Essay on "To What Extent Is the Nation State Still Relevant in Shaping National Labour Markets"

Essay 14 pages (4447 words) Sources: 10 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

nation state still relevant in shaping national labour markets?

Globalization and HRM

Hyper-globalization

Modern Challenges for the Nation State

National Labor Markets

One of the greatest challenges in the development of modern Human Resource Management (HRM) practices is the rise of the globalized market, which many have viewed as signaling the demise of the fully autonomous and internally regulated nation state. In many ways, the globalized management world is one in which autonomous individuals are unable to entirely delineate their HRM programs and commitments, since the effects of the globalized and hyper-globalized environments are felt around the world. As modern technologies have continued to improve, it has become apparent that the ability of individual nation states to retain complete control over factors such as production, employment and management has been eroded; even those nations that opt to enshrine their independence in law are finding that there is no neutral position in the globalized world - as Jan Aart Scholte points out, "globalization is very much a 'with us or against us' phenomenon, forcing non-globalized entities to retreat to a position of perceived intransigence" (Scholte, 2005, p. 69).Clearly, therefore, no nation can afford the luxury of simply ignoring the rise of globalization.

One area where globalization has become a contentious issue is the labor market. While some nations promote the idea of regional regulation of labor, others resist such calls and insist on maintaining complete autonomy in this delicate area of policy. As David Goldblatt et al. note, "labor policy is regarded by many as cultural significant... (since) it defines the ability of a nation to protect its own citizens and enjoy its own wealth" (Goldblatt et al., 1999, p. 172); in other words, many nation states resist the encroachment of globalization within the labor market, primarily due to a fear that a loss of employment-related sovereignty will damage that nation state's economic performance. In the EU, for example, the majority of countries now make it easy for migratory workers to move from country to country in search of employment, yet a small core of countries - principally the UK and the Republic of Ireland - continue to resist calls to fully globalize their national labor markets. Similarly, the U.S. has recently begun to move to close its borders with Mexico, in order to stem the tide of labor-based immigration. After a decade of increasingly free employment regulation around the world, many countries are using the current economic crisis as a springboard for tightening up nation state-based regulation and counter-globalizing tendencies.

2.

GLOBALIZATION and HRM

Before the commencement of the internationalized economic crisis, the buzzword of the day was globalization. Ongoing debates of the phenomenon's characteristics, benefits and limitations would feature in all media presentations, as well as through the communications means of the specialized literature. Basically, the force represents the ability to transcend boundaries from one location to the other. This is the most simplistic explanation of the concept. Nevertheless, a more formal one is offered by European Commission, quoted by David Held, in which, globalization is defined "as the process by which markets and production in different countries are becoming increasingly interdependent due to the dynamics of trade in goods and services and flows of capital and technology. It is not a new phenomenon but a continuation of developments that have been in train for some considerable time" (Held, 2000, p.92).

This definition has the limitation of focusing on the exchange of goods and services, but globalization reaches far beyond material products. It includes the transcending of boundaries of elements such as culture or religion, not to mention technologies, practices, skills and knowledge. This basically means that globalization has the ability of influencing any feature of an individual's daily life. In this context, a question is being posed relative to the impact globalization has had upon the practices and policies of human resource management.

HRM integrates the set of practices and policies which are developed and implemented by an economic or public agent in the relationship with its staff members. This explanation of human resource management is far too broad for one to clearly understand the role of the HR division within an organization. Some examples of the functions fulfilled by the HR department include the identification of staffing needs, recruiting, selecting and hiring the necessary staff members, offering training programs or creating incentive packages, such as flexible working schedules, premiums and bonuses and so on. In this order of ideas, it becomes clear that the overall role of human resource management is that of ensuring personnel sufficiency, while in the same time ensuring that the staff members perform at the highest possible levels and as such support the company in reaching its overall objectives.

Human resource management practices and policies have suffered some modifications as the forces of globalization emerged. The following paragraphs detail some of the changes, as revealed by the challenge global market place as well as by the intensifying competition generated by globalization.

Enlarged labor force

First of all, globalization allowed not only products and technologies to transcend boundaries and move from one location to the other, but also people. This basically materialized in a flow of human capital from one country to the other. The effects of this movement were tremendous. For once, there was the cultural factor; the foreigners moving to the new country had to get passed the cultural shock, and the natives in the destination country had to learn how to absorb the newcomers. In terms of actual cultural experience, this generally sounds good in theory, in the meaning that the native born employees and the foreign staff members are presented with the opportunity of exchanging cultural values. In practice however, it gave birth to a major problem of dealing with, integrating and embracing cultural diversity.

The issue of cultural diversity in the workplace is an extremely challenging task not only for the human resource department, but for the entire managerial team. The actions taken in dealing with the culturally diverse employees and integrating them within the organizational background are organized under the term of diversity management. This approach is part of a long series of affirmative action policies, implemented within organizations and striving to regulate the employment of minorities and reduce discrimination. The stand taken relative to diversity management depends from one region to the other. Within the United States for instance, the strategies are up to each and every independent economic or public entity, where the managerial team decides how to best proceed and integrate culturally diverse employees. Within the European Union however, the power of decision associated with the manager is lower as the power of unions is greater; yet, each union has a different perception of diversity (Earley, Ang and Tan, 2006, p.103).

The culturally diverse workforce poses several barriers in the path to effective business communication. For once, it does so through the imposition of language barriers. Given that the natives in the destination country speak their birth language and the foreigner does not understand the respective language, communications could easily be disrupted, coming to negatively impact organizational results. "Communication difficulties will affect reporting, evaluating and negotiations. The employees throughout this multinational organization may find themselves segregated by the language barrier. The issues caused by language barriers have the potential to hinder the success of the organization" (Striker Pacific Corporation).

Cultural barriers could also arise when people are insensitive to the national values of a foreigner, or when they do not understand the newcomers' cultural heritage. Such situations could easily materialize in internal tensions and conflicts in the workplace; telling for instance an Indian immigrant to not have a cow (expression used in informally telling somebody to not get angry), in the context in which India holds the cow as a sacred animal, would not help strengthen the team and the organization.

The enlarged workforce reveals a new means by which globalization impacts the practice of human resource management. The foreign individuals could come from countries which reveal comparative advantages relative to the host country. Assume for instance that an individual is employed as an it specialist; he comes from India and his employer is located in Spain -- country which clearly recognized for its openness to immigration, unlike other European countries such as Ireland or Great Britain. Returning to the it specialist however, it has to be recognized that India possesses a vast labor force specialized in high technology, this being the country's comparative advantage. The immigrant to Spain could bring with him a technological advantage that could be included within HR. For instance, he could possess expertise in software applications that evaluate the performance of the organizational staff members or he could help with the development of an application that calculates premiums and bonuses based on computer measured performances. Whichever the case however, fact remains that globalization forces the field of human resource management to develop, evolve and improve in order to better perform its task and as such respond to the… READ MORE

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