Negotiating Global Corporate Culture through Innovations in Human Resource Management

Let us briefly explore and analyze the term of education, human resource development and globalization in context of the seamless transfer of Human capital in the age Globalization. The basic assumption or position taken here is that Knowledge and education level of the human resource is the key competitive weapon in the 21st century that can take care of differences and disaggregates in the organizational culture of the corporate in contemporary India.

On a simplified plane, globalization is characterized by interconnectedness, contrary to the patterns and processes of difference, inequality and division that we Indians witnessed in first three to four decades after independence. It is true that border regimes are being redrawn by globalization, as borders today increasingly transcend state structures and control, highlighting new actors and concerns in Human Resource Development. However, there is no point in denying that still there is considerable residual importance of the state.

In view of the above, your attention is being drawn to the fact that 'relations of disjuncture' is now being produced by globalization itself that is visible in the sphere of culture of an organization or in other words organizational culture.

According to Ellen Wallach, in Individuals and organizations: The cultural march (1983) "Organization culture is like pornography; it is hard to define, but you know it when you see it." Broadly, organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that's difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear, etc. -- similar to what you can use to get a feeling about someone's personality. The organizational culture differences found resided mainly at the level of practices as perceived by members. There is no consensus about its definition, but there is a broad agreement on the following characteristics of the organizational culture construct: that is it is (1) holistic, (2) historically determined, (3) related to anthropological concepts, (4) socially constructed, (5) soft, and (6) difficult to change. Therefore, it can be said that culture is shaped by an organization’s unique history and situational growth. It can be defined as the values, beliefs, and expectations more or less shared by the organization’s members. It affects the way a company does business and makes known relevant employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors.

A nation’s culture, similar to that of an organization, is comprised of the symbols, values, rituals, and traditions of the people living in a particular region. Language, food, and family traditions are all rooted in national culture. How people behave in public verse how they behave within their own home is also associated with values and standards of their nation. Cultures usually differ in relationships between the individual and society, ways of dealing with conflict, relationships to authority, and conceptions of class and gender. All of these things are comparable to organizational culture, just on a grander scale.

The disjuncture and disaggregate that we mentioned earlier is visible more and more today as we see personnel, working side by side, in corporate, are aggravated by three major challenges:
1. Variations in social, political, and economic circumstances of both the individual and organization
2. Different locations/offices have their own way of doing things and are resistant to change.
3. The perceived value of the Human Resource function varies across locations/offices.

The organizations today, due to weak organizational culture, therefore, are under distress to tackle the following problems:
1. Leadership development
2. Recruiting high-quality employees
3. Employee retention
4. Coordination of activities in many different locations.
5. Understanding the continual change of the globally competitive environment.
6. Building a global awareness in all HR departments/divisions.
7. Creating a multicultural HR team.

The following steps are often mentioned to be the desired strategies of the corporate today to negotiate through the diversified environment:
1. Develop a long-term HR plan to ensure alignment of HR strategies/objectives with corporate objectives
2. Create centralized reporting relationships around the globe.
3. Standardize assessment, development, and compensation practices
4. Introduce practices to regions around the globe and allowed the HR function in each region the autonomy to do [its] job.
5. Create global policies/processes for data management, performance management, compensation, education, and development
6. Tie regional accountability to performance management
7. Share HR best practices used in certain locations with all other locations.

Organizations have taken the following actions when trying to create a consistent corporate culture:
1. Communicate to all locations about a common corporate culture
2. Allow local cultures to maintain their identity in the context of the corporate culture
3. Establish common systems (e.g., accounting, marketing, MIS)
4. Provide management with education outlining how the company does business.
5. Create an organizational mission with input from all locations
6. Create a written strategy outlining the corporate culture

Here we need to factor in higher education as a method of skill development. Instead of top-heavy Management courses, it seems better to employ personnel with mainstream subject specialization. However, for this the educational institutions of our country need to prepare themselves to provide for knowledge and skills to students that enable them to perform in a globalized environment.
Peter Stearns [Globalization in World History 2009] offers the following questions that need to be answered, which we may consider for study:
 What is the educational benefit to students at the institution?
 Do relevant academic units have interest and active participation in the initiative?
 Is it affordable, or at least revenue neutral?
 Does the initiative involve an “interesting” part of the world and involve mutual collaboration?
 Is it manageable for the institution?
 Does the initiative offer the potential for possible innovation for the institution?

When it comes to business, the world is indeed becoming a smaller place. More and more companies are operating across geographic and cultural boundaries. However, most of the companies are lagging behind in developing the human resource policies, structures, and services that support globalization. The human resource function faces many challenges during the globalization process, including creating a global mind-set within the HR group, creating practices that will be consistently applied in different locations/offices while also maintaining the various local cultures and practices, and communicating a consistent corporate culture across the entire organization.

The process of globalizing resources, both human and otherwise, is challenging for any company. Organizations should realize that their global HR function that can help them utilize their existing human talent from across multiple geographic and cultural boundaries is possible when their personnel are capable academically to distance their subjective existence from the objective reality. International organizations need to employ specialists from social science disciplines to assist and incorporate their HR function to meet the challenges they face if they want to create a truly global workforce.