Global Business Today, 11e (Hill)
Chapter 17 Global Human Resource Management
1) Employee compensation and labor relations are functions associated with human resource
management.
2) An expatriate manager is a citizen of one country who is working in the home country while
managing the firm’s foreign subsidiaries.
3) Organizational architecture refers to an organization’s norms and value systems.
4) Ethnocentric staffing policies are in place when all key management positions are filled by
host-country nationals.
5) One disadvantage of an ethnocentric staffing policy is that it produces resentment in
host-country nationals.
6) An international firm demonstrates cultural myopia when it adopts cross-cultural literacy
policies and understands cultural differences in a host country.
7) A polycentric approach to staffing might be less expensive to implement than an ethnocentric
approach.
8) For international firms, an ethnocentric staffing approach is compatible with a localization
strategy.
9) Citizens of a foreign country working in the home country of their multinational employer are
known as repatriates.
10) According to a study by R. L. Tung, the most indicated reason for expatriate failure among
U.S. multinationals was difficulty coping with a new environment.
11) A person’s willingness to communicate is an important dimension in others-orientation, which
was identified by Mendenhall and Oddou as a factor that predicts success in a foreign posting.
12) It is important for the spouse of an expatriate manager, and perhaps the whole family, to be
included in cultural training programs.
13) Transnational firm managers need to be able to detect pressures for local responsiveness,
which means they need to understand the culture of a host country.
14) Bringing managers together in one location for extended periods and rotating them through
different jobs in several countries help a firm build an informal management network.
15) Unintentional bias makes it easy to evaluate the performance of expatriate managers
objectively.
16) The balance sheet approach to expatriate pay is used for expatriates in lower economic
postings to show how their reduced income level is in line with the economy where they are living.
17) An expatriate’s base salary is normally lower than the base salary for a similar position in the
home country.
18) Unless a host country has a reciprocal tax treaty with the expatriate’s home country, an
expatriate must pay income tax to both the home- and host-country governments.
19) A concern of organized labor is that an international business will farm out highly skilled tasks
to foreign plants.
20) International trade secretariats have been highly successful in linking national unions in the
automobile and steel industries.
21) An expatriate manager refers to
A) a citizen of one country who is working abroad in one of the firm’s subsidiaries.
B) a parent-country national who works in the parent country.
C) a host-country national who works in the host country.
D) any person who lives in a foreign country.
E) a person willing to work in different departments of a foreign firm.
22) Ryan, a U.S. citizen, is the operations manager at the Middle East office of KB Constructions
Inc., an American firm. In this situation, Ryan is a(n) ________ manager.
A) repatriate
B) host-country
C) inpatriate
D) expatriate
E) virtual
23) Haruto Kawa, a Japanese citizen who works for Shin-Ro Corp. in Japan, has been asked to
head the company’s sales office in the United States. Upon taking the assignment, Haruto will be
a(n) ________ manager.
A) repatriate
B) host-country
C) inpatriate
D) expatriate
E) virtual
24) Which aspect of organizational architecture is considered the linchpin that brings together all
of the other components?
A) culture
B) people
C) processes
D) structure
E) product
25) Marcie Conroy of Feel-Better Pharmaceuticals works in the human resource department and is
responsible for developing criteria for matching prospective employees to available jobs. What is
Marcie responsible for?
A) compensation policy
B) staffing policy
C) performance appraisal policy
D) training policy
E) management development policy
26) At a job fair, a recruiter explained to Matt that his company not only looks for employees who
have college degrees and work experience, but also those who have the same beliefs and value
systems as the company. What aspect of the company is the recruiter referring to?
A) corporate social responsibility
B) cultural toughness
C) cultural sensitivity
D) corporate culture
E) perceptual ability
27) What staffing policy is concerned with filling all key management positions by parent-country
nationals?
A) ethnocentric
B) global
C) polycentric
D) geocentric
E) transnational
28) Kanga-Kicks, Inc. is an Australian multinational company with operations in 15 countries
around the world. It is the company’s policy to staff all the key positions in foreign operations with
Australian managers. What type of staffing policy does the company use?
A) ethnocentric
B) global
C) polycentric
D) geocentric
E) transnational
29) In the Swiss watch firm PrimeTime Inc., all the top management positions in its international
operations are held by Swiss nationals. What is the staffing policy followed by PrimeTime Inc.?
A) eurocentric
B) ethnocentric
C) polycentric
D) geocentric
E) transnational
30) Col-For, an Italian beverage company, prides itself on its corporate culture that it has
developed over a twenty-year period and believes it is a key to its competitive advantage. What
staffing policy will the company likely follow if it expands to Germany?
A) eurocentric
B) ethnocentric
C) polycentric
D) geocentric
E) transnational
31) A U.S.–based company set up operations in Indonesia and determined that there wasn’t a
qualified applicant pool in Jakarta to fill its senior management positions. What staffing policy will
the company most likely follow?
A) eurocentric
B) ethnocentric
C) polycentric
D) geocentric
E) transnational
32) What is a characteristic of an ethnocentric staffing policy?
A) It requires host-country nationals to be recruited to manage subsidiaries.
B) It is used when a firm places a low value on its corporate culture.
C) It increases advancement opportunities for host-country nationals.
D) It seeks the best people for key jobs throughout the organization, regardless of nationality.
E) It places parent-country nationals in key management positions.
33) Red Brands, a Singapore-based agricultural commodities company, continuously expands into
Africa to source and process commodities. The company finds that many of these countries lack
advanced higher education institutions, and thus decides to pursue an ethnocentric senior staffing
policy in Africa. This is most likely because the management of Red Brands
A) believes in providing growth opportunities to host-country nationals.
B) wants to avoid cultural myopia.
C) believes host counties lack qualified individuals for senior management positions.
D) wants to keep all core competencies within the home country.
E) wants to build strong informal management networks in all its subsidiaries.
34) Borsh Lawn Products, a German manufacturer, did not succeed in its international ventures
because it used its domestic marketing mix “as-is” in foreign markets. This failure to understand
host-country cultural differences that require different approaches to marketing and management
is referred to as
A) cultural parity.
B) cultural myopia.
C) power distance.
D) cultural toughness.
E) cultural polarization.
35) The expatriate managers of Je Parle, a French leader in specialty perfumes, followed the same
domestic marketing and management practices in foreign markets as their colleagues did in
France. As a result, Je Parle’s international expansion failed because the company suffers from
A) a masculine culture.
B) cultural myopia.
C) power distance.
D) cultural toughness.
E) low ambiguity.
36) Thermal-Core, a United States-based company, is clear-cut in its human resources policy with
regard to international expansion. While U.S. nationals staff key positions at its Tampa, Florida,
headquarters, it recruits locals to manage subsidiaries in each country that it goes into.
Thermal-Core’s staffing policy is
A) geocentric.
B) polycentric.
C) ethnocentric.
D) global.
E) transnational.
37) What is an advantage of a polycentric staffing approach?
A) It is less expensive to implement as compared to other staffing approaches.
B) It gives host-country nationals unlimited opportunities to gain experience outside their own
country.
C) It increases career mobility.
D) It increases interaction between the headquarters of a firm and its foreign subsidiaries.
E) It bridges the gap between host-country managers and parent-country managers.
38) Flor-Restore, a U.S. dental products company, follows a polycentric staffing approach, and
key positions at the company’s U.S. headquarters are staffed by U.S. nationals while foreign
subsidiaries are managed by locals. While the company’s international business has grown
exponentially in the past five years, greater competition in the United States has caused this office
to see a decline in sales and many top U.S. managers are leaving the company. What drawback to
a polycentric approach might explain this?
A) It is expensive to implement.
B) It leads managers to make mistakes due to cultural misunderstandings.
C) It limits advancement opportunities for managers.
D) It invariably makes a firm suffer from cultural myopia.
E) It bridges the gap between the headquarters of a firm and its foreign subsidiaries.
39) A(n) ________ approach to staffing limits career mobility and isolates headquarters from
foreign subsidiaries.
A) polycentric
B) transnational
C) geocentric
D) ethnocentric
E) global
40) Takahashi Talent, a Japanese commercial advertising agency, has a policy of appointing the
best person for the job in its various locations regardless of the candidate’s nationality. Which
staffing policy best describes Takahashi Talent’s approach?
A) local
B) ethnocentric
C) geocentric
D) polycentric
E) transnational
41) How is a geocentric staffing policy beneficial to a firm?
A) It requires the firm to provide little or no documentation to hire a foreign national.
B) It is inexpensive to implement.
C) It helps the firm follow a localization strategy.
D) It allows all key management positions to be filled by parent-country nationals.
E) It enables the firm to make the best use of its human resources.
42) There are vast differences in local market needs in the consumer soft drink business around the
world. TwinFold Media, a Canadian multinational advertising agency, specializes in the soft drink
industry and uses a geocentric staffing approach. What advantage would the company gain by
using this approach?
A) It tends to reduce cultural myopia and enhance local responsiveness.
B) It is inexpensive to implement.
C) It reduces the costs of value creation.
D) It allows all key management positions of a firm and its subsidiaries to be filled by
parent-country nationals.
E) It requires minimal documentation for hiring foreign nationals.
43) Countries such as the United States and China require extensive documentation if firms wish to
hire a foreign national instead of a local national. This is an important consideration for Desert
Plain Wines, a Chilean wine maker, as it decides on its staffing policy for international expansion.
What staffing approach would be most affected by this type of limitation?
A) polycentric
B) geocentric
C) transnational
D) ethnocentric
E) local
44) What is a disadvantage of adopting a geocentric staffing approach?
A) Cultural myopia negatively influences effective management control.
B) Training and relocation costs increase when transferring managers from country to country.
C) Host-country nationals cannot progress beyond senior positions in their own subsidiary.
D) A gap forms between host-country managers and parent-country managers.
E) The lack of management transfers leads to a lack of integration between corporate headquarters
and foreign subsidiaries.