Imagine that you are Director of Human Resources for a Large Global Pharmaceutical: Cross Cultural Management Assignment, NUS, Singapore

Assignment Details:

The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to apply the theories and frameworks learned in class in a situation that resembles a real-life setting and in doing so to fully understand the application and usefulness in understanding and managing people in a global environment.

Imagine that you are Director of Human Resources for a large global Pharmaceutical organization. You are based in the company’s head office in Singapore. Your organization plans to expand its operations quickly into Europe, South America, and Japan. Ideal locations have been identified in Dublin (Ireland), São Paulo (Brazil), and Kyoto (Japan). You plan to recruit a team of four individuals from the head office in Singapore who will be tasked with the initial set-up and ongoing management in these locations. They will travel, as a team of four, to each location to oversee the initial set up. The assignment is expected to take up to two years to complete. The team will live as ex-pats in these locations for the duration of the assignment.

Employees and middle to lower management will be recruited locally for each of the three locations (Dublin, SãoPauloandKyoto. Once each operation is up and running, your team of four will return to HQ in Singapore from where they will direct operations in their roles as Head of Operations, Head of Procurement, Head of Sales & Marketing and Head of HR and for the company’s operations in these three locations.

You know that for this team of four to succeed in managing operations from afar, for these very different cultures, they will need to be culturally competent as well as being excellent leaders and managers. You need to choose the right people for the job in so far as they need to be willing and able to commit to a two-year assignment away from home. Then you will need to provide them with the appropriate training.

Using the theories and frameworks learned in class outline and explain how you might approach both aspects of this task:

1. Recruiting the right people for the job
2. Preparing a training course that will help them to navigate these three very different cultures.

Areas you should focus on might include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Recruiting the right people
   • How might you identify individuals who are willing and able to agree to a two-year expatriate assignment?
   • How might you identify people who are most likely to succeed in these very different cultures?
   • What personal considerations should you make them aware of?
2. Preparing a training course that will help them to navigate these three very different cultures.
   • What are the important areas that you will need to cover?
   • What topics are essential for the manager to understand before they embark on their foreign assignment?
   • How can you help them to lead and manage people effectively and avoid making fundamental cultural errors?
   • How can they refine their communication, negotiations, and leadership skills to suit the cultural environment they will work in?
   • Will they need to alter their approach to managing teams?
   • How should they recognize and deal with ethical conflicts?