Environmental Scanning

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING EXERCISE

Please post your ESE to this DB forum. Please post it as an attachment

A recommendation: explore countries you are thinking about using for your expatriate packets.

You might also want to look at websites such as the US State Department for information that might be useful for both the ESE and the Expatriate packet.

Reminder, this is a difficult time-consuming assignment, so you should start working on it early

1. (a) Select an industry with which you are somewhat familiar [e.g., kitchen appliance manufacturing, personal care products, or after-market automobile parts]. (b) Identify two (2) countries with which companies in your nation might establish a partnership or subsidiary. (c) Assume your locally-based corporation has entered into a joint venture [shared equity and management partnership] in one (1) of those countries, and has a wholly-owned subsidiary [i.e., no partner] operating in the other country [your choice]. In both types of business relationships your company has employed a combination of expatriate [i.e., parent-country employees who have been employed in your local operations] as well as host country nationals [HCNs], and employees from at least one other third country [TCNs].

2. Identify basic trends in the following aspects of the business environment which might affect your business over the next two or three years while engaged in a partnership [international joint venture] or with a wholly-owned subsidiary doing business in the group of countries you are assigned. Cite your sources.

• Economic
• Social-Cultural
• Political-Legal
• Technological
• Market

3. From your analysis, determine potential implications for HRM policies and practices.

4. Using the outline below, prepare a Main Points Overview of your findings.

5. Conclude by telling what additional information you would seek and what sources you might use.

BRIEFING OUTLINE

1. Industry: ____________________ Group of Countries: _________________________

2. Key Environmental Trends and HR Implications

Environmental Factors and Trends [list several key factors for each of the following]	HRM Policy Implications [Identify HR policy implications associated with this and other factors/trends in the column to the left]
Economic Conditions
Social-Cultural
Market/Competition Changes
Technological Changes
Political-Legal Conditions

3. What additional information would you seek, and name some potential sources.