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Consultancy Report to the Board of Directors of
Greenway Hotel Group.
Module: International Human Resource Management INDU-1130
Assessment 2: Case Study Report
Module Leader: Dr XXXXX
Student ID Number: 00010…
Executive Summary
A very short brief summary of whole report which offers a brief description of what the report is about,
and the key findings. Given the tight wordcount, this is likely to be no more than 3 or 4 sentences.
Introduction
This report is structured into three sections, with each section offering recommendations to the
Greenway Hotel Group Board of Directors, along with reasoning and justifications to support those
recommendations.
The first section addresses the issue of Greenways long-term strategic approach to resourcing its
management team within its newly acquired subsidiary company – Hôtel de Charme. It is
recommended that over the course of 5-10 years, as Greenway expands across Europe, it is advised
that the long-term strategic approach to resourcing the management team should move towards a
regiocentric approach. Evidence to support these recommendations are provided.
The second section addresses the immediate concern of HR functions. Although the United Kingdom
(UK) and France are similar in many ways culturally and institutionally, there are differences which
Greenway must consider as it expands its operations to France, and across Europe. This report focuses
specifically on the issues of recruitment & selection, and employee relations (You don’t have to have
to discuss these. If you prefer to talk about something else, that is fine, but this is just an example of
HR functions which you may choose to raise with Greenway’s BoD).
Finally, the report considers the wider socio-political and cultural circumstances which the board must
consider. There is a focus on Brexit, and its implications for the free movement of people (specifically,
managers) between the UK and the European Union (EU) which Greenway must consider, as well as
the issue of Post Covid-19 (again, you don’t have to consider these issues. This is a deliberately open
question for you to explore and raise relevant issues as you like. There are other things you can choose
to discuss if you like – this is just to show you how to structure the work).
International staffing –long-term strategies.
Paragraph1: Outline what you believe Greenway’s international staffing approach should be:
ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric or regiocentric. Briefly define what you mean by this strategy.
There is no ‘wrong’ answer here – your tutor is interested in seeing that you have thought about these
strategies and are able to make a recommendation based on your considerations. You might also
advice that Greenway adopts a longer-term resourcing strategy which is regiocentric (for example).
Paragraph 2: Give reasons for your recommendations – why is this the best strategy for Greenway,
and support those reasons with evidence from the academic literature. You also need to tailor your
answer specifically to Greenway.
Paragraph 3: What are the disadvantages of this approach for Greenway. Again make direct reference
to Greenway, and support your analysis with evidence from the literature.
Challenges of managerial staffing
Regardless what staffing approach you advised in the previous section, if you use Host Country
Nationals (HCNs, i.e. French), then you should consider how you can best ensure oversight and control
of the subsidiary.
If you recommend using Parent Country Nationals (PCNs, i.e. British) or Third Country Nations (those
neither from the UK or France), then you should also consider this issue of expatriates.
For example, if you advice an ethnocentric approach, you will have to consider expatriates. However,
even if you advise a polycentric approach, you should also consider what this means for Greenway. In
the case of expatriates, your analysis may look something like this:
Paragraph 1: Outline the risks and challenges that Greenway will have to address by using expatriates.
This may include culture shock, individual factors, nonwork factors, language factors, etc. You will
not be able to talk about ALL of these factors because there isn’t enough space. Instead choose one
(or max two) challenges that Greenway will now face by using expatriates.
Paragraph 2: What types of actions should Greenway take to minimise challenges & risks for the
expatriate and the organisation. Consider issues around expatriate selection processes, possible
training programmes (e.g. cultural programmes, language programmes, etc). Use evidence to support
your work, and there is A LOT of research on these issues. Use that research to support your analysis.
Even if you don’t recommend using expatriates, you can still conduct this type work for HCNs. Or even
consider other alternatives. For example, you might recommend using Self-initiated expatriates (SIEs
– Howe-Walsh & Schynes, 2010) by identifying British people already working in hotels in France, or
French nationals already working in hotels in the UK. These people will understand both cultures and
working practices.
Alterantviely you might recommend Euro-commuters. Technology and transport infrastructure across
Europe is developed. Europe is not that big a continent. Perhaps you can just have managers
‘commuting’ between the UK and France. See Ralph (2015) for a discussion of this in relation to Irish
people ‘commuting’ to the rest of Europe.
There is no way you can discuss all of these in any depth. These are just ideas for you to think about,
consider for Greenway. There is no right or wrong answer here. We are looking for evidence-based
advise, regardless of what it is that you are advising.
HR functions – differences across Europe
Here you will consider specific HR functions such as recruitment & selection, performance
management, appraisal, employee relations, trade union engagement, pay & reward etc. Again, you
will not be able to talk about all these functions as this is a 2,500 word consultancy report, not a
15,000 word consultancy report. However, you should be able to demonstrate that you understand
that what is ‘best practice’ in the UK (in recruitment, appraisal, etc) may not be ‘best’ in France.
If you take the example of recruitment:
Para 1: Outline why the company should consider recruitment differences as an important function of
HR to consider. Make your recommendation: HOW should Greenway recruit in France?
Para 2: Consider if this recommendation is based on ‘best practice’ or a ‘best fit’. In other words, does
the academic literature say that “XXXX” is the best way of recruiting employees universally and that
Greenway should do what is ‘best practice’, or does France do something different in terms of
recruitment that Greenway should consider. You can use the GLOBE 2017 report to look at
recruitment practices in the UK and France (and lots of other countries) – an excellent resource.
Para 3: What type of cultural differences might exist in recruitment in France? Support your work with
evidence? What type of culture does France have? How does that impact on recruitment practices
(e.g see Ma and Allen, 2009 or Segalla et al (2001).
Para 4: Are there any institutional (legal) considerations in recruitment in France? For example, are
there laws that Greenway must follow in recruitment practices?
Alternatively, if you’re interested in discussing Performance Management consider articles such as:
Festing, M., & Barzantny, C. (2008). A comparative approach to performance management in France
and Germany: the impact of the European and the country-specific environment. European Journal of
International Management, 2 (2): 208-227. Considers how culture and institutions shape Performance
Management in France and Germany. Secondary analysis rather than empirical, but helps explore
some of the issues around PM in a French context which is different to that of the British (/American)
context.
Festing, M., Knappert, L., Dowling, P., & Engle, A. (2010). Country specific profiles in global
performance management: a contribution to balancing global standardization and local adaptions in
MNEs. In 11th Conference on International Human Resource Management in Aston Business School,
Birmingham, June. A neat conference presentation where the researchers look at how the cultural
and institutional contexts of Germany, the United States, and China shape Global Performance
Management. A secondary analysis; nicely written. Would help you understand how culture and
institutions shape NMC’s practices around Performance Management in a general way, but not
focused on France and the UK.
Sayers, E., Benson, A., Hussey, D., Thompson, B. and Irdam, D. (2018) ‘Improvement required?’ A
mixed-methods study of employers ‘use of Performance Management systems. National Centre for
Social Research NatCen Social for ACAS.
Talbot, C. (2008). Performance regimes—The institutional context of performance policies. Intl Journal
of Public Administration, 31(14), 1569-1591. This paper is an example of the institutional context of
performance management within the UK public sector.
—These are suggestions, and should be used to help give you ideas of the types of things that you can
consider and how you might present your ideas. Don’t take from this advice it that your report MUST
consider recruitment, you can look at appraisal, training, employee relations/trade union
engagement, or anything else that you’ve covered in the module to date. Even if you look at
recruitment, this advice isn’t to say that your report MUST consider this structure or these ideas.
Again, this is to help you think about the types of issues you will raise and how you might structure it.
It is not prescriptive.
Finally, some things will have a stronger cultural element (e.g. recruitment), and others will have a
stronger institutional / legal element (e.g. employee relations, trade unions)
The socio-political and cultural environment
The final question is intentionally open.
You may talk about cultural differences, regulatory differences (e.g. in France the working week is
limited in ways that it is not in the UK), you may wish talk about Brexit and how this may impact on
the free movement of people/managers, or Coronavirus and how this may affect the hospitality sector
and how employees work and interact either each other, and customers). It is up to you what other
social issues you think Greenway should know that is relevant to HR. For very contemporary issues
(such as Brexit and Covid), then there will be very little academic work, but do use quality practitioner
work such as from the CIPD or hotel industry representatives in the UK (and, if you can read French,
France).
Conclusions
A short summary outlining your key recommendations to Greenway. Use sentences rather than bullet
points. Given how short this report is, this is likely only to be a paragraph or two long.
References
In the Harvard Style:
Book:
Wintersberger, D. (2016) International Human Resource Management. London: KoganPage.
Journal paper:
Frijns, B., Gilbert, A., Lehnert, T. and Tourani-Rad, A. (2013) Uncertainty avoidance, risk tolerance and
corporate takeover decisions. Journal of Banking & Finance 37 (7): 2457-2471.
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