International Human Resource

Case Study – Part One

The case of Brunt Hotels, PLC, involves a decision problem regarding the staff required for the company’s newly acquired hotel chain outside the UK. Three solutions are offered by its employees: hiring only parent country nationals (PCNs), recruiting only host country nationals (HCNs), and hiring a combination of PCNs and HCNs. Each of the suggested solutions has specific advantages and disadvantages.

As for the first option, hiring parent country nationals would enable Brunt Hotels, PLC, to transfer the company’s corporate culture to its French subsidiary. For instance, the managers may select the strategy of having an interior and internal organizational structure similar to that they have in the UK hotels. As a result, clients who are satisfied with the services offered in the UK would likely visit the company’s hotels in France as well. However, according to the case scenario, the shortcomings of this step are associated both with the staff and intercultural features. For instance, although the employees of Brunt Hotels, PLC, have a desire to work abroad, they do not know the French language. This drawback is critical since the lack of foreign language proficiency adversely impacts social, economic, and other aspects of professional career (Bordia & Bordia, 2015). Thus, in case the company hires PCNs for its French hotels, the workers would have no possibility to communicate with local stakeholders, which would negatively affect the business.

The second option for Brunt Hotels, PLC, is recruiting host country nationals, which is more beneficial than hiring PCNs but has some drawbacks as well. The benefits of this step include a high level of rapport with the local stakeholders in France. However, this option might require the workers to learn the English language. The company would also have to hire interpreters and translators for its managers in the UK to communicate their tasks with the French managers. Such step would incur additional expenses not related to the business directly. Another potential drawback of this option is inability of HCNs to transfer the aspects of corporate culture of the company from the UK. However, the benefits of hiring HCNs are mostly associated with the ability of the company to perform well in the international market. Thus, there is evidence that HCNs achieve higher productivity and performance (Dörrenbächer, Gammelgaard, McDonald, Stephan, & Tüselmann, 2013). Furthermore, the option is less costly than hiring PCNs. Therefore, employing HCNs for the company’s French hotels is a better option than recruiting PCNs.

Finally, the option of employing a mixed team consisting of both HCNs and PCNs may be the most beneficial for Brunt Hotels, PLC, as it has fewer drawbacks. In such a team, the top-level executives and managers should be from the UK, whereas the remaining staff should be from France. In case of validation of this step, the company would successfully transfer the aspects of its corporate culture to France. At the same time, the UK workers would have to learn French in order to increase their productivity and performance in relations with the French stakeholders of the company (Bordia & Bordia, 2015). Another benefit of this step is that HCNs would have an increased ratio of establishing relationships with clients than PCNs as a mixed staff contributes to a higher level of performance in foreign subsidiaries (Dörrenbächer et al., 2013). Out of the three analyzed options, a combination of PCNs and HCNs is the best one as it is associated with better performance of the staff and fewer additional expenses. Consequently, Brunt Hotels, PLC, should recruit executives and managers who are PCNs and HCN workers for its hotels chain in France.

Case Study – Part Two

Brunt Hotels, PLC, is a hotel company that has proved to be effective and client-friendly in the UK and is going to offer its services for its customers in France. As a company with an excellent reputation among partners and clients, Brunt Hotels requires a new staff that would accept the values of the company and transfer them to its new clients. Currently, the company seeks managers for the work in its new French office.

The main responsibilities of the managers include running the team of local employees according to the company’s values; maintaining the policy of the company; ensuring provision of excellent service to all clients; recruiting and training the staff; ensuring self-improvement at the obtained position; and validating friendly, proactive and innovative managerial strategies.

The required skills of the new workers include diligence, respect to the code of corporate values, the ability to work in a team, manage and lead employees, work autonomously and bring creative and innovative solutions, self-education and developed communication skills, and the knowledge of the French language. Moderate to high proficiency in French is highly appreciated.

Case Study – Part Three

The process of selection of new candidates for a position is an important process that critically affects the performance of an organization. For this reason, it is necessary to ensure that the criteria selected as the requirements for job candidates are relevant to the needs of the position and future tasks that a person will perform at the workplace. Since the hospitality industry is labor-intensive, candidates should have industry-specific and personal qualities to ensure strong performance of the hospitality business (Park & Levy, 2014). Apparently, most of these skills are connected with the ability to establish rapport with different workers, effectively communicate ideas and tasks, create a team and manage it, and transfer corporate values into the subsidiary enterprise.

Since the selected candidates are supposed to work as expatriate managers, the first requirement is moderate to high proficiency in the French language. Language proficiency is central for managers who work in a foreign environment as the level of language proficiency may facilitate or hinder communication between the management and employees (Bordia & Bordia, 2015). In case none of the candidates has the required level of foreign language proficiency, a suitable candidate for the managing position should have high motivation for achieving it. Experts presume that some of the managers may perceive the requirement of learning a foreign language for the work abroad as a threat (Bordia & Bordia, 2015). They argue that such candidates should not be recruited to avoid different complexities associated with their inability to learn a foreign language due to the negative attitude to it.

A further quality necessary for the managerial candidate is flexibility. Thus, an expatriate manager would work in a stressful intercultural environment that would require adaptation and creative solutions for meeting the established corporate goals. Experts characterize this feature as cultural flexibility that facilitates general adjustment of an individual to the existing cultural environment and his or her participation in the life of the community in which he or she works (Puck, Holtbrügge, & Raupp, 2017). Another reason for considering this professional quality is the evidence that some of the subordinates fail to predict the leadership behavior of their expatriate managers (Muenjohn & Armstrong, 2015). Thus, the flexibility of an expatriate manager would allow him or her selecting suitable communicative and leadership strategies for organizing an effective team consisting of host country employees. For managers in multinational corporations and companies, the practice of flexible leadership allows selecting behavior that is suitable to a specific cultural environment (Muenjohn & Armstrong, 2015). Although the need for such qualities is the most critical for countries that are located on large distances from each other, such as Australia and Thailand, the UK and France are also culturally different (Muenjohn & Armstrong, 2015). Consequently, the most suitable candidates for the role of expatriate managers at Brunt Hotels, PLC should be flexible.

The next skill required for a managerial candidate is the ability to work in a team since all expatriate managers would have to create, manage, and lead their teams. This ability is critical for any manager disregarding the place of his or her work because it is central to this occupational role. The essence of this role is supervision as managers are responsible for defining output issues and negotiating with different stakeholders to obtain resources for the team (Block, 2017). In its turn, the team is responsible for such issues as quality control, the use of equipment, scheduling, assignments, etc. (Block, 2017). If a manager is unable to work in a team, he or she would fail to delegate tasks and responsibilities as well as transfer corporate values to the context of the culture of the host country.

Furthermore, a critical selection criterion for an expatriate manager is the ability to work autonomously, especially in tight and stressful conditions, as he or she would lead employees who represent another culture. Such individuals would have different goals in life as well as a different cultural representation, which is why the manager would have to work autonomously until he or she organizes a team. When characterizing the tasks of a manager, some experts claim that it is impossible for a manager to be autonomous as this role is associated with managing and leading others (Block, 2017). At the same time, the work in a foreign country means that a manager would often face challenges and make autonomous decisions based on the guidelines and values of the company. In the process of organizing a team, the manager would achieve the goals of obtaining approval, attention, and recognition of the subordinates, which would require autonomous work and continuous self-improvement (Block, 2017). Therefore, the ability of a managerial candidate to perform his or her work autonomously is one of the most critical requirements.

Finally, developed communication and rhetoric skills are required enable the manager to communicate his or her ideas to the team and the clients in a manner to produce the desired effect. The manager should be capable of using persuasion skills for controlling and supervising the team. Similarly, the possession of different communicative tools and the selection of adequate communicative behaviors are important for managers who work overseas (Block, 2017). The reason for such approach is that, depending on the culture, some subordinates may require direct communication, whereas others appreciate validation of strategies of implicit influence. In this respect, experts argue that managers and supervisors should have awareness of communicative strategies as they often need to use script-oriented bartering instead of direct and authentic communication (Block, 2017). Using different communication tools and interpersonal techniques, a managerial candidate would be capable of manipulating the opinion of the subordinates (Block, 2017). As a result, developed communication skills would ease validation of tasks related to task-setting, supervision, control etc. Therefore, an ideal candidate should possess all the qualities and skills mentioned above in order to become a manager of the Brunt Hotels Company’s office in France.

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