Issues Relating To the Management of People in Multinational Essay - 2

Issues Relating To the Management of People in Multinational Enterprises - Essay Example It is evidently clear from the discussion that in the multinational enterprise, managers are often expatriates that come from a home country to a foreign nation to guide and control the business. When this occurs, there is often a culture clash between foreign workers and the expatriate manager especially when their values and attitudes are very different. Also in the multinational enterprise, there are existing organizational cultures that have set norms which are often different from those of foreign management. This makes it hard to align organizational objectives with satisfying employee needs in a way that is productive and effective. Wal-Mart is a major multinational firm. It currently operates in the UK, the United States, China and approximately ten other nations. It is common for Wal-Mart managers to be recruited as expatriates when the business acquires other retailers in a foreign country or when foreign direct investment (FDI) is a good market entry strategy. Wal-Mart, in the UK and United States, has built a solid organizational culture where all members operate as a team. It is a type of family structure where employees are rewarded for their efforts and given bonuses for achieving organizational goals. This is known as management-by-objectives which is a transactional leadership style. Antonakis, Avolio, and Sivasubramaniam call this style the process of setting desired performance targets and then giving rewards for employees that meet these goals. When Wal-Mart entered the Canadian market, the organization tried to build a similar, family-style organizational culture that works rather well in the UK and the United States. However, the firm’s HR leaders realized very quickly that Canadian work culture was very different from these countries. Canadian workers and consumers are very conservative socially.