- General education and professional skills
The quality of the workforce depends on the general quality of general and professional
education of the country. In the poorer countries, the quality of education is lower and
as a result it is difficult to get staff of the required levels of competence needed to de-
velop, drive and sustain business strategies. This is one of the reasons that most interna-
tional firms resort to hiring unnecessarily expensive expatriates to head strategic posi-
tions in an organisation. - Technology
SHRM will work where an organisation is able to acquire the best available technology
if the business strategy is beyond mere survival. With the exception of strongly emerg-
ing countries, which to some extent may not qualify as being third world countries
(Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and even more re-
cently India) the rest of the countries are technologically dependent on the developed
countries. Lack of capital required to acquire modern machinery and equipment has
been a major setback in modernising most of the processing industries that are now in
the hands of the private sector after many decades of public ownership and misman-
agement. In Tanzania, Morogoro Canvas Mill Ltd and Tanzania Portland Cement Com-
pany Ltd (Twiga Cement) are cases that illustrate this. - Infrastructure
One of the main reasons for the failure of poor countries to attract sufficient foreign
direct investment is lack of efficient infrastructure - roads, telephone services, electric-
ity, railways, air and water networks. Even if the organisation has excellent business and
human resource strategies, with poor infrastructural support, the chance of failure is
higher than success. This is a disincentive for devoting time and energy to developing
SHRM, particularly in medium and small-scale firms. - The extent of urbanisation
Organisations located in big cities are more likely to develop and use business strategies
than those in semi urban or rural areas. Managers can learn from other firms in the
neighbourhood, network, get information on time, obtain a well-educated workforce,
and get access to emerging markets etc. Urban centres in poor countries are far less
comparable to big cities worldwide. Therefore, it is unrealistic to expect business and
human resource management strategies in poor countries to work in the same way as
they do in developed countries, let alone the existence of these human resource man-
agement strategies in the former. - Cultural issues
Managing organisations in third world countries is far more influenced by cultural is-
sues than the Western management school of thought on business strategy or human
resource strategy was designed to address. After all, the concepts and the language used
in human resource management are devoid of cultural diversity, corruption, as well as
an obsession for following the rules and regulations (inherited from colonialists) and
paternalistic behavioural expectations by society. Others are the meanings attached to
concepts such as ‘risk’, ‘deadline’, ‘quality work‘ and many more which do not seem-
ingly fit the context of other countries, although there is quick learning and adapting in
the form of imitation in order to catch up with the ‘civilised society’. It is immoral to
use corruption as a means for exercising strategies where there are barriers. For exam-
ple, circumventing corruption to get a business licence or tax clearance may prove very
marcin
(Marcin)
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