International Performance Management
Managing the performance of employees based on the needs of the organization, strategic requirements as well as the preferences of clients is a critical aspect of International Human Resources Management. Multinational companies incur huge costs on HR departments as a result of hiring employees from several countries (Slavić, Berber & Leković, 2014). Hence, MNCs expect the foreign employees to contribute significantly towards theaddition of value to the company’s activities. Even though mManaging performance on anat international level is accompanied by a number of challenges, it is still possible..
Different countries have employees with different capabilities and maturity levels. Some countries have expertswho are strong in systematic analysis whereas other have highly skilled individualsin mathematics and logic. Therefore, it becomes hard for MNCs to formulate a performance management systems for employees from different countries (Slavić, Berber & Leković, 2014). As a result, MNCs cannot formulate a standard performance appraisal format due to theexistence of these didiscrepanciesfferences.
Cultural difference is also another challenge the American MNCs experience in foreign countries. It is quite obvious that eachDifferent countryies has its ownve different cultures which, therefore,. Type of culture in acertain country will determines the performance of theemployee. In cases of cultural adjustment, an individual finds it difficult to adopt the culture ofathenewcountry, and this could have a drastic effect on his/her performance. This aspect must be put into consideration while conductingatheperformance evaluation.
Carrying out performance evaluation in daughter companies located in a with different time zones than with the parent company presents a serious challenge. In a scenario where headquarter company is inwith the same time zone as its affiliate companies, it is easier for HR manager to meet face-to-face with employees of domestic subsidiaries but much difficult for foreign HRM(Slavić, Berber & Leković, 2014).
One of the examples where the difference between organizational and country culture has led to poor performance of the company is Walmart in China. Walmart culture is based on providing products at lower prices for to their customers. However,in China, customers do not only consider the prices but also whether the products are tailor-made for their needs and whetheror if the shopping environment considers the culture of Chinese people. As a result, Walmart has performed very poorly in China for the past few decades.
Walm-Mart China only contributes about 2% of the total revenue of the company worldwide. This is quite surprising considering the tremendous growth rate of theretail market in this country. The growth of Walm-Mart has been halted by theshrewd behavior of the customers as well as thepresence of Sun-Aart Retail Company. Chinese consumers do not only consider prices when buying the goods from retail shops, but they also pay attention atalso the quality and authenticity of the products. Walmart has successfully applied everyday low price (EDLP) approach in most of the other countries, but this strategy has miserably failed in China. Contrary, the Walmart main local competitor Sun-Art, has performed much better by applying a more local approach.
Despite Sun-Art being smaller in size than Walmart, it has aenjoys larger market share. This is because the company has gone a step further to investigate and understand the cultural behavior of Chinese consumers. For instance, Chinese customers normally buy the groceries at local outdoor shops. Walmart has only closed-door supermarkets which attract mostlya fee customer most of them being foreign customersers. On the other hand, Sun-Art has provided this experience where consumers enter into “Chinese Street Look” shops to buy fresh seafood products such as octopus displayed on tables.
Reference
Slavić, A., Berber, N.& Leković, B. (2014). Performance management in international human resource management: evidence from the CEE region. Serbian Journal of Management, 9(1), 45-58. http://www.sjm06.com/SJM%20ISSN1452-4864/9_1_2014_May_1-144/9_1_2014_45-58.pdf