Implications of cross border integration on HRM:

In the increasingly complex economic modem of the world, cross border integration of
businesses though Mergers and acquisitions has become a fundamentally important way to
establish growth, as more firms seek international expansion. This leads to the rise of many
positive and negative implications on both parties involved in the integration process that
have to be dealt with in order to undergo the process successfully. As mentioned by (Piekkari
et al.), organizations ongoing the process of integration have mainly focused their energy and
resources on stabilize the strategic and financial functions of the process, while the
incremental function of HRM has been deemed inferior, but as the frequency of cross border
integration took off, it has been realized that HRM plays a significant role in stabilizing the
procedure thus calling for carefully handling the function. In fact (Piekkari et al.) have
playfully characterized the integration of organizations in a cross border premise to be
ironically disintegrating for the HRM fabric of both firms, in a way that would recall for the
sowing a new thread of policies and functions that will help manage the newly formed
organization.
The issues that can arise from the cross border integration are mainly linked to two factors
that directly impact HRM practices, these factors are cultural environment and legal matters.
The implications of these factors on HRM are that of the overall failure and success of the
integration processes. In terms of the cultural aspect, it has become increasingly visible to
scholars and HR management around the world that the cultural behavior of the country has
direct link to the organizational performance, thus an organization that is pursuing successful
integration has to be highly aware and vigilant of the cultural element of the country in which
it is about to operate, and it has to accordingly amend its organizational culture in order to suit
the national culture. Otherwise the strategic stability of the integration process will be
threatened and unimmunized to failure. One of the few companies that have been deemed
successful in going through this integration process is Cisco Systems Inc. (Child, et al. 2001)
have argued that they were able to succeed through addressing issues in the right matter,
ahead of their acquisition of the (Cerent), Cisco has appointed a team to study the
organizational culture of the Cerent as well as the practices of the company, all in an effort to
go through the integration process smoothly. And based on the findings of this team Ciscos
HR department had integrated the Cerent culture with its own culture, and attaining only the
best practices of both firms involved. This has allowed Cisco to keep its employees motivated
and at the same time gained the commitment and trust of Cerents employees.
The Other implication of cross border integration on the role of HRM is in relations to legal
matters, as employment laws and regulations can differ from one country to another, it can
become a challenge for the HR management to have a standard code of conduct due to the
specific needs of the legal matters of the different countries. Therefore, it becomes the role of
the HRM department to make the companies regulations flexible to accommodate the
domestic employment regulations within its practices. An example of this is Wal-Mart and
how they differentiate their legal HR practices based on the employment regulation of the
country, in which they operate, by law in Europe they are required to provide health care
coverage and pension funds for their employees, while such privileges are not provided for

the majority of their employees in the United States, due to the fact that employment
regulations are more flexible in the US in comparison to Europe. This is just one example of
how domestic legal enforcements can affect the HR practices of the company. There are other
forms of legal differences that can have a variety of implications on HRM in cross border
integration; in fact there are laws that can interfere with all the known function of HRM.
The issues that can spring from cross border integration can have serious and challenging
implications on all the organizational functions of the company, but none more serious than
on Human Resource department, because establishing the acceptable level of productivity
during crucial times of change and alteration will heavily depend on the commitment of the
workforce, and that cannot be accomplished without the careful treatment of the HR functions
with special regards to the issues of cultural behavior and legal factors.

The Impact of Ethical Leadership and Social Corporate responsibility on HR

management:
The topic of ethical leadership has received substantial coverage in the last few decades, and
that is notably due to the rise of ethical corporate scandals in the US and elsewhere. The topic
has become of significant importance due to the rising belief that it has direct impact on the
behavior and performance of employees and ultimately on the overall organizational goals.
This has caused the strong focus on the HR functions, and specifically on how can ethical
leadership and the practice of social corporate responsibility lead it to positive development of
the employees commitment and performance. Empirical research by (Ponnu & Tennakoon,
2009) has evidence that there is a direct link between Ethical leadership practices which
includes HR functions in the matter and with the positive perception and performance of
employees. They explained that it provides a sense of responsibility and belonging to a greater
world purpose for the employees by breaking off the cyclical trends of profit and loss focuses,
or more specifically giving them a sense of purpose, and that will ultimately lead them to
stronger understanding of ethicality performing their tasks.
Through HR strategies a companies has a significant responsibility of enforcing ethical values
in the employees activities, because the actions and decisions of employees can directly
reflect the image of the company. Therefore, it becomes the role of the HR management
through its various functions to install a model that will force employees to make ethical
decisions in the work place. The HRM department can accomplish this goal in various ways
through it strategies. The first possible way HRM can do that is through the HR function of
recruitment and selection; during the interview process there are a few companies that give
hypothetical clauses to the interviewees and ask what they would do in certain situations, all
to analyze their actions and how effective they are, which means it can be possible to also
analyze their responses for the ethicality of their decision making approaches, this would
make it easier for the corporation to hire only ethically responsible individuals. In addition to
that, the HRM department can simply enforce an ethics code that prohibits the use of
unethical actions in the company; in fact this has become a fundamental part in all HRM
strategies in the modern corporate Model, Due to the rise of ethical dilemmas. Another way

HRM can try to spread a positive ethical behavior is by providing ethical training to
employees. The Entertainment giant Walt Disney has become highly reputable for its HR
strategies in regards to ethical leadership, as they use all the practices we have so far
mentioned, in fact they make sure that their employees enroll in ethical training programs
before starting their work with the company. The Walt Disney Human resources mission is
stated as follows Our mission is to drive the people dimension of our business, consistent
with Disneys culture and values. This show the companys commitment to ethical leadership
and even to Corporate social responsibility as their corporate vision is stated to be as simple
and meaningful as To make the world happier place this goal has had a significant impact
on the companys HR strategy as we have explained, and subsequently on the employees
commitment to the corporate vision of Walt Disney.
The impact of Ethical leadership on HR strategies is somewhat dependant on the seriousness
of the companys upholding of its own values, as those values are directly reflected in the
companys actions, companies like Enron have long claimed their values of integrity, honesty,
and transparency, but the scandal has proven that those were nothing but empty marketing
slogans. Therefore, empirical research implies that employees tend to respect and commit to
ethical values if they see that the company is doing the same; Hence, leading by example. The
E-Bay as the E-commerce leader in the world has been able to do that successfully, the way
they treat their employees by having an open door policy that gives the least of employees in
the company direct access to the CEO has demonstrated that everyone including the top level
management is held accountable for actions. Which allowed for a transparent and an ethical
model of leadership to be circulated in the companies HR strategies, and it is this form of
ethical upheaval embraced by E-Bay that has lead the company to be considered one of the
most ethical companies in the world by the Ethisphere Institute. In sum up it is very important
for the HRM department to make the Ethical leadership a primary goal in formulating its
activities.
Performance management and appraisal System
The role of performance management as an HR function has become a mandatory as a
practice for many companies as it is a way to keep employees motivated and active toward the
goal of receiving recognition and appraisal in both its forms; intrinsic and extrinsic. And it is
also a way for the organization to keep track of the efforts of its employees including their
best practices, which in some cases are used to develop the performance of others in the
company. But for the performance management cycle to be effective and also efficient in
regards to the cost of the function, it is deemed to be simplified. Because a complex system
would fail to provide accurate entail to help employees know what they are doing right and
what needs further development, and also as we have explained it can cause the HR
department to spend a lot of its valuable time performing one task while ignoring others. The
St. Lukes Hospital is a very clear example of an inefficient and overly counter-effective
performance management style. However, the overall intention of their plan is very positive,
which is to accurately appraise the performance of their employees. but the long process is
only leading to their frustration and causing them to lose motivation and commitment to the
Hospital due to the ineffectiveness of the appraisal system.

The appraisal system that is believed to accomplish exactly the same results as the once
intended by the System of St. Lucks Hospital is known as KSF (Knowledge, and skills
framework) system, which focuses in a simpler manner on the only those two factors of the
employees performance and eliminating the fiasco that is the divisional barriers of job
descriptions. The KSF system works in a following approach:

To simplify the diagram that explains the proposed KSF appraisal system, the apprasail of
employees is solely based on the agreed upon objective of the employees through information
about his tasks and on the companies values and goals, and based on the level by which the
employees has met his individual agreed upon objective, hence the analysis of his
performance it is decided whether development of Skills and knowledge is needed to reach
better result or if the performance objective has been met, the employee is rewarded. This
makes the cycle of the process much simpler and clearly more efficient. in addition to that, by
spending too much time reviewing individual performance s to see who deserves most to be
rewarded, the KSF model permits the employees to be awarded based on simpler terms and
not have to be compared to other employees who migh have completely different tasks than
them. Instead if St. Lukes Hospital wishes to create more competition and ultimately more
productivity, the HR department can guarantee extra appraisal for any of the employees that
can prove that they have gone above and beyond the call of duty mentioned in their individual
objectives. The KSF system which is a well developed framework that addresses the
challenges of the Health care industry will provide a valid and useful solution to the problems
presented by the current Appraisal management Systems.

Piekkari, R., Vaara, E., Tienari, J. and Santti, R. (2005) 'Integration of disintegration? Human
resource implications of a common corporate language decision in a cross-border merger',

International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16, 3, 330-344.