2 1 century is the era of economic globalization, and transnational operation will become a common mode of operation for enterprises in various countries. Cross-cultural problems must be faced and dealt with in transnational operation of enterprises. How to face cross-culture and deal with cultural conflicts is one of the important factors that affect the management effect and success or failure of multinational enterprises. One of the most effective ways to solve cultural conflicts is to localize managers, that is, the managers of multinational companies in foreign subsidiaries, especially middle and senior managers and key technicians, are mainly local people in the host country. In the last two decades, although each country has its own characteristics in the personnel strategy of transnational operation, a prominent phenomenon is that among the personnel strategies that multinational companies can choose, the influence of talent localization strategy is growing, such as talent localization and talent internationalization. A survey by foreign scholars shows that 43 of the 44 American multinational companies employ local people as senior managers.
1979 since China's reform and opening up, it has agreed to use foreign capital of 470 billion US dollars and actually introduced foreign capital of170 billion US dollars; More than 280,000 foreign-invested enterprises have been approved, with 6,543,800 enterprises actually operating and 6,543,800 employees. Nearly 200 of the world's top 500 multinational companies have invested in China. (1) In order to adapt to the unique business environment in China, multinational companies have adopted localization business strategies to varying degrees, and localization of talents is one of its main characteristics. The localization of talents is of great significance to the operation of multinational companies in China. Hire China people to manage production and business. They are well versed in China's cultural traditions, behaviors and ways of thinking under their influence, and can communicate and cooperate well with their subordinates for effective management. At the same time, these Chinese personnel often receive more western education, have a deep understanding of western behavior and management methods, and can better understand and implement the management ideas of foreign bosses. Therefore, the localization of managers plays an important role in solving cultural conflicts and promoting effective cooperation. The general manager of a Sino-US joint venture pointed out that "the localization of managers is the trend of foreign-funded enterprises, which is increasingly proved to be effective and can reduce costs."
Of course, localization management also has obvious weaknesses. In terms of management communication, how to understand the strategy of the headquarters and implement it locally, managers sent from abroad at the beginning have more advantages in this respect and can better understand the intention of the headquarters. This is also the reason why multinational companies that first entered China began to use foreign managers. There are obvious differences between westerners and orientals in management culture. Westerners don't care about people when dealing with problems. No matter what is right in advance, talk about people. If something goes wrong, no matter who it is, just deal with it. On the other hand, when faced with a problem, China people will subconsciously look at who did it first. If it is done by certain people, even if it is wrong, it will affect the handling of things because of respect. China people's method of discussing things according to people can't adapt to the institutionalized management of multinational companies. Institutionalized management attaches great importance to documents and data. In most multinational companies, if you want to do something, you must do it very rigorously. They clearly describe the ins and outs of things and the description of projects in documents, and everything depends on documents and data, which is very different from domestic enterprises.
Enterprise management is essentially market competition, which is essentially product competition, product competition is essentially science and technology competition, and science and technology competition is essentially talent competition. Therefore, the competition between enterprises is, in the final analysis, the competition for talents. With the economic internationalization, enterprises are increasingly engaged in transnational operations and participating in international economic competition. The amount of materialized capital owned by enterprises is no longer the key factor to determine the outcome, but talents become the key to the success of enterprises. It can be seen that the localization of management talents is a prerequisite for foreign investors to succeed in investing and operating enterprises in China. At the same time, because China culture has its special origin and humanistic background, how to adapt to China culture as soon as possible is another problem faced by human resources managers and general managers of multinational companies. Since China's reform and opening up, the empirical materials of personnel policies of foreign multinational companies investing in China have also reflected this distinctive feature.
Sanyo Electric (Shekou) Co., Ltd. is the earliest wholly-owned production enterprise established by Japanese Sanyo Group in China, and all its products are exported. At present, there are about 4,500 local employees in China, including about 104 middle and senior management cadres and about 30 1 grass-roots supervisors. Most of these management cadres are trained and promoted from the workers. Beijing Sitong Matsushita Electric Co., Ltd. regularly sends China employees to participate in overseas training every year. After training, many China employees have become the technical backbone and management cadres of the company. ②
Mr. Su, Vice President of Yum! Asia Pacific. Brands, which manages more than 3,000 KFC, Pizza Hut and korbel in the world, wrote in an open letter to all employees of China Company: "We will speed up the localization of management talents and strive to find suitable talents to join the company in China in the next five years ...".
One of the guiding principles that Motorola follows in every investment in China is the principle of "management localization". An important part of management localization is employee localization. Localization of employees means that multinational companies train local employees in a transnational environment, so that they have the ability and knowledge of a certain position and can compete equally with the same positions in other parts of the world. The company gives employees a lot of room for development and makes them full of hope for the future. Training a group of excellent reserve managers for the company is most beneficial to the company's own development.
Undoubtedly, many famous domestic companies have made great efforts in using local talents in China, which has played a positive role in improving the quality of human resources in China. Talent is not innate. To realize the localization of management, we need to actively cultivate outstanding talents and dare to let them develop, manufacture and sell products. Foreign-funded enterprises attach great importance to employee training, and think that training is extremely important to improve the competitiveness of enterprises and the long-term development of the company. Through training, the work skills of employees are greatly improved, and the knowledge of corporate culture is instilled in employees, and efforts are made to build senior staff and stable high-quality teams that meet the requirements of the company. Motorola founded Motorola School in Beijing and Tianjin to train employees on a large scale. At the same time, excellent employees will be sent to American headquarters for long-term or short-term training.
The training policies of foreign companies are very attractive to China employees, which makes people see that getting such training opportunities is undoubtedly beneficial to their career and lays a good foundation for future development. Many people are full of praise for the training of foreign companies and hope to have such training opportunities.
Foreign-funded enterprises spare no expense in training. The China Training Planning Department of the famous American General Electric Company invested 900 million US dollars in training funds only in 1996. In contrast, enterprises in China do not know enough about the importance of training. Many enterprises do not pay attention to the training of employees, the investment in training, and the tracking and feedback of training effects.
The goal of talent localization in multinational corporations is to maximize global operating profits. In practice, it shows many advantages over other personnel strategies, as follows:
First, improve the international image of the enterprise and enhance the trust of the country where the subsidiary is located.
If a large number of people from the host country enter the local subsidiaries of multinational companies to take up management jobs, they will generally bring their own feelings, which will certainly curb any behavior of multinational companies that harms the interests of the host country. At the same time, the practice of multinational companies to abandon national prejudice will also win the trust of the host government and people. The high transparency of the company's operation will also establish its own international image.
Second, avoid management losses caused by cultural differences.
David. A. Lex thinks: "almost all multinational companies fail because they ignore cultural differences." Some people think that the proportion of failure due to these reasons is 25%-40%. The talent localization strategy can overcome this deficiency to a great extent. In addition, the implementation of talent localization strategy can reduce operating costs and make multinational companies profitable. Under normal circumstances, managers sent abroad must invest a lot of money to carry out long-term, comprehensive and in-depth training on relevant knowledge. At the same time, these expatriates also enjoy high allowances and subsidies, round-trip travel expenses between the home country and the host country, etc. On the one hand, it can avoid the above expenses, on the other hand, it can make full use of the advantage of low wages in the host country to attract high-quality talents with wages far lower than those of the parent company but significantly higher than those in the host country. Furthermore, due to the talent localization strategy, cultural barriers have been eliminated to the greatest extent, and the company's ability to deal with the host government has been enhanced.
Third, to a certain extent, it ensures the relative stability of the company's management personnel.
People from the home country go to work in foreign countries, and the ideological instability caused by cultural differences and family members' inadaptability sometimes leads managers to give up their management responsibilities in the host country; Managers often encounter opportunities for cross-border promotion at home, which will affect the stability of managers. Recruiting local managers in the host country will reduce this negative impact.
For multinational companies, the benefits brought by talent localization strategy are obviously more than the above points. However, the talent localization strategy, like other strategies, has advantages and disadvantages, and both advantages and disadvantages coexist. Theoretically speaking, in the personnel strategy of multinational companies, the internationalization strategy of talents should be the most effective. Because it does not consider the nationality of managers, but only from the perspective of ability, it rationally allocates and uses human resources on a global scale, which is more in line with the growing global strategic needs. However, in practice, because many countries where subsidiaries are located require to employ local personnel as managers and realize this requirement through state intervention, there are a series of insurmountable weaknesses in the talent localization strategy. First, in order to internationalize managers, multinational enterprises must disperse recruitment in a large geographical area, train employees in language and culture, and mobilize managers and their families in different countries, which may make the cost of implementing this strategy higher. Second, this strategy requires multinational companies to implement a high degree of centralized control in human resource management, thus limiting the autonomy of regional managers in employing people.
On the one hand, they have trained a large number of high-quality talents for China, and in a sense, they have also reserved management talents for the future development of China. Managers employed by multinational companies in China have more opportunities to get in touch with foreign advanced science and technology and management experience, and are familiar with the operation mechanism of market economy. The flow of these new enterprise managers and technicians in China will certainly promote the spread of international advanced management experience and technology in China, thus accelerating the process of China's integration into the world economy. On the other hand, the talent localization strategy of multinational companies makes the salary gap between the senior managers and technical backbones of some multinational companies in China and ordinary workers very large. It is quite common that the salary of the personnel department manager in China reaches four to seven times that of the workers. The salary of Chinese representatives in some joint ventures is more than ten times that of directors of similar state-owned enterprises. At the same time, these multinational enterprises also implement housing concessions for higher vocational personnel. This salary policy adopted by multinational companies has led to a large number of brain drain from state-owned enterprises. high flyers, who has spent a lot of resources to train, has been given priority by multinational companies, which has brought psychological imbalance to state-owned enterprise cadres at the same level and affected their work enthusiasm. Some senior employees in China are even completely on the side of foreign interests, even conniving at foreign businessmen's damage to national interests, and even making suggestions for foreign businessmen to make huge profits.
Precautions:
The globalization trend of 1 and the development of human resources in China. Beijing talent market news. 1March 9, 998
2 talent management localization. China human resources development. 1998No. 18
3 China MBA is promising. China Human Resources Development 1998No. 12
4. Some information about the labor relations of foreign multinational companies investing in China. Contemporary Thought1February 29, 998