International Human Resource Management-MJ Version

Global business management

Effective global business management complies with the demands of global
efficiency and competitiveness. Capturing scale and scope economies and
co-ordinating and integrating activities across national and functional barriers are
the fundamental tasks of the global business manager. In order to perform these
tasks a global business manager has three core roles and responsibilities: as world-
wide business strategist, architect of a worldwide asset and resource configuration,
and cross-border co-ordinator and controller. In his/her role as worldwide business
strategist, the global business manager tries to reconcile the different perspectives
of geographic, functional and business management in order to provide an inte-
grated competitive strategy for his/her particular business. As architect of an asset
and resource configuration he/she subsequently co-ordinates the distribution of
key assets and resources to support the competitive strategy chosen. In this role,
however, he/she also has to take the other perspectives into account and will fur-
thermore be guided by the company’s administrative heritage (see Chapter 2) of
existing assets and resources. This distribution of assets and resources leads to a flow
of materials, components and finished products that has to be co-ordinated by the
global business manager in his/her role as cross-border co-ordinator. As transna-
tional companies mostly rely on distributed sourcing this is a very complex task.

Worldwide functional management

Effective worldwide functional management responds to the challenge of
developing and diffusing innovations on a worldwide basis. Knowledge is
transferred by links between functional experts around the world. Most world-
wide functional managers play three basic roles: as worldwide scanner of
specialized information and knowledge, cross-pollinator of ‘best practices’ and
champion of transnational innovation. As worldwide intelligence scanner the
worldwide functional manager scans the whole world for opportunities and
threats, which may be in the form of a technological breakthrough or an
emerging consumer trend. Functional managers are linked by informal net-
works, so that information is transmitted rapidly. In a transnational company
subsidiaries can be an important source of capabilities, expertise and innova-
tions, which can be transferred to other parts of the organization. It is the
worldwide functional manager in his/her role as cross-pollinator of ‘best practices’
who spots these opportunities and transfers them in a way that breaks down
the ‘not invented here’ syndrome. Transnational innovations are the focus of
this role as champion of transnational innovation. The first form of trans-
national innovation, which is called ‘locally leveraged’, follows from the ‘best-
practices’ approach – local innovations that have applications everywhere. A
more sophisticated form of transnational innovation is termed ‘globally linked’
innovation. ‘This type of innovation fully exploits the company’s access to
worldwide information and expertise by linking and leveraging intelligence

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