Eric Christopher Case

The case is about Eric Christopher who was brought up in the hill country village district of San Antonio. He graduated from Churchill high school and Baylor University with major in history and minor in Spanish. His facility for language was impressive in Spanish, French, and Italian & German. Eric has also lived in Europe and South America. He has an experience of 4yrs at south west after which he was contacted by a head-hunter about a position as global development assistant with Tex mark. Eric had self imposed workload on him by undertaking MBA at university of Texas as a part time student.

After successful 5yrs of work in Tex Mark he is now an associate director for global HR development. One morning when he was on his way to office, in a traffic jam he realised that he has ended up at Tex Mark a computer input-output manufacturer and supplier through an indirect career route just like the reason for traffic jam where he was stuck. Tex Mark a major force in the printer and optical scanner had started out a spin off firm from dell computers. Research and new product development activities were split between the home offices, a printer centre in Durham and an optical research in Edinburgh.

His main concerns for the day were two meeting for which he was late one was with Fred banks a plant engineer from Jaipur and other which was important was with his director. Topic was a review and evaluation of training & development strategies for expatriate professionals and managers. Eric had heard indirectly that the vice president for HR wanted costs cut in training programs, shorter expatriates assignments and a faster appointments of HCN's whenever possible. It was a major concern in the planning of his HR practices, which was getting more weighted day by day.

Eric's meeting with Fred had not gone well. The conversation was hostile but Eric did not lose his temper. Fred was a successful engineer but his project in Mexico which was to be completed in 18months was taking 3yrs. The problem there was Fred's team which did not relate well to their Mexican counterparts. They didn't even treat the local and national government agencies with enough respect and sensitivity. His next assignment was in India which was a sheer chance as on the last minute the engineer who was earlier going his father was diagnosed with cancer. Fred was angry because the assignment was taking long now and the position of research in Durham which was promised by vice president was now given to someone else.

Eric then realised that Tex mark should have more formal policies regarding international assignments. Language courses were also problematic. He thought of an idea of extensive and vigorous training but that was impossible as the cost related to hr practise were supposed to be cut. The main concern according to him was about repatriation; even the top management has signalled it now.