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 of labor conditions and
For this exercise, you will examine characteristics of the labor force in four countries,
including the quality (education, attitudes, skill sets, etc.) and quantity (workforce size
overall and in various sectors, number of available employees, age, growth rate, number of
trained workers, etc.). Your instructor may assign the countries or provide you with
For each country, present a set of labor variables that convey an accurate picture of the
situation in that country. In your report, comment on the data and, importantly, their
International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 9 Activities Page 2
We also recommend assessing labor conditions in your target countries that may present
either opportunities or challenges to a firms doing business there. Among other questions
to raise about the conditions are the following:
• Has the labor force been shifting from rural to urban?
You may wish to create a matrix chart showing your countries as columns and variable
comparisons as rows. Include a final row that is your rating for the multinational you might
work for. This could be on a scale of 1 (tough labor market) to 10 (favorable market). In
your (brief) report itself, use 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 internet and in your library to help with this
assignment. Here are some especially relevant sources to kick-start your research:
MAKING THE CASE FOR INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING – Labor Relations on the
Brink in Belgium: A Cautionary Tale for Firms doing Business in Today’s Europe
The 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
This variance can create challenges and hurdles, as it did for Brink’s in 2010 in its Belgian
operation. Since the mid-1970s, the company has had two subsidiaries there: a money-
making 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
had to be done. Their analysis told them that one thing was driving a good share of the
problems—the nearly 500 staff who drove the armored cars and serviced the ATMs were
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
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?