Man Overboard

1. Establish and evaluate the issues of this case in relation to the recruitment and selection processes followed by the company. How effective have the firm’s processes been?

The HR department of Kline & Associates was clearly neglectful in many aspects on the assignment of Fred Bailey moving to Japan. The way this whole recruitment process occurred was not well managed from the beginning, since the opportunity appeared because the person managing Japan had been promoted, so Fred would just take his place. That is the first evidence that shows why things where not working. The company should have been involved in the selection and training process for the expatriate in advance.

Fred did not know many basic differences between these two cultures, and lacked the knowledge to handle it, therefore, he committed many mistakes with wrong assumptions. Somehow he thought that United States should not be very different from Japan, he was in charge of 7 Americans and 33 Japanese, and thought people had the same motivations, so he could apply the same strategies and behaviours when conducting business. As shown in the case, the company did not provide him with the appropriate training that an expat should have to take the position on managing director. HR should contain cultural awareness programs, preliminary visits, job training, practical assistance and language training (Dowling, Festing & Engle 2013). The human resource managers must have training programs before an expat is sent to his assignment. What often happens is that companies prepare very well the relocation, but in terms of the logistics; flights, new home, school for the children, vehicles, etc. But leaving aside the human and more sensitive, training the expat and his family before departure, giving them all the necessary tools to live and adapt to the new culture. Taking this into account, the company did not prepare Fred or his family for the “cultural shock” that they would obviously face in this new country. Known as the U-Curve (Downling 2009), exposes that there are four phases in the adjustment process of an expat, honeymoon, culture shock, adjustment, and mastery. At the beginning everything seemed good for Fred, good promotion, almost earning three times his actual salary. After some months, Fred was facing a double problem, failing commitment of its employees with difficulties in his leadership, and secondly with his spouse and kids, who were not comfortable living in Japan. According to the Global Mobility Policy & Practices Survey, 30% of expat assignment failure is because the family was unable to adapt to the host location, and the 28% because the expat was unable to adapt to host location (Cartus, 2010). He had these 2 failure reasons affecting at the same time.

Another aspect to consider, is the fact that Fred did not made any self-reflection when analysing why Japanese where not collaborating the way he expected. An expat should understand the culture and language of the host country he is going to manage. You cannot take an ethnocentric approach (Belcourt, 1996), and impose your culture, values and ideas without understanding their environment. This was another factor that the company did not consider when delivering the assignment to Fred, other double error, the choice of a home-country employee, by an ethnocentric staffing approach, instead of recruiting maybe a local employee, and Fred who tried to impose his way of management.

Fred was confronted with many uncomfortable situations, and these are all common issues that expats are supposed to be able to overcome; culture clashes, language, training, break in the career of the spouse, etc. These issues can become real difficulties that not all manage to control, and if not addressed, pose abandonment and return to the home country earlier than expected. This is exactly what happened to Fred and family, due to errors mostly committed by the company, they are thinking of leaving the assignment and returning back home.

2. How might job analysis and competency profiling assisted these processes? List the competencies that you believe Fred should have possessed.

The analysis of the skills or competences for a job provides information about the features that should have the candidate that should take the assignment and thus is useful for determining the sources of recruitment, and the most qualified profiles. As any other job, an expat assignment should have a matrix of competences, taking in consideration cognitive, emotional, physical, and social aspects, and additional to this, you have to considerate the country were the expat is moving and all the cultural differences he or she could have. Regardless of their academic and professional experience, manager or officer posted abroad or leading multicultural teams, should have a range of skills and competencies in cross cultural aspects. The recruitment process in this case did not have any of these, they did not have time to do any analysis, but this is a key factor for the execution of an expat assignment.

The problem in this case

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