International HRM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

International HRM - Essay Example The United Kingdom is also a very masculine society, which emphasises a cultural orientation toward achievement of success and exhibiting ambition and motivation in the professional world. This culture is also driven by a short-term orientation, meaning that future gains will be more eagerly sacrificed in order to achieve rapid results, especially in business. This is especially apparent in the professional relationship between the London Stock Exchange and UK investors, using quarterly results to help investors achieve instant gains. In order to fully understand the complexities, problems or opportunities for UK-based management expanding into France, Germany and Japan, it is necessary to outline the most prominent cultural characteristics that make up societal and professional values, beliefs and orientations. This essay describes the characteristics of the French, German and Japanese business cultures to critically assess what degree of adaptability will be required by the UK-base d organization upon new foreign business market entry. Research indicates that there are some distinct differences and moderate similarities to the UK culture that will determine the strategy direction for people management in these countries. Working with French employees For people management to be effective in France, the UK-based HR team must understand the fundamentals of what drives professional culture in this country. France scores highly on the power distance metric in Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions framework. The notion of cultural power distance is defined as the level of inequality that is tolerated within a culture (Leng and Bothelo 2010). For instance, a less powerful figure (such as a subordinate employee) will be more indulgent and accepting of a more powerful figure (such as executives) maintaining disparity between ranking representatives of the business. Much of these cultural beliefs are driven by long-standing power distance between government and general society that was founded during the historical periods where France was governed by autocratic monarchy structures (Communicaid 2009). Powers in France, as it relates to business and government, have always been centralised in which business executives maintain the majority of control, thus creating organisational structures where decision-making authority is top-down rather than horizontal. French citizens further maintain a great deal of ethnocentrism, a belief in superiority of French culture and its rich history, which further supports acceptance and tolerance for power distance. For a UK human resources practitioner, there should be consideration of the high prevalence of tolerance of power distance. It is unlikely that French employees will be accustomed to working within decentralised business hierarchies that facilitate a great deal of team-working and horizontal problem-solving and decision-making. Therefore, there would be advantages for the UK manager that is attempting to facilitate more effective work processes and outcomes to take a hard approach to people management. Armstrong (2007) describes the hard HRM approach as an HR strategy that ensures more effective