International Management of Human Resources [ LLSMS2107 ]

Prerequisites:

• This is an applied course. To take the full benefit of this course, which emphasizes practical applications of the HRM concepts and approaches, the students are expected to be familiar with the basic HRM theories and practices, and to possess notions of cross-cultural and international management (i.e. basic course on Human Resource Management and on International Business Management or comparable).
• To make sure that all students and their groups benefit from this course, you will have to pass a written admission exam in the first session of this course. The results will be available at short notice.
• You will profit the most from this course if you have a strong interest in people management issues in international companies, and if you are sufficiently fluent in English to communicate well orally and in writing with your group members, the guest speaker, the Professor and for the oral assessment.

The following themes are examples of what will be addressed in this course:
- Intercultural management of human resources
- Issues raised by international projects and assignments (e.g. selection of expatriates, working in multi-cultural teams, competences needed in a multi-national business environment)
- Communicating effectively across culturally and socially different groups
- Acting responsibly in the global arena and coping with ethical and cultural dilemmas.

Contribution of the course competencies in the repository:

Given the competency framework (LSM https://www.uclouvain.be/372562.html), this course contributes to the development and acquisition of the following skills:

This course will contribute in particular to developing the following competences:
- (P) Priority is given to manage your own project in a very self-organised and autonomous way, to develop innovative solutions to practical challenges and to enhance your ability to work in and even guide a multicultural team. You will be faced with situations of uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity where you need to take action yourself and find constructive solutions.
- (S) Secondary competences also developed in the course are cross-cultural communication and interpersonal skills, using academic knowledge and reasoning and applying a scientific and systematic approach for practical problem-solving.

COMPETENCES AND COURSE OBJECTIVES
Course objectives:

• The course is designed to develop both general and HR managers to act in a highly complex and dynamic international work environment.
• The central aim of this course is to develop the student capacity to understand and analyse HR management challenges that the multi-national case organization faces with regard to managing people efficiently and effectively and to explore innovative options how to deal with these challenges.
• It is also the intention of the course to foster student self-development by taking the initiative to create common and mutual learning opportunities to advance personal skills and competences on the topic.
• The final aim is to develop practitioners who are capable of using academic knowledge to analyse and understand HR problem-solving situations in multi-national organisations in a fast-changing global context.

EVALUATION METHODS OF STUDENT PERFORMANCE
The evaluation or assessment methods of the course are linked to the objectives of the course and emphasize group performance. The assessment of your performance in this course will be composed of the following element:

Group project and presentation (20/20): As working collaboratively in a cross-cultural team is one of the objectives of the course, your group project and presentation will account for 100% of your grade.
Group composition: Please sign up on iCampus as soon as possible. Group composition of 5-6 students per group will be announced together with the results of your admission exam. You will also receive the title of your company case.
Team grades: Members of one team receive the same marks on their presentation except when team members ask that the final grade is going to be differentiated and not equally distributed. In this case, the team members have to agree within their group on the distribution of points (in %) and let me know about this before the final presentation. (Remember to put this into your written team contract at the beginning of the semester).
Important deadlines: The presentation date for your group work is on in the week between 17-21 December. Deadline for submission of the presentation slides on iCampus is one day before the presentation.

EVALUATION CRITERIA
The evaluation or assessment criteria of the course are linked to the objectives of the course.
Group project and presentation (20/20):
- Correct and accurate reflection of the case issue studied
- Proper use of the theoretical and empirical literature for the analysis and resolution of the case
- Adequate reporting and attention-catching presentation to a critique-prone audience
- Quality of the analysis
- Justification of assumptions (including full and correct referencing!)
- Practical usefulness of managerial implications (clear value of the academic knowledge for practice)
- Team performance
- Clear structure and coherence
Course failure: If you do not succeed the group assessment during the semester, there will be a 'closed book exam' (no books/notes or other help to be used) on the course in the next exam session.

RULES REGARDING PLAGIARISM AND CHEATING
The University's general guidance for students on plagiarism and cheating can be found at
http://www.uclouvain.be/plagiat and http://www.uclouvain.be/99514.html.

PEDAGOGICAL TOOLS AND TEACHING METHODS
This course is based on a real case study (a complex issue facing the IHRM), in teams in a proposed organization.
As part of a 'blended-learning' approach practical input from a company representative will be complemented with a team building activity, input lectures, a visit to the site of the organization, self-organised learning and
consulting sessions by the Professor.
Literature on cross-cultural, comparative and international (HR)M, found in a proposed bibliography and proceedings of symposiums will guide the students' search for an original, innovative and practical answer to the
IHR challenge.
To be successful in the course, you will have to be able to 'read and decipher' the real case situations with the support from the literature and practice voices, you need to find ways of using your resources (information, time, etc.) wisely and to manage your team quickly and effectively.

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND CONTENT

• Working with people for other cultural backgrounds has become part of the daily activities in organizations today for employees at all levels. The global pressure for competitiveness and effectiveness has increased the number of strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, with the objective of having access to resources, capital and new market opportunities. The travelling distance of managers has increased i.e. even short trips can be from one continent to another. People who have never met each other need to work together in multicultural virtual teams.
• This course focuses on the challenges of International HR departments and related functions managing i.e. attracting and retaining globally a highly qualified and diverse workforce and how global managers get things done with and through people in a global context.
• This course is based on research and insights from the areas International Human Resource Management, Comparative Human Resource Management, International Management, Strategic Human Resource Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Sustainability and Cross-Cultural Management.
• With this course, we propose to examine actual situations where Human Resources Management is currently facing issues generated by the international dimension of the business. This year, those situations will be observed from the Belgian site of TOTAL, a major energy & chemical supplier.

COURSE SCHEDULE AND CONTENT OF THE SESSIONS
The course is structured around 2-hour classroom sessions plus 120h of individual and group work outside ' before and after ' the course (see schedule). Please check regularly the course website for changes in dates, room or deadlines!
In the first session of the course, the entry exam will be written for admission to the course. The results will be announced at short notice and the Professor will form teams of max. 4-5 students and assign practical IHR challenges to each team. For the second session the students must organize themselves and do a team building activity on which a short report must be produced. The third session will be dedicated to the introduction of the case company and the practical challenges.
The following two sessions will provide lecture input and academic background information on cross-cultural management and management of people in international organisations before the next seven sessions provide 'question & answer' sessions with company representatives (company visit) and consulting sessions with the Professor.
At the time of the first Q&A session, the students are expected to be already quite familiar with the theoretical knowledge concerning their area of expertise needed to provide case solutions in order to ask questions which help them to better read and understand the practical challenge.
At the second Q&A session, the students should have prepared a first version of their presentation showing their own original, innovative and practical answer to the case challenge in order to make a 'reality check' with the company representative. (The slides do not have to be presented on this occasion but need to be uploaded on iCampus).

The last official course session will be dedicated to presenting the students' work that has been developed during the semester. After this, an additional voluntary session will be offered for a wrap up of the course including feedback.

SUPPORT AND INITIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Course support:

• Q&A sessions, consulting session
• Readings
• Library resources (http://www.bib.ucl.ac.be). In the library, you will find hard copies of IHRM literature. In addition, you will find rich online resources (e-journals) via electronic databases (such as Business Source Premier, ISI web of science, ISI web of knowledge) and via electronic journals (list of relevant journals will be provided to you).

Bibliographical references:

• Bird, A. & Osland, J.S. (2005). Making sense of Intercultural Collaboration. Int. Studies of Mgt. & Org., 35 (4), 115'132.
• Briscoe, D., Randall, S., & Tarique, I. (2012). International Human Resource Management: Policies and Practices for Multinational enterprises, 4th ed. New York: Routledge.
• Brewster, C., Sparrow, P., Vernon, G. & Houldsworth, E. (2011). International Human Resource Management, 3rd ed. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
• Dowling, P., Festing, M., Engle, A.D. (2008). International Human Resource Management. 5th ed. Thomson.
• Hitt, M., Black, J. S. & Porter, L. W. (2005). Managing within cultural contexts. Chapter 4 in Management (pp. 113-147). Prentice-Hall Financial Times.
• Mead, R. (2004). International management: Cross-cultural dimensions, John Wiley & Sons.
• Osland, J.S. & Bird, A. (2000). Beyond sophisticated stereotyping: Cultural sensemaking in context. Academy of Management Executive, 14 (1), 65'77.
• Schneider, S. C. & Barsoux. J.-L. (2003). Managing Across Cultures. 2nd ed. Prentice Hall.
• Stahl, G.K., Mendenhall, M.E. & Oddou, G.R. (2012). Readings and cases in International Human Resource Management and Organizational Behaviour, 5th ed., Routledge.

Apart from provided readings you are expected to search for further literature on the course topics by using
the sources mentioned above in the 'support' section. Please note that consulting any webpages via internet
search machines will very often NOT provide you with the quality material and information that you are
expected to use in this course.

APPENDIX
This appendix is composed of:

• Appendix 1: Suggested data bases
• Appendix 2: Suggested journals

Appendix 1: Suggested data bases
ISI web of science
ISI web of knowledge (Thomson Reuters)

Appendix 2: Suggested Journals

• Academy of Management Executive/Perspectives
• Academy of Management Journal
• Academy of Management Review
• Academy of Management Learning & Education
• Administrative Science Quarterly
• Applied Psychology: An International Review
• California Management Review
• Cross Cultural Management
• European Journal of International Management
• Harvard Business Review
• Human Relations
• Human Resource Management Journal
• Management and Organization Review
• International Journal of Cross Cultural Management
• International Journal of Human Resource Management
• International Journal of Intercultural Relations
• Journal of Applied Psychology
• Journal of Applied Social Psychology
• Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
• Journal of Intl. Business Studies
• Journal of Management Studies
• Journal of Managerial Psychology
• Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
• Journal of Organizational Behavior
• Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
• Journal of Vocational Behavior
• Leadership and Organizational Development Journal
• Leadership Quarterly
• Management Learning
• New Technology, Work and Employment
• Organization Dynamics
• Organization Science
• Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes
• Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
• Personality and Social Psychology Review
• Personnel Psychology
• Sloan Management ReviewThe European Work and Organizational Psychologist

Getting course information: Please keep yourself informed about the course website (iCampus) and by attending the course. Please make sure that your e-mail account is connected to iCampus and that you read the incoming announcements and information that is provided to you carefully. All relevant information for a successful course assessment will be uploaded and/or communicated to you directly during the sessions. Please seize opportunities to ask questions before and after the course.
With regard to information on the assessment, please do NOT rely only on information that is posted by peers in forums or on the internet as this information can unfortunately be wrong or not up to date.