International management : text and cases

The global economy has spawned a new business organization. This new organization is often referred to as a multinational, transnational or global business organization. These organizations not only sell their products or services in more than one nation, but also undertake operations in more than one nation, often times throughout the globe. Many of these entities have grown out of domestic companies of economic powers such as the United States or the member states of the European Union. Based on globalization and value orientation of personnel management in international enterprises and in the context of the shareholder value approach, three arguments can be formulated which will better characterize the tasks of the personnel management in the future. (1) Personnel management will be characterized more and more by a social-cultural dimension of the enterprise and its environment. i.e. motivation of the employees, teamwork, intercultural competence and other aspects come to the fore as soft factors in the international company culture. (2) International strategies of enterprises and their quantitative implementations are in a focus of value-oriented economical decisions. This led to the measurability of personnel decisions and the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard, comes up with the Shareholder Value approach, into the centre of interest. (3) Personnel management is on the way to getting quantified. This can be testified on the examples of flexible management salaries in stock option incentives, company pension schemes and outsourcing activities with internal transfer prices. Nowadays the survival in multinational organizations entails the successful management of a multi-cultural workforce in a global context. It also means being able to vary services across cultures: not simple marketing ploys imposed from outside, but an understanding of how culture drives differences from within. Finally, most modern organizations must battle for economic survival in a dynamic and ever-changing environment. Gone are the days that when an organization, or individual, can ignore the forces of change that are attacking the complacency of the "status quo". With the advent of a capitalistic oriented world, nations, as well as organizations, are thrust into an environment that essentially subordinates organizations, to a customer- oriented competitive arena