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Case Study: an Irish Employee

Objective

With specific reference to the theoretical frameworks underpinning international human resource management (IHRM), critique the following case study to facilitate the application of scholarly concepts to practice.

 Case Study

An Irish employee living and working in Ireland is being coached for a future position at an executive level within a multinational organisation in the petrochemical industry. She has performed a variety of roles within the company, all of which were located in her home country, and in non-technical areas. The organisation’s policy is for each individual on its fast track succession plan to occupy at least one position overseas and manage a subsidiary or overseas office.

The individual was offered a position in a predominantly Arabic-speaking and Muslim North African country. It was a relatively new location for the organisation. It had opened an office there because oil had recently been discovered offshore and there was a great opportunity to drill for oil and share in the proceeds with the government.

The employee had not been briefed in any way about the country, its security concerns or politics, only about the exciting oil partnership deal. She had decided that as it was located close to Europe, she could fly back to her home country relatively easily, if required. With her husband willing to take a leave of absence, and her young children prepared, she felt she was ready to take on the international role.

A few weeks before starting her new assignment, she travelled to the country in question. Her first meeting was with the UK ambassador (there was no Irish embassy in the country), who warned her that her forthcoming appointment was already widely known about, and not just in a positive way. She was already apparently on the radar of Al-Qaeda, which was ‘known to be operating within the country’. What’s more, her place of residence was beside the TV station, which had been taken over recently during a coup d’état.

To make matters worse, on meeting with the newly appointed oil minister, he announced that the formula for the royalties split was being amended, so that her organisation would receive less than what had been originally agreed, so it seemed she would face a difficult challenge in dealing with the government.

The employee met with a number of locally recruited staff to get acquainted with them in advance of her assignment. The ‘employees’ turned out to be contractors, and all appeared to be relatives of government ministers, their appointments ratified by the government. None spoke English and no one had any expertise in the oil industry.

Finally, the employee discovered that there were no schools that provided schooling in English – or even French. Arabic was the national language. With small children, she had assumed there would be plenty of English-speaking nannies and teachers. As for her husband, who had planned to take leave of absence from his job, it transpired that the government was not granting entry visas for anyone other than direct employees working for organisations that had contracts with the government.

Based on: Rennie, A. and McGee, R. (2012) International Human Resource  Management. London: CIPD. 

Instructions

• Case study critique involves:
  • Applying theoretical concepts and frameworks
  • Drawing upon practitioner resources

• Submit a hard copy of the individual case study critique in class on Thursday 7^th November 2019 (week 8 of semester one)
• Submit a softcopy of same through Brightspace (for plagiarism purposes) by the commencement of class on the aforementioned submission date [submit one document only via Brightspace]
• Keep within a maximum word count of 2,500 words (excluding appendices and bibliography)
• Late submission penalties as per the School of Marketing Guidelines will apply
• Engage with the literature and apply this knowledge utilising appropriate theoretical framework(s)
• Structure and format assignment appropriate to an academic work
• Expect appropriate number of academic references (textbooks and journals) for Masters level submission
• Use the APA (American Psychological Society) system of referencing which is a Harvard (name-date or “in-text”) referencing system
• Type using double spacing and times new roman (size 12), aligning text to both left and right margins (that is, straight lines on the left and right margins). Case Study: an Irish Employee
• Include cover sheet (attached) as first page of the submission for the hard copy
• Questions about the continuous assessment will only be dealt with in class during lecture time

 Please be sure to include the following points in your mind while you are writing:

1. Write about Muslim culture.
2. High context and low context societies.
3. Institutional context.
4. International experience.
5. Organizational culture.
6. Career management.
7. Staff availability.
8. Type of industry.
9. Training and development.

Assessment Criteria:

 Assessed on the following categories (unequal weighting per criterion):

• Theoretical underpinnings (70%) – appropriate reference to relevant concepts and frameworks, demonstrating a knowledge and understanding of how these theories apply to the topic.
• Practical application (20%) – appropriate reference to relevant practice, demonstrating an ability to apply knowledge of the topic to real world situations. Case Study: an Irish Employee
• Academic presentation and coherence (10%) – appropriate writing style, structure, logic, headings and sub-headings, font, format, pagination and adherence to APA referencing.