environmental variables.

Technical Competence on Job

This is one of the fundamental factors of evaluating performance especially in domestic operations and it is one of the success determinants. Technical as well as managerial performance can be assessed through past performance and therefore for this reason most multinationals usually place a lot of emphasis on technical skills in the selection process. However, in some cases, past performance may have little impact on an individual’s capability to perform tasks efficiently in various cultural environments (Lineha, 2001).

The Workplace Culture of Specific Organizations

The workplace culture of an organization shapes it and makes it what it is. Culture refers to the sum of organizational customs, attitudes, as well as beliefs that differentiate a faction of the population from another. Corporate culture is similar to ethnic culture. However, the only difference is that it incorporates people from every background and history along with their distinct ethnic cultures. The cross-cultural relationships in the organization can flourish into ingenuity and understanding which can enhance the organization to be a better place of work and possibly a healthier global community. Therefore, no corporation exists without a culture, but each organization functions under its distinct type of culture. Hence, the type of staff, policies, values, and principles of an organization makes the organization.

Organizational Behavior Issues

The organizational behavior issue provides several insights that are vital in managing corporate teams, individuals, and groups for excellent performance in the current highly competitive and dynamic environment. Organizational behavior is the evaluation of the various behavioral aspects that influence modern enterprises as well as their management at the personal, group as well as corporate level (Anderson & Brown, 2010).

It includes the combined characters of people, groups, as well as the process of organizational management. Individuals exhibit observable behaviors as well as particular attitudes that demonstrate the culture of the organization as well as its communication models (Anderson & Brown, 2010). Also, the intergroup, as well as intra-group interactions, offer insight into the level of synergy that exists across the organization.

Personal Character or Relational Abilities

For expatriates to perform and operate effectively in new environments, they require cross-cultural capabilities that will help them to exist and deal effectively with their peers, superiors, subordinates, clients as well as business associates in the new environment. Therefore, knowledge of other cultures is necessary, and the ability to live and work with individuals whose systems, customs as well as beliefs significantly varies from their personal cultures. However, in practice, it may be hard to assess a person who can be the most suitable using this factor.

Family Situation

The family of the expatriate selected greatly contributes to the success of the foreign assignment for example spouses. The issue of adjusting to the new environment is one of the underlying reasons why some people prefer to return to their original homes early before even the completion of the assignment(Welsh & Kersten, 2014). The situation can be worsened if one of the couples had left pursuing a career to accompany their partners abroad. Therefore, most companies are often not willing to include spouses in their selection process.

Ability to Cope with Environmental Variables

To achieve maximum and efficient performance, it is critical for the selected expatriate to be able to adapt fully with the various stakeholders in the new environment such as the governments, customers, unions, and competitors. The political, legal, as well as the socio-economic structures of the host country, may considerably vary with the systems and processes that are known to the employee. Therefore, it is important for the selected expatriate to understand these new systems fully and then be able to operate efficiently within them.

Barriers Facing Female Expatriate Managers

Significant barriers facing female managers that are introduced into the expatriate positions include dual career marriages, foreigners prejudice, and selection biases during selection.

Foreigners’ Prejudice

Most of the personnel administrators in the United States regard various foreign cultural patterns as being the significant barriers to the women expatriate managers. For instance, a variety of countries such as Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Greece are seen to limit the duty that female expatriates play in the business because they regard them as second-class citizens, and they restrict women from moving to work in foreign countries or from working. This form of culturally based discrimination against working females usually differs across various countries, but it severely limits the female’s potential effectiveness. Therefore, most corporations believe this as being a limiting factor in women’s pursuit of successful global careers due to the most enterprises’ respect for the integrity of foreign culture as well as the hardship involved in trying to change the core beliefs and cultural values in the foreign countries.

Dual Career Marriages

Balancing more than two careers in an international working move is also regarded as a major obstacle to women expatriates seeking to expand their careers abroad. This is mainly because of the perception that wives are vital in getting successful male manager jobs while husbands are perceived as obstructions to careers of aspiring female directors. Therefore international corporations do not want to be worried concerning the instance when the man is not willing to move to the foreign country or is unable to get a satisfactory position abroad. Similarly, most males do not like the idea of the wives’ salary eclipsing their wages, and also a foreign move can also result in decreasing a two income pay to one and therefore the husband’s salary is considered as the primary option when making their career choices. Therefore, the chances of transferring married female employees abroad are regarded as a difficult prospect when compared to the process of moving single ladies or married men that are married to non-working women.

Selection Biases

Female managers are also directly affected by biases when selecting and considering women to international careers. In most surveys conducted, the number of male employees chosen to head or manage foreign subsidiaries almost doubled the number of women that have been selected. The difference indicated in most studies suggests that decisions on female participation in various global careers are made using entirely different criteria compared to the issues that affect most women. Many of the corporations attribute male dominance in the international career selection to the traditionally accepted male chauvinism, identification of a higher risk that is involved in sending an unproven quantity as more men have a more proven record abroad compared to women, and the paucity of women with adequate technical training and internal management experience.

Advantages of using Women as International Expatriates

Women Economic Empowerment

Women economic empowerment can be achieved through cultivating the capability to develop and thrive economically and the decisions and actions to make and act on financial resolutions. To meet women empowerment economically, the quality of substantial labor and human capital play a crucial role in ensuring its success. The unequal division of the care that is associated with work determines the amount and quality of the available labor and opportunities for development of skills, knowledge and access to the leading workforce who are in most instances women. Women are exposed to various care services especially after childbirth that makes it hard for them to return to formal international employment and therefore social farming empowers them to overcome this challenge in many ways. First is by decreasing the work burden of women that may be related to care and enhance them to be the suppliers of care services. These actions will ensure that there is extra time created for facilitating investment in revenue generating practices and activities. Thus, this very efficient and effective social practice enhances protection, promotion, and the transformation of the various human rights of women that will enable them to overcome social injustices in different instances in their lifestyles as well as promoting an equal and just society.

Women Welfare and Empowerment

Women are an important group in the economy of any country. Usually, they make up the majority of many agricultural self-help and credit savings groups and enterprises. Following the current trends, women are increasingly creating their businesses and cooperatives as well as taking various duties of leadership at the national, regional, and global levels and associations. Therefore, different economic projects support women in handling their issues and ensuring their empowerment and well-being. Global programs that empower women expatriates can enhance women who are poor and those facing discrimination in the labor market as well as women who face work and family-related conflicts. Additionally, women should be politically empowered and emancipated from the various social injustices they face. However, women usually face gender discrimination in communal issues such as access to education, training, assets, and leadership positions. This issue can be a hindering factor in the women’s access to the needed resources, and markets that contribute to the building, increasing, and sustenance of an organization. For example in the agricultural sector, women are many in cooperatives that deal with spices, fruits, cereals and dairy products while in contrast their requirements to own land in the society are not embraced

Conclusion

Most personnel managers do not attach any benefits in sending female expatriates overseas to advance their careers. However, doing this has many advantages that include greater motivation where women are determined to go abroad and to work extra hard compared top men. Similarly, some corporation views female managers that are single to be more flexible as well as more mobile compared to married males. Also, female managers are more visible compared to male managers due to their limited presence hence they will be easily noticed and remembered. Additionally, there is the advantage of novelty which refers to the shock value of the female managers that may lead foreign citizens to believe that if women were selected then, they must have been of great value or performers and therefore they can be more readily accepted compared to males and their competence be highly regarded. Women expatriates in the society can significantly encourage performance in international organizations and their position in the globe and therefore there should be efforts to build awareness across the management of various corporations and agencies concerning the advantages of selecting females to expert posts in the business world.

References

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