When we try to figure what is going to happen in the next years in the labor market, it is difficult to imagine that everything will be the same. Globalization, cross-culture interactions and influences, people´s aging, fast technological changes, and a large list of new scenarios and conditions will stress companies and employees.

These conditions will make the employees to stand in an uncomfortable position, simply because their backwardness in knowledge, skill and experience. The question is, Who´s the responsible to turn up the gap? Maybe the employees, the organizations or both?

It is a fact that “the effectiveness of every organization depends to a great extent on the nature of its work-force and how well its human resources are utilized” (Ball et al., 2010), this lead us to responsibility of the companies, that have to watch for the recruitment, selection, training, development and motivation of the employees.

But this is not all, Management Orientation (MO) plays a decisive role in the company´s international strategy and hence in the type of employees they need or prepare. We can evaluate the MO as Ethnocentric, Geocentric or Polycentric (Lee, 2012). In the first case the company has a strong control in their international operations; the values and interest of the parent firm guide the strategic decisions. The Geocentric companies are more decentralized and pass control to the local country, this approach assumes that local managers have a best knowledge of the local forces. Finally, the Polycentric management is a combination of the other two, and attempts to mesh both product and regional expertise (Lee, 2012).

What is the best type of management, what is the best for employees? The answer strongly depends on the host´s and branch´s country culture, the business environment, and the marketing and production strategy, in between others.

For example, in countries like Brazil, the power of adaption to the local culture needs to be relative high, but always on the near control of the foreign bosses, because they don´t have great amounts of trained executives and employees (Novais, 2011).

By the other hand, you have countries like India, where you find more trained people that can hold the executive positions. This is a clue in this country, because employees like to be guided by their own people. A study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group concluded that one of the more important reasons in the success of European Companies in India was that they give increasing decision rights to their executive, investing in the formation of high quality local teams (BCG, 2003).

This second example looks like the best for raising social capital of people, and prepare them for the future.

Resources

Ball, D., Geringer, J., Minor, M., & McNett, J. (2010). International Business (twelfth edition). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Lee, J. (2012). Lecture 6: Organizational Structure and Managing Human Resources and Labor Forces in International Business. Boston: Boston University

Novais, A. (2011, November 11). Brazilian organizational culture in a nutshell. Retrieved on April 12, 2012 from http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/brazilian-organization-culture-in-a-nutshell

The Boston Consulting Group – BCG (2003). Ten Tips from successful European Companies in India. Retrieved on April 19, 2012 from ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/ist/docs/international/how-eu-companies-can-be-successful-in-india.pdf