International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 9 Activities Page 1
CHAPTER 9
EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF GLOBAL ETHICS
AND INTERNATIONAL WORKFORCES
CHAPTER ACTIVITIES
DEVELOPING YOUR INTERNATIONAL CAREER – Developing Expertise in International
Labor Trends
Purpose and Instructions
The purpose of this exercise is to familiarize you with features about labor conditions and
trends worldwide. This can be valuable knowledge to have, or to know how to get, for an
For this exercise, you will examine characteristics about the labor force in four countries,
including features about the quality (education, attitudes, skill sets) and quantity
(workforce size overall and in various sectors; number of available employees; age; growth
rate; quantity of trained workers, etc.). Your instructor may assign the countries or provide
For each country, present a set of labor quantity and quality variables that convey an
accurate picture of the situation in your chosen countries. In your report, comment on the
International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 9 Activities Page 2
We also recommend that you assess features about labor conditions in your target
countries, ones that may present either opportunities or challenges to a firms doing
business there. Among other questions to raise about the conditions are the following: a)
has the labor force been shifting from rural to urban?, b) what is the status of immigrant
You may wish to create a matrix chart that includes your countries as columns and variable
comparisons as rows. Include a final row that is your rating on a 1 (tough labor market) to
10 (favorable market) for the multinational you might work for. In your (brief) report itself,
rely on this chart to talk through your rating as well as the key comparison variables that
determined your overall rating.
Resources
There are a number of useful resources on the web and in your library to help with this
assignment. Here are some especially relevant sources to kick start your research on this
project:
help to this project and that you should bookmark.
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD).
International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 9 Activities Page 3
MAKING THE CASE FOR INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING – Labor Relations on the
Brink in Belgium: A Cautionary Tale for Firms doing Business in Today’s Europe
Brink’s Company, currently based in Richmond, Virginia, was founded in 1859 in Chicago,
Illinois, and is famous for its armored car delivery business. Now one of the largest
providers of logistics solutions and secure transport services, it employs 60,000 people in
such as Brinks, features such as taxes, labor costs, and business-related laws vary.
This variance can create challenges and hurdles, as it did for Brinks in 2010 in their
Belgium business. Since the mid-1970s, they have two subsidiaries there: a money-making
Brink’s Diamond delivery business (mostly in the Antwerp diamond district); and Brink’s
Belgium, a cash delivery unit that provides services to banks. The latter has been losing
Willem Candel, a senior director at Brink’s, characterized the problem: “65% of our costs
were labor costs. We were no longer competitive.” In the first half of 2010, the firm had
losses of $7 million on $32 million in sales, making it clear to management that something
While unions continue their efforts to eliminate the job distinctions, Brink’s developed a
strategy. In late 2010, it announced a plan to lay off about 60 workers and to reclassify staff
from white to blue collar. The unions were stunned and announced a strike. Fearing a
prolonged union conflict and more losses, Brink’s declared bankruptcy as a way to escape
financial problems. Employees of the cash delivery business were laid off and management
moved to the Netherlands. The lucrative diamond delivery business was spun off ahead of
bankruptcy proceedings.
There is one postscript and a big challenge for Brink’s—a Brussels court recently rejected
the firm’s bankruptcy filing. It held that Brink’s had no grounds to turn its more profitable
diamond transport business into a new firm ahead of the bankruptcy plea. The court
Assignment Questions
1) What is your view of how the company handled this problem? Did it handle things
correctly? Why or why not?
2) What did it do wrong? What were the key problems in its approach to this situation?