Wolfgang’s Balancing Act
Charles J. Cummings
Keiser University
Dr. Yan LUO-Beitler
MAN-674 Global Human Resource Management
August 11, 2013
Over the years, times have changed; many years ago in order for a business to communicate they needed to be located in the same physical location. Now there are email, intranet, and video conferencing, all of which do not require face to face meeting. The world of international business has employees in different cities, countries, and continents. Their employees can live in different time zones and in order to operate in those countries they often speak many languages and cultures. Geographically dispersed executives offer tremendous opportunities to global corporations. Wolfgang’s position as human resource manager at Healthcare Pharmaceutical offers the corporation a full range of skills, education, and experience. As an international human resource manager (IHRM) Wolfgang understood that some of the best skilled employees in the corporation came from outside of the host country (Dowling, Festing, & Engle, 2009, p. 327).

How can the firm communication to the geographically dispersed executives, the need to acquire and maintain those management competencies that have been defined in the competency set (in folder three)?
Would a purely competency-based pay system be somehow more flexible?
But then again, what about the standardization Healthcare has just achieved through standardizing the job descriptions across units?
How would he take these three competency categories and use them to develop a series of measurable, behavioral indicators to be used to assess an executive’s contributions to Healthcare? In what sense should these new behavioral indicators be customized to local (regional) contexts? How can Wolfgang go about this process to ensure a balance of organizational standardization and local relevance?
Wolfgang’s Balancing Act (Case #5, page 326 of the textbook). Respond to the case questions on page 336…