Statement of a Problem

Statement of a Problem

Over the last few decades, there has been a trend of several organizations internationalizing their operations. As today’s businesses develop a more international focus expanding operations to other countries, challenges related to human resource management have become inevitable. For many international companies, effective human resource management has become arguably one of the most challenging tasks. However, it has also become evident that effective human resource management is crucial for international businesses. International businesses encompass numerous trends compared to domestic companies, which also significantly impact human resource management. International companies need to understand these trends, how they affect human resource management, and the challenges they cause if they are to be successful. International businesses are, therefore, forced to consider broad areas and issues impacting human resource management and find potential solutions to facilitate success in their markets. The human resource management challenges of international businesses hinder these organizations from maintaining advantage at scale, putting them at a disadvantage. Human resource management challenges of international companies are issues that have substantial negative impacts on the concerned organizations. Human resource management challenges interfere with the competitive advantage and success of international businesses. Due to business globalization, international companies have become more open and competition more challenging and intense. Open and globalized markets have resulted in numerous challenges that affect the operations, processes, and tasks of human resource management. Since human resource management is one of the crucial aspects of international businesses, firms need to find and address these issues by finding potential solutions. The task is usually not easy but not impossible to achieve at the same time. Also, finding solutions to human resource management challenges of international business is not an option but an obligation. Many international businesses fail to make it in the global markets due to their inability to address human resource management challenges.

Explanation of the Significance of the Study

The study is significant as it provides a deeper understanding of what it takes for international businesses to be successful in the global markets. It reveals the crucial role that human resource management plays in the success of international companies, revealing why it is one of the most valuable assets for the concerned business. However, most importantly, the study discusses the human resource challenges of international business, which are the significant factors that contribute to the failure of the concerned organizations. The study will explore some of the significant challenges that the human resource management of international businesses face and how they affect success. Through the study, readers will gain in-depth knowledge of the issues that are challenging human resource management of international companies. The research is also significant as it only focuses on the human resource management challenges of international companies but also the potential solutions to these issues. As such, readers would gain not only an understanding of the human resource management challenges of international businesses but also possible solutions that can help to overcome them. The study hopes to research on some of the best practices that human resource management of international companies can adopt to overcome the challenges they might be facing. The study hopes to provide a roadmap that international businesses can follow to navigate through obstacles hindering their human resource management from helping them to be successful in the global market. Through the research, international companies will also gain knowledge on how they can leverage their human resource management to achieve competitive advantage in their markets.

Additionally, the study is also significant as it covers a gap in literature. Most of the studies in human resource management challenges of international businesses focus on either the problems or solutions that the concerned organizations can take to improve the effectiveness of their human resource management. However, this study aims to cover both aspects. The research study would strive to determine human resource challenges of international businesses and provide potential solutions to the identified issues. The research, therefore, provides more reliable information, which can be used to solve some of the common human resource management challenges of international businesses. The study will, thus, not only contribute to literature but also cover an existing gap making it very significant in the field of human resource management.

Literature Review

Human resource management involves managing both work and people towards the desired end. According to Guest (2018), human resource management is an inevitable consequence of starting and growing organizations internationally. Regardless of the crucial role that human resource management plays in the expansion of organizations, there are various challenges faced related to international business. Collings & Isichei (2017) identify global staffing as one of the human resource management challenges of international enterprises. The authors note that the success of international companies is highly dependent on the ability of human resource management to choose effective staffing policies that can promote talent management and employee well-being. The challenge associated in staffing policy of International Human Resource Management (IHRM) is the development of effective staffing policies. Collings & Isichei argue that that the problem is primarily due to geographical barriers between head offices and overseas branches. These geographic barriers make it practically difficult for international businesses to implement a day-to-day relationship leading to staffing policies that do not meet the needs of the concerned organizations. Other factors identified by Collings & Isichei that cause staffing problems are socio-cultural factors, legal factors, and political factors. Although global staffing is a challenge for IHRM, literature has identified potential solutions to the challenge. Alam & Rasheduzzaman (2018) argue that global staffing challenge can be overcome by human resource management in international businesses through cultural training. Alam & Rasheduzzaman indicate miscommunication between head offices and overseas branches is due to cultural differences, and cross-cultural training can act as a solution to such intercultural conflicts. The two authors reveal that cross-cultural training of human resource personnel in international businesses is an excellent strategy for overcoming bocks of behavior, emotions, culture, and race. However, other researchers disagree that cross-cultural training is the best strategy for overcoming the challenge of global staffing. Mockaitis, Zander, & Cieri (2018), for example, argue that short-term international assignments are the best practices for dealing with the global staffing issue. Based on the authors, short-term international assignments serve as one of the most appropriate forms of non-standard tasks. In short-term international assignments, human resource management personnel are transferred to a foreign subsidiary to assist in solving challenges associated with managerial development and talent shortage in the host country. Mockaitis, Zander, & Cieri also conclude in their research that such assignments can provide additional benefits such as increased effectiveness, flexibility, and simplicity for human resource management that are crucial for solving the global staffing challenge.

Another challenge identified by literature for human resource management of international business is developing future leaders. Pudelko, Reiche, & Carr (2015) indicate that the primary requirement for the sustainability of international companies is skilled employees. Based on the authors, leadership development is one of the biggest challenges for IHRM that threatens the future success of international businesses. Pudelko, Reiche, & Carr reveal that that IHRM is challenged with strategic initiative of ensuring that international businesses retain the right employees, organization cultures support employee performance, and that junior employees are prepared to take leadership positions. Andresen, Goldmann, & Volodina (2017) argue that the significant reason expatriates, especially in the department of human resource management, fail and leave is due to cultural sensitivity and stress. The authors in their research argue that cultural sensitivity courses and training can help to deal with the challenge of developing future leaders in human resource management of international business. According to Andresen & Volodina, expatriates are forced to deal with numerous stimuli resulting from their new environment and cultural influences abroad. As a result, their development assignments and programs fail to achieve the intended goals due to stress and probability of high rates of turnover. The efforts of human resource management to develop future leaders, therefore, becomes a challenge. However, Andresen & Vodina argue that IHRM can integrate cultural sensitivity curses and training in the leadership programs and assignments of expatriates that can help them to manage and deal with stimuli resulting from the new environment and cultural influences. As a result, stress is reduced, and IHRMs can effectively develop future leaders. Tymon & Mackay (2016) agree with Pudelko, Reiche & Carr and argue that the challenge can be overcome by IHRM exposing their personnel to multicountry and multicultural experiences. However, they disagree that cultural sensitivity courses can aid in developing competent future leaders, arguing that they are a poor substitute for actual on-the-ground experience. The goal can be achieved by ensuring that human resource personnel participate in international assignments that can help them gain experience of a different kind, which is crucial for developing human resource leaders embedded with multicountry experiences, multicultural experiences, and global perspectives. Tymon and Mackay give an example of how Alibaba has overcome the challenge as an international global company by making developing leaders as a crucial part of their growth. Its Alibaba Global Talent Development Program has been successful in building young leaders from various departments, including human resource management, who have been successful in running the company in new expansion countries.

Research Question

Question: What human resource management challenges do international businesses face and what are the possible solutions to these challenges?

The research question relates to the topic of the proposed study and tries to focus the study on what the topic requires to be addressed. The research question seeks to answer the problem under discussion in the proposed literature-based dissertation. It is divided into two parts to address the concerns of the topic. The first section of the research question is on the challenges that human resource management face operating in the global markets. It specifically aims to address the first section of the topic, the human resource management challenges of international business. The second section of the research question is on the potential solutions of the identified human resource management challenges operating in international markets. The second aspect of the research question seeks to address the second concern of the topic, possible solutions to the problems. The research question, therefore, focuses the study to ensure that it aligns itself with what it is expected from the proposed literature-based dissertation. A research question is an answerable inquiry into a specific issue facing organizations, which can be domestic or international. Research questions act as catalysts for studies as they encourage the focus on subjective aspects when collecting information and concluding. Research questions are essential as they act as a guide to studies. As such, the formulated research question of this study would act as a guide throughout the research process. All operations and procedures would be formulated around the research question to ensure that the information contained is relevant to the topic, targeted groups, and other interested readers. All parts of the proposed literature-based dissertation would be connected to the formulated research question. The formulated research question is, therefore, foundational to the proposed literature-based dissertation.

Recently, there have also been intense debates in IHRM both in theory and practice regarding functionalists and the critical approach in challenge solving. From the functionalist perspective, solving human resource management challenges of international business majorly requires transferring of best practices across the border and using expatriates in foreign subsidiaries. According to Cooke (2017), functionalist theorist and practitioners believe that HRM best practices are transferable to subsidiaries and can help to provide positive impacts in addressing some of the common challenges of human resource management. Based on Cookie, the use of expatriates in foreign subsidiaries and transferring of HRM best practices across borders should key roles of corporate HRM functions in international businesses. However, critical approaches to solving human resource management challenges of international companies disagree and have a different opinion. Dalton & Bingham (2016) reveal that critical approaches are based on the argument that just like domestic human resource management, IHRM should majorly be concerned with control and perpetuating power retention in international businesses. Based on critical approach theory, cross-border transfer of HRM best practices tends to mostly disregard power issues and ideology issues. As such, using such strategies to deal with human resource management challenges of international businesses is inadequate as they would ultimately constitute disguised forms of neo-colonialism. Dalton & Bingham indicate that critical theorists argue that transferring HRM practices across borders would only encourage the headquarters to control subsidiaries and the host country’s realities, which wud ultimately interfere with the relationships existing throughout the international business. The extremes from both functionalist and critical theorists have resulted in heated debates on what should be the basis of determining the best practices for solving human resource management challenges of international business. Their debate has resulted in disagreements on some of the methods that have been adopted by IHRM to address its challenges affecting the success of international companies. However, some of the identified practices by research have proved useful in solving common human resource management challenges of international businesses by those who have practically applied them, such as Alibaba. Putting these debates and disagreements aside, international companies need to identify their needs and choose the practices that best suit them as these human resource management challenges will not solve themselves.

Data Collection Method

The proposed research to be conducted will be a literature-based dissertation, so the preferable data collection that will be utilized is a systematic review. A systematic review is a data collection method that aims to answer a research question through collecting and summarizing empirical evidence that fits the eligibility criteria of a study. The proposed research would involve collecting sources that focus their discussion on human resource management challenges of international businesses, and also those whose discussion concentrates on the identified solutions. Although sources would be randomly selected, scholarly journal articles, peer-reviewed articles, and books would majorly be utilized in the proposed study. Other potential sources that might be used in the content analysis method in the research include media website, documented interviews, films, magazines, and field research notes. It is expected that by utilizing a wide range of different types of sources, the study will be able to retrieve enough reliable information. The proposed research hopes to use 70 to 100 sources, which can be from the categories identified earlier. The selected sources will be critically evaluated and appraised to ensure that they are credible enough to answer the research question of the study. The inclusion criterion for the sources to be used in the study is that they will focus their discussion on human resource challenges of international business. Another inclusion criterion is that the sources would also focus their discussion on the possible solutions f the identified challenges facing human resource management of international companies. The final inclusion criterion is that the sources will not be less than six years old. The study will aim at identifying current human resource management challenges of international businesses for it to be valid for the present and future readers. Utilizing more current sources would help to ensure that the identified issues are those that are currently challenging human resource management of international businesses. The first procedure in the systematic review would be to identify various databases that would assist in accessing the desired sources. The proposed research would aim to utilize a total of 50 databases to retrieve multiple sources that would be analyzed. The second procedure will be accessing various sources from the selected databases. In this stage, the study will aim to retrieve a total of 200 sources from the selected databases. The third stage will involve selecting 120 to 150 sources that meet the inclusion criteria of the study. Sources that do not meet the inclusion criteria will not be used in the study in whatsoever case. The fourth stage will be evaluating and appraising the selected sources to find the ones that best fit the research question and topic of the study. In this stage, a total of 70 to 100 sources will be selected that will be used in the research. The final phase will involve analyzing the chosen sources to draw conclusions that answer the research question. Some of the reasons why the systematic review method was preferred for the proposed study is because the technique is rigorous and transparent, making it reliable for the literature-based dissertation. Other reasons are that systematic review is considered as an excellent method for generating robust and empirically derived answer to a focus research question of a study. By utilizing the systematic review, the proposed research will put itself at an advantage of providing beneficial information to the targeted groups and other interested readers.

Analytical Approach

Since the study will be a literature-based dissertation, the data collection that will be used is content analysis. Content analysis is an analytical method that involves studying and analyzing documents and other communication artefacts. The study would include studying and analyzing relevant documents and communication artefacts that would have been collected and selected through the systematic review method. Since the study will aim to answer two aspects, human resource management challenges of international businesses and potential solutions to the identified problems, both conceptual and rational content analyses will be utilized in the study. Conceptual analysis in content analysis involves choosing concepts for examination and quantifying and counting their presence in the selected sources. Conceptual analysis in the study will be used to identify the common human resource management challenges of international businesses and the best possible solutions for the identified issues. In content analysis, rational analysis involves identifying sources related to the concepts under investigation and exploring the relationship between them. In the proposed research, human resource management challenges of international business will be determined. After these challenges are identified, the study would identify reliable sources providing solutions to human resource management challenges. As a result, the study will be able to link the two concepts together revealing the relationships between them, thereby, utilizing rational analysis as it chose. Content analysis is considered as the preferred choice for the proposed literature-based research as it allows for a more objective evaluation than comparing content based on impressions of a listener. Content analysis involves summarizing and coding contents that enable the making of more informed and better conclusions. In content analysis, summarizing, coding, and drawing conclusions from the information collected helps in removing subjectivity and simplifying trend detections. As a result, content analysis is thorough and will help to ensure that the study provides information that is free from subjectivity and reliable. Another reason why content analysis is considered as the preferred method for the proposed research is that it makes links between causes and effects. Using the technique in the study would add extra knowledge that would provide a better understanding of the topic under study. Using content analysis in the proposed research will help to provide an understanding of some of the causes of human resource management challenges of international businesses. The study will, therefore, not only enlighten the readers on the human resource management challenges of international business and possible solutions, but also some of the factors causing the identified challenges.

Conclusion

Human resource management challenges have a significant impact on international businesses. Human resource management challenges of international business can hinder the success of the concerned organizations and further deny them the opportunity to create a competitive advantage for themselves. Literature identifies challenges such as global staffing, political factors, economic factors, cultural problems, and developing future leaders as the main human resource management challenges of international businesses. However, literature also reveals that regardless of the disagreements and debate surrounding the possible solutions to the identified challenges, they can help human resource management departments and international businesses to overcome them. From the proposed study, it is anticipated that some of the identified problems and the potential solutions by literature will also be identified from the systematic review that will be carried out. However, it is as expected that the results of the proposed study would provide more concrete evidence of solutions that have been practically experimented and helped to solve some of the identified solutions.