Recruiting for a Multinational Enterprise in China (Simplified Chinese)
by Sarah Preusse, Diana E. Krause
The CEO of a multinational company wanted the new human resource team of their subsidiary in Guangzhou, China, to recruit and select 85 individuals for different positions throughout the company. These positions included finance managers, production managers, factory workers, secretaries, and interns. The members of the human resource team were highly diverse in terms of educational backgrounds (marketing, law, human resources, public relations, general business administration) and countries of origin (Canada, China, Germany). The team had to deal with a series of challenges to ensure the project’s success. These included a decision about task-specific job requirements, methods to assess job requirements, strategies for recruitment, methods for personnel selection, and final decision-making. The team also had to deal with diversity within the team, cross-cultural issues, and the
leadership behaviour of its CEO.
Learning Objectives:
The case can be used in courses on human resource management, international management (with a focus on human resources), personnel selection, leadership, and teams (with a focus on cross-cultural issues). The primary focus of the case is on employee selection for different positions throughout China. The secondary purpose includes topics such as leadership, intercultural team work, and decision-making.
The case requires students to think critically about job analysis, personnel selection methods and their validity, judgment biases in personnel selection, CEO leadership, teamwork in a multicultural group, and cultural differences. It introduces students to the challenges that an organization faces in the context of personnel selection, risks that exist if a general personnel selection approach is used for all positions without customization, opportunities in which country-unspecific personnel selection methods can be adapted to a specific country, and features, stages, and methods of personnel selection. Students have to consider which personnel selection methods are more or less appropriate given their different predictive validity. Students will become familiar with the leadership style of a particular CEO and will examine it in terms of leadership behaviours as proposed in the
research on transformational leadership. Moreover, students will become familiar with cultural differences between Canada, China, and Germany and will have to analyze those differences systematically using the cultural values and practices dimensions proposed in the Global Leadership and Effectiveness Study.
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