Development of a Multinational Personnel Selection System

Question 1: What strengths and what shortcomings do you see in the newly developed multinational personnel selection? Justify your answer.

The newly developed multinational personnel selection contains three advantages: innovative ideas, potential new market and quality employee.

The most important strength of multinational personnel selection is cultural benefit. A collection of people from different countries and cultures with different background and experiences can contribute their ideas and perspectives to a workplace. This brings new concepts, broader perspectives and innovative ideas towards any issues in a company so that the chances of decision optimized will be increased. This is a win-win situation for both employees and the company as the employees can exchange their ideas and learn among colleagues in order to contribute to the company.

Furthermore, when the culture in a company is diversified, ComInTec may be easier to expand in a foreign market and serve a diverse clientele in global market as the company is acquainted with the requirement of foreign countries. For example, ComInTec located in Hong Kong hires a large amount of employees who are from Melbourne, the company may easier to expand in Melbourne as those employees understand Melbourne’s market, polices and culture. This also increases the competitiveness of the company in Hong Kong.

Multinational companies have strengths in attracting and retaining the best employee. Companies that are able to attract and retain multinational members and treat them with fair advancement treatment would result in high quality human resources. Further, a cultural diversified workforce is a symbol of equality and fairness. This might bring a high reputation to the company and attract customers who are seeking equality-orientated company.

At the same time, the newly developed multinational personnel selection has some drawbacks: cultural conflicts, high cost and difficulty of setting up company’s policy.

Cultural conflict is one of the most significant shortcomings. Because of difference of values, beliefs and perception, disagreement among co-workers from different countries may easily arise. Furthermore, language is a fatal barrier lead to miscommunication within a company. Ineffective communication might result in low morale, misunderstanding and confusion, thus low collaboration and low productivity.

The second weakness is that the cost of hiring cultural diversified specialist may be expensive. The amount of time, money and resources would be high for providing training to employees, teaching them how to solve cultural conflicts and improves their interpersonal and communication skills with people different from themselves in order to maintain a respectful workplace. It also requires specialties or professionals to provide proper training program.

Lastly, even laws are often based on the culture’s definitions of right and wrong, it is very difficult to set up company’s policies that valid for all employees from multiple countries. Also, in order to attract employees to work in a foreign location, the company should offer high quality condition such as high salaries, better working environment and more benefits which might greatly increase the labor cost.

Question 2: What long term implications do the weaknesses impose on the company?

Misunderstanding due to cultural difference may possibly further evolve to discrimination in a workplace. People may form a small circle with those who have similar cultural background and ethnicity and isolate those who have different background and ethnicity. According to Earley, “within culturally homogeneous groups, members will have a tendency to communicate with each another more often and in a greater variety of ways, perhaps because they share worldviews and a unified culture resulting from in-group attachments and shared perceptions.” Employee may be unwilling to share their knowledge and skills with individuals different from them. This could harm the team spirit, cause high turnover rate and eventually drop the productivity.