Indochina

This short case looks at an organization in the travel and tourism sector that was set up 20 years ago and how it gradually built up an HR function that is designed to be sustainable for the coming decades. Seen as one of the most dynamic groups in its sector in Asia, the company started with a handful of employees and has grown to over 2,000. Now winning awards for innovation and fast-growth, the organization started small and stayed that way for its first decade then took off – and needed an HR function. The group needed job contracts, job descriptions, and to apply for all the licenses needed in Vietnam, a Communist state. Recruitment by word-of-mouth and then online processes, promotion and retention, performance management, salaries and benefits, training and development, disciplinary procedures, the preparation of guidelines, rules, an employee handbook – there was a lot of work to do, which is still ongoing.

Egypt

This case considers the process of identifying the competencies needed for leaders of organizations in Egypt at a time of great political, economic, and social dislocation. Data was collected as many senior executives, entrepreneurs, and expats and locals in multinational businesses were leaving the country, fearing continued unrest. This scenario in Egypt presents a traumatic test for organizations and their human resources departments, who are seeking to retain talent, recruit new talent who can cope with this scenario, and to ensure the sustainability of their organizations for the future. It is widely believed by many in HR and general management that Egypt might take a decade even to return to the employment stability of the Mubarak era, for all its shortcomings. The research for this case was based on two sources: blogs written by interested observers both inside and outside Egypt published on local and foreign websites and a series of three Delphi rounds, consulting over 30 experts in leadership competencies.

Afghanistan: Leadership Development

This case study investigates the leadership styles of Afghan men and women managers as practiced in Afghanistan, originally prepared as background research to developing their leadership skills in the context of a public sector organization receiving extensive international donor funding. The case includes a detailed study of the barriers that women managers face in Afghanistan. The research revealed that compared with men, Afghan women managers are more balanced in terms of being people-oriented and task-oriented and practice a mix of transformational and transactional leadership styles (rather than mostly transactional). To overcome the existing barriers that prevent Afghan women from reaching senior leadership positions in Afghanistan, the case concludes that Afghan women need more access to higher education and need more training in management skills. Increased awareness of women's leadership talents by men, requiring the need to change male attitudes towards female participation in leadership, may help improve the situation. This process may need greater mobility in workplaces in Afghanistan.

Vietnam

Understanding national culture has become increasingly important in this new era, when the world is more interconnected, globalized, and has fewer boundaries. Managing Cultural Diversity or Cross-Cultural Management is now a major topic of consideration for companies across Asia, especially in Vietnam. This case study aims to present insights on Vietnamese cultural preferences. The research approach is based on the Canning model, including preferences of “Relationship,” “Communication,” “Time,” “Truth,” and “Human Philosophy.” From this basis, an Expert Profile is built for Vietnam in the hope that it can become an engaging guide for any foreigner who wants to study the Vietnamese culture. This case also looks at cultural factors like being an “individualist,” the concept of “close distance,” being “effusive,” thinking “long term,” and looking at “fixed truth.” Generally speaking, the Vietnamese people come from a “group oriented,” “physical distance,” “reserved,” “short-term,” and “relative truth” culture.

Iran

The research for this case study considered 55 SMEs in Iran, collecting 227 responses from employees. The data generated from questionnaires were analyzed in order to evaluate the levels of sustainable HR practices in these organizations – outlined in the study of the “honeybee” model and covering a wide range of practices mostly related to people and environmental resource management. Findings suggested that the educational sector has the highest level of sustainability in Iranian companies. In comparison with the educational sector, the production and the automotive sector had a negative contribution to sustainability – this was something seen as of little importance for these businesses. The study looks at the barriers faced in implementing sustainability in organizations, especially in the different political, economic, and social conditions experienced by HR and general managers in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The importance of the environmental aspects is highlighted by the many deaths from air pollution experienced in the capital city – nearly 5,000 fatalities per year.

China: Managing a Diverse and Multicultural Workforce in Multinationals in a Growth Economy

This case suggests a system of understanding the Chinese employees of a typical multinational company operating in China, based on attitudinal, behavioral, and psychological factors. The study particularly focuses on Chinese staff members of multinationals in terms of their career ambitions, consumer habits, and attitudes to each other, to foreigners, and foreign companies in China generally. Chinese staff, the author argues (based on more than ten years of observation and a detailed survey he conducted), can be categorized as in one of three main types: Chuppies, Westernized and Traditional, or “Mandarins.” They can be a mix of two or three of these types and their behaviors can evolve between types over time. Understanding these differences can help the non-Chinese manager and student of HR issues in China to operate more effectively and gain more insights – as the author himself discovered in the process of researching this case.

China: Managing a Diverse and Multicultural Workforce in Multinationals in a Growth Economy

This case follows on from Cases 1 and 2, which suggested a system of analyzing both the Chinese employees and Western expatriate managers of a typical multinational company operating in China. Based on attitudinal, behavioral, and psychological factors, the analysis included career ambitions, consumer habits, and attitudes to foreign companies in China generally. Chinese staff, the author argues (based on more than five years of observation and a detailed survey she conducted), can be categorized as in one of three main types: Chuppies, Westernized and Traditional, or “Mandarins.” Western expatriates can be seen as “Gilded Cage” types, or “Half-Way House,” or “Gone Local.” Understanding these differences can help the head office executive living far from China and the student of China HR issues to gain insights into the important issues of recruiting, motivating, training and developing staff, and achieving results through them – as the author herself discovered in the process of researching this case.

Egypt: Sustainable HR within the CSR Policies in a Multinational Hospitality Group

This case considers the attempts to create sustainable HR practices as part of the development of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy in a multinational hospitality group. This practice has become an opportunity given the creation and growth of the tourism industry in many countries worldwide. The case investigates the extent of HR policy compliance in these hotels—in a case study based on Egypt—matched against their stated head office policies and benchmarked against best practice frameworks in the literature, which define and suggest frameworks for analyzing and measuring HR practice in hotels. The HR policies in practice in examples of properties in Egypt, although not exactly in compliance with head office, show some concern within the capabilities of the local management in Egypt and within the constraints of the local population in offering improved HR-related benefits to staff members. Certainly, the multinational-branded properties are better than the local ones, but they still have some way to go.

Afghanistan

Based on interviews and the use of the “Conflict Management Modes” exercise, it was discovered that Afghan managers are more directive, less empowering and delegating, more relationship-oriented, have long-term visions, are less confrontational and mostly avoid conflicts, whereas American expatriate managers seemed to be more collaborating, more empowering and delegating, more task-oriented, more short-term in their thinking, and collaborative in handling conflicts. It is recommended that Americans working in Afghanistan need to pay more attention to the need to build human capital, pay exclusive attention to cultural values, and foster more relationship-oriented attitudes, particularly when working in this kind of environment. Afghans need to be prepared to be more confrontational, more collaborating, and empower others in order to develop future leaders. In certain areas, such as teamwork, expertise, and the relationship between management and leadership, both Afghan and American managers seem to agree to a great extent but with different attitudes.

Bhutan: Measuring Employee Training Effectiveness

The public sector of Bhutan—as in many developing countries—budgets substantial funds for capacity building and training, and in the case of one of the ministries in the government, the investment is not evaluated for effectiveness. This case looks at the effectiveness of the existing training programs of that ministry and recommends necessary policy and regulatory changes to improve training processes. The model of measuring training effectiveness developed by Donald Kirkpatrick in 1959 (known as the four level model) was used; the data for the study was collected from two sets of questionnaires. One set was from the employees who have undergone some form of training in the last three years and the other from the manager of these employees. A total of 92 employees and 23 managers responded positively to the survey. The conclusion of the study established that there is ample room for the ministry to improve their training effectiveness – and this point is true for many relatively underdeveloped emerging markets in Asia that are similar to Bhutan.