We assumed that we, like most other people in business, knew exactly what strategy was all about. After all, vooks about strategy fill our bookshelves at work and at home, and the magazines we read usually feature an article about one strategic technology or another. What’s more, we used the term every day: strategic decision-making, strategic impact, strategic partnerships, strategic alignment, strategic outsourcing – and new variations are cropping up on a daily basis. In fact, we discovered that we used the term differently in talking with each other and with our colleagues. Sometimes, we meant “big.” In other instances, we used “strategy” or “strategic” as a synonym for “important.” When we looked back over memos, emails, and articles we had written or received, we found other meanings too: strategy meant bottom line, long-range or executive level. The term often carried with it a suggestion of planning, but sometimes we meant “visioning” rather than detailed step-by-step directions. Some of our communications seemed to imply a need for resource specifications, critical path diagrams or milestones and measurements – but others studiously avoided such tools as too constraining. It didn’t take us long to realize that it meant all of the things we had encountered and more: like the frustrating search for a single definition of headcount a generation ago, it dawned on us that both the definition of strategy and what we decide to do to be “strategic” vary according to context. When we see HR and HRIT as support for the corporation, our strategies focus on support; when we see HR as leaders, then our strategic contribution has a visionary and “enabling” flavor. Likewise, who we define as primary clients – stakeholders, shareholders, employees, management, government regulators, for example – changes what strategy entails.

It seems working in change management has probably never been so important or so complex. To help managers navigate, this report presents models and methods derived from the collective wisdom and experience of working group members and survey participants. It is hoped the knowledge gleaned from this research will help organizations know more about what they need to make change management work.

Encounters with the 'Other' – including strangers, foreigners, and speakers of other languages – are an ancient feature of the social and psychological reality of human beings and an ancient topic for humanistic research. But the march of time and technology has greatly accelerated the rate at which we have such experiences. The set of social, commercial, and communicative phenomena that is subsumed under the term globalization constitutes a qualitative change in the human environment; there now exists a growing population of people who live, work, converse, and interact in multiple cultures, countries, continents, and communicative contexts. They travel internationally, live outside their home countries for extended periods, speak more than one language, and function within multiple cultural settings. Of course, such experiences vary tremendously from individual to individual, in terms of duration, intensity, the countries and languages involved, and so on. This entails varying levels of acculturation, accommodation and assimilation.

The sweeping trends in human affairs collectively known as globalization entail accelerating rates of international and intercultural contact. As international travel, global economic expansion, and multicultural communicative integration via technological advances like the Internet all increase, more and more individuals are brought into extensive contact with 'foreign' places, cultures, languages, and people. Hence the future of the human condition will involve increasing and intensifying experiences of the Other(s). Awareness of 'Otherness' raises questions of culture, identity, and global mindset. We investigate these issues in connection with an empirical study of individuals with international work experiences.

With the ever-accelerating speed of change and the ever increasing demands placed on global business, our world is both expanding and shrinking – expanding by promoting broader, more extensive contacts among countries and individuals, and simultaneously, shrinking through faster and easier access to information and people from different cultures around the world. While these paradoxical forces provide increased business opportunities, they also create more occasions for cross-cultural conflict and misunderstanding.

This lectures presents a model for understanding cultural differences and building awareness of the effects that culture has on language. It discuss the aspects of the international business environment and the role that culture and language play, and illustrates the application of various analytical perspectives and models from linguistics and the social sciences on international business communications with the goal of demonstrating the interdependence of the social science disciplines -- sociology, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics -- and to show their effects on various business situations.

Wherever in the world your company has operations and employees, you need reliable economic indicators and compensation planning information in order to make equitable, competitive, and cost-effective business decisions that align with your global workforce strategy as well as corporate goals, policies, and practices. Knowing the right market-driven questions to ask anywhere in the world regarding salary trends, unemployment rates, inflation outlook, and anticipated GDP is critical to the success and profitability of your global organizations.

The business world continues to globalize. No longer limited by geography or national boundaries, companies of all size are ‘going global’—compelling HR professionals and other decision makers with significant line-of-business and value creation responsibilities to enter the unchartered territory of sustaining competitiveness worldwide using new tools in new markets. The truth is, building a world-class borderless enterprise is difficult to conceptualize, visualize, and support. The complexities of acculturation as well as the barriers of language, business practices, and international regulations contribute to a lack of organizational clarity when transcending boundaries.

This article first provides a brief history of the modern organization and discusses the various types of global organizational models that are common today. The main tenet of this article is that HRIT needs to move to the collaborative transnational organization model in order to deliver services more effectively in the age of Web 2.0.

The organizational demands in the era of globalization, digitization, expanding networks, and eroding boundaries provoke the perennial question as to whether we should organize our operations locally, regionally, or globally. In the past, a standard globalization strategy has been to take a global solution built by the headquarters office and roll it out locally, country by country. Yet, this approach goes about globalization completely the wrong way. The slogan, "Think Global, Act Local," originally created by Canadian futurist Hazel Henderson to describe how small local actions can have large global impact, is completely the inverse of what we should be doing to globalize our HR organization and supporting systems. Rather, we should first "Think Local" to truly understand the needs of our local business communities and then "Act Global" to seamlessly knit together diverse business functions and systems into a holistic approach if we want to build an effective, efficient, and competitive HR organization that will thrive in the 21st century.

Adroit human resource (HR) professionals are continually striving for ways to improve HR service delivery and demonstrate greater value of the human capital function to their enterprise. As a result, many organisations are beginning to take advantage of emerging and maturing Web services technology. While Information Technology (IT) units are the initial beneficiaries of Web services applications resulting from lower cost of technology ownership and improved infrastructure management, business units also benefit through greater business agility and improved business process management. Human resource units, in particular, are able to do their jobs better and improve service delivery to their clients (e.g., employees, company management, business partners) through the deployment of applications that enable HR professionals to easily configure, orchestrate, and modify company business processes in line with changes in business strategy, economic/ political environment, and/or regulatory and compliance requirements. One key dilemma facing organisations embarking on a Web services initiative is which delivery model should they consider for the company's Human Capital Management Suite (HCMS): the Software as a Service (SaaS) model or the owner-maintained model -- both can make effective use of the same Web services technology.

Prediction is tricky when analyzing the human resource information systems (HRIS) scene in Europe, because of the many conflicting forces the continent is subject to. In general, these forces can be summarized as dialectic of two trends. On the one hand, Europe has many nations, languages, cultures, histories, and nationalistic tendencies that are pushing it in one direction; on the other, there are significant 'Europeanisation' forces that are pulling it in another, more unified direction with the subsequent emergence of a pan-European business environment.

In spite of the recent economic slowdown, the worldwide business process outsourcing (BPO) market, according to the Gartner Group, is continuing to grow by 9.5 percent (compound annual growth rate) and is projected to reach $173B in 2007.1 During the same period, the Asia/Pacific IT outsourcing market, says International Data Corporation (IDC), will experience modest growth, driven primarily by China and Korea. As vendor offerings for the region are maturing and competitive pressures increasing, BPO markets, particularly in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore are moving into a rapid growth stage.

This volume is a collection of articles by well-known, highly experienced professionals in the field. Its goal is to provide a comprehensive, inside view of HR outsourcing -- from defining a strategic vision, developing a business plan, and redesigning the organization, to deploying new business processes, transitioning to a new delivery model, and managing people and change. It also provides an overview of regional outsourcing trends, with chapters on Europe, Latin America, and Asia/Pacific. Finally, to ensure a balanced perspective, Out of Site includes a discussion of the case "against" outsourcing and why outsourcing may not always be the best strategy for everyone. It is a "must read" for all HR professionals, regardless of industry or company size. As companies grapple with how to "do more with less," outsourcing will continue to be an important strategy.

The New Multi-Dimensional Talentforce: Implications for Managing the Emerging Multi-Generational, Multi-Cultural, Multi-Contractual, and Multi-Environmental Workforce in the 21st Century

This article discusses the second dimension of the multi-dimensional talentforce: multi-cultural differences that have become ubiquitous in the global work force. There are significant cultural aspects that influence how people interpret and respond to events, act and react in the workplace, and in general determine and govern how we conduct business. These cultural influences include such things as differing styles of communication, multiple ways of making decisions, and various approaches to demonstrating engagement, commitment, respecting diversity, ethics, and so on. Some of the ways in which cultures can radically differ from one another include: extent to which individuals are independent versus interdependent; expression of individualistic intentions versus more collectivist, group behaviors; belief in a more egalitarian versus hierarchical status; degree of aggressiveness versus accommodation to others; more direct versus indirect styles of communicating; feelings of neutral versus more affective relationships; specific and closed relationships versus multiple and diffuse relationships; orientation toward tasks and getting things done versus building relationships and rapport; appreciation of universalism versus particularism; tolerance for risk versus more conservative approaches; short-term versus long-term planning horizons; monochronic versus polychronious sense of time; differences in sense of personal space (called proxemics); tolerance for and acceptance of change versus resistance to change; receptivity versus resistance to diversity; and, acceptance versus resistance to new ideas.

Much has been said and written about 'globalizing' HRIS over the years, but has much been achieved? If the answer is 'yes', what has been the nature of those achievements? Consider the following: What global or even pan-European compensation programs exist that pay managers on the same identifiable, quantifiable performance metrics across all countries (while of course not necessarily on the same scales due to the varying economic situations and standards of living)? How many global HRIS organizations exist that manage worldwide HRIS issues on an ongoing basis? (Think about how many global teams are broken up and redeployed into the local business units once the implementation is declared a success.) What truly global software solutions exist that can manage HR, benefits and payroll needs on an integrated (not 'interfaced') basis, for all countries (or even for the major economic powers) and handle all the different linguistic, cultural, financial, legislative and taxation requirements?

As Charles Handy observes in his book, The Age of Paradox, we are entering the 'age of unreason'. We are no longer in the position of being able to choose between various opposing business strategies; we have to develop multiple strategic competencies that may at times appear to be in conflict. According to Handy, today's organizations need to be like both the 'elephant' and the 'flea': they need the size, the reach, and the power of an elephant, but, at the same time, they must remain small, agile, and quick like a flea. To be competitive today, organizations have to be both large and small, both global and local, both centralized and decentralized, sensitive to the needs of local units, and simultaneously responsive to the demands of head office. Instead of choosing one or the other, organizations must learn how to reconcile what were formerly considered 'opposites'. They must find a way to combine multiple contrasting strategies and avoid situations where they have to neglect one for the other.

This white paper describes the major developments in data privacy and security relevant to HR and HR systems over the past six years.  It assumes the reader’s familiarity with topics addressed in a chapter on data privacy by this author in Boundaryless HR: Human Capital Management in the Global Economy (IHRIM Press, 2002). 

These topics include: (a) definitions of privacy; types of privacy; values and limits of privacy; and the differences between privacy, security and confidentiality; (b) an overview of the legal protections for privacy that exist in the U.S., the European Union (EU), Canada and elsewhere; (c) the challenge of the EU Data Protection Directive, including enforcement issues; (d) an explanation and analysis of four major strategies for complying with the Directive, namely consent, model contracts, the Safe Harbor Program and global codes of conduct, along with advantages and disadvantages of each; and (e) observations and recommendations concerning a global standard for handling employee data.  Readers unfamiliar with these topics, which form a baseline for this white paper, are encouraged to peruse these earlier writings before proceeding. 

The treatment of the major developments in data privacy and security begins with those occurring within Europe, then turns to Canada, and then to other countries, before taking up developments in the United States.  As we shall see, the single most prominent development of the past six years is the dramatic expansion of regulatory requirements within the U.S.

There are some major changes taking place in the human resource management systems (HRMS) landscape. Web services, service-oriented architecture (SOA), component development, and new software delivery methods are all contributing to substantial change. On-demand HRMS business solutions are gaining popularity every month. Present indications are the uptake will continue to increase during 2007 and by 2010 the option will become mainstream. On-demand is not just a new technology stack; it is a whole new business platform and will throw down a challenge to the conventional on-premise model that has dominated for so long. The players are still the same but the playing field has been moved to a new level. The acceptance of the new platform will cause some dramatic changes to HRMS and the way software needs are specified, products are built, components are sold and solutions assembled and deployed. Although the rules may have changed, the issues – such as integration – are still the same, irrespective of the platform.

Human resource functions have traditionally been candidates for outsourcing. While initially outsourcing concerned payroll, benefits and HR information technology, today companies outsource an average of a dozen HR processes, according to a recent survey by Towers Perrin of Fortune 500 U.S. companies. Communication technology allows the outsourcing of a large number of HR activities on a global level. The customer may selectively outsource various administrative back-office functions, potentially to several vendors and subject to different levels of relationship. For instance, a company may outsource a business function partially (e.g., performance management), a single business function fully (e.g., payroll processing), several functions of a business process (e.g., payroll, benefits and training), or all functions of a business process (e.g., the HR department). This article provides a framework for understanding HR outsourcing (HRO) services by discussing several business models that characterize today’s market. It concentrates on the core functions of Human Resources and Payroll from a global point of view of HRO, yet with particular focus on Europe. However, the observations are applicable to other multinational regions as well.

Saving manager time with a Manager Self-Service application has become a new area of cost savings, unattainable with earlier systems since Web applications, portals and related technologies were not available in usable form prior to a few years ago. This approach to determining the tangible cost benefits of implementing a new or improved human resource technology solution is meant to supplement other areas of possible savings wherever possible since a stronger business case can be made with multiple areas of savings.

Just to set your minds at ease, this article will not cover all the points about setting a HR Technology Strategy (HRTS), just the primary ones. To properly address all the aspects, a new text book may well be needed, but for these purposes, we can at least explore what a HR Technology Strategy is, why we need one, and what the most important components of a HRTS are.