Ib Case Study
IB CASE STUDY * CHAPTER 2 [OBJ 2]
Successful companies have insightful strategies, great supply chains and sharp financial systems. Ultimately, though, success is a function of the people who start and sustain the company. The challenge of putting the right person into the right job in the right place at the right time for the right compensation takes us to the front lines of international business.
One can evaluate HRM from many perspectives. Two reasons motivate an executive perspective. First, in the MNE, the tip of the operational spear is the executive running international operations. Expatriates drive critical tasks of the company’s strategy; they launch new ventures, build local management expertise and diffuse the organization culture. Thus, an executive perspective directs our attention to the principles and practices HRM applies to specify the selection, role, responsibility, development and retention of expatriates.
This assignment examines the intersection of two major trends in international business. Firstly, executive coaching has emerged as an increasingly common intervention to assist managers to become more productive and increase their levels of personal satisfaction. Secondly, there has been an ongoing move towards economic globalization with a concomitant rise in cross-national management assignments of various kinds, creating a high number of ‘expatriate managers’ whose lives are invariably stories of constant change and transition. Through an innovative case study methodology, the assignment explores how executive coaching can facilitate acculturation processes for expatriate managers. Acculturation refers here to the ongoing changes and outcomes that occur as an individual experiences the process of interacting in and adapting to a different cultural environment (Berry, 1997, p.12).
The termination rate of expatriate assignments is generally seen as high, though figures vary. Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991) claimed that
Successful companies have insightful strategies, great supply chains and sharp financial systems. Ultimately, though, success is a function of the people who start and sustain the company. The challenge of putting the right person into the right job in the right place at the right time for the right compensation takes us to the front lines of international business.
One can evaluate HRM from many perspectives. Two reasons motivate an executive perspective. First, in the MNE, the tip of the operational spear is the executive running international operations. Expatriates drive critical tasks of the company’s strategy; they launch new ventures, build local management expertise and diffuse the organization culture. Thus, an executive perspective directs our attention to the principles and practices HRM applies to specify the selection, role, responsibility, development and retention of expatriates.
This assignment examines the intersection of two major trends in international business. Firstly, executive coaching has emerged as an increasingly common intervention to assist managers to become more productive and increase their levels of personal satisfaction. Secondly, there has been an ongoing move towards economic globalization with a concomitant rise in cross-national management assignments of various kinds, creating a high number of ‘expatriate managers’ whose lives are invariably stories of constant change and transition. Through an innovative case study methodology, the assignment explores how executive coaching can facilitate acculturation processes for expatriate managers. Acculturation refers here to the ongoing changes and outcomes that occur as an individual experiences the process of interacting in and adapting to a different cultural environment (Berry, 1997, p.12).
The termination rate of expatriate assignments is generally seen as high, though figures vary. Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991) claimed that