[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Expatriate Selection and Evaluation
The changes that have taken place in the world since the early 1980s have been many and startling. I will focus on the most salient changes and developments that have an important bearing on IHRM. These are:
- shift in the calculus of global competition;
- formation of global strategic alliances;
- conflicting demands on multinational corporations to maintain an appropriate balance between global integration and local responsiveness;
- emergence of network organizations;
- growing diversity in the workforce both at home and abroad;
- growing convergence of core competencies for domestic and international managers; and
- increasing use of overseas assignments for career development purposes.
Shift in Calculus of Global Competition
With the end of the cold war, countries around the world have focused increasingly on economic competition and cooperation. Countries, which were once ideological adversaries, now collaborate on the economic front. In some cases, the economic imperative takes precedence over ideological differences. For example, the People's Republic of China (PRC), which espouses communism and was once a close ally of North Korea, normalized diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992. By 1996, South Korea had emerged as the fourth largest trading partner of the PRC. These political changes have facilitated the globalization of industries. One of the best definitions of globalization we have encountered to date is "deregulation on a global scale." With deregulation, all countries have an equal opportunity to join in the competition.
Increasingly, competition comes not only from the industrialized west but from the newly industrialized economies and/or emerging markets. Singapore and South Korea, two newly industrialized economies, have graduated recently to the ranks of the OECD. The PRC, an emerging market, has experienced the fastest economic growth rate in the world in he past decade. Many have projected that China will be the world's largest economy by the early part of the Twenty-first century.......
