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"The Jack Welch of the future cannot be like me. I spent my entire life in the United States.
The next head of General Electric will be somebody who spent time in Bombay, In Hong
Kong in Buenos Aires. We have to send our best and brightest overseas and make sure they
have the training that will allow them to be global leaders who will make GE flourish in
the future."“
Jack Welch
Discuss the challenges facing Multinational Corporation in the management of global
talent.
In a highly competitive global economy where the other factors of production- capital,
technology, raw materials and information, are increasingly able to be duplicated the
calibre of the people in an organisation will be the only source of sustainable competitive
advantage available to US companies (J.L Laabs 1996). Therefore attention must be paid
to and resources must be ploughed into the management of global talent to take the
business forward. To do this attention must be paid to several areas, in particular to
maximise long-term retention and use of international cadre through career management so
that the company can develop a top management team with global experience and to
develop effective global management teams (Deresky 2006).
International assignments are becoming increasingly important for the reasons outlined by
Jack Welch above; moving forward, top level managers need to have international
experience in order for their company to remain competitive. An understanding of the
management of expatriates is of growing importance due to the rapid increase in global
economic activity and global competition (Young and Hamill, 1992). It is increasingly
being recognised that expatriates play a vital role in success or failure of international
business (Tung 1984).
However there are various challenges facing Multinational Corporations in the realisation
of these goals. These challenges are two fold involving the attitudes of two groups of
people, namely the multinational corporation who are instigating the international
assignment and the expatriate and their family.
In international assignments there are three phases of transition and adjustment that must
be managed for successful integration to a new culture and re-orientation to the old one.
These phases are:
1. The exit transition form the home country
2. The entry transition to the host country,
3. The entry transition back to the home country or to a new host country (Asheghian and
Ebrahimi 1990)
The first stage requires appropriate selection and recruitment procedures, the second
adequate pre-assignment training and mentoring and the final, preparation by the company
for the homecoming and procedures put in place to maximise on the increase in expertise.
