Continue from HR's Changing Role

ARTICLE PUBLISHED HERE IS FOR MY SOLE USE ONLYA Changing Environment

Globalization:

Globalization refers to the tendency of firms to extend their sales, ownership, and/or manufacturing to new markets abroad. Examples are all around us. Toyota produces the Camry in Kentucky, while Dell produces and sells PCs in China.

Free trade areas- agreements that reduce tariffs and barriers among trading partners - further encourage international trade. NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Area), SAFTA (the South Asian Free Trade Area) and EU (European Union) are examples. Doing business internationally is big business today. For example, the total value of US imports rose from $799 million in 1994 to $135 billion in 2003; exports rose from $702 million to $88 billion in the same period.

More globalization means more competition, and more competition means more pressure to be "world class" - to lower costs, to make employees more productive, and to do things better and less expensively. As one expert puts it, " the bottom line is that the growing integration of the world economy into a single, huge market place is increasing the intensity of competition in a wide range of manufacturing and service industries. From helping firms like Dell cut global HR communication costs, to formulation selection, training and compensation policies for exptriate employees, managing globalization in world-class firms is a major HR challenge."

Technological Advances:

Many of the improvements that make firms world-class involve technology. For example, Carrier Corporation is the world's largest manufacturer of air conditioners, and saves an estimated $100 million per year by using the internet.

In Brazil, Carrier handles all its transactions with its channel partners (its 550 dealers, retailers, and installers) over the web. "The time required to get an order entered and confirmed by our channel partners has gone from six days to six minutes". Today, HR faces the challenge of quickly applying technology to the task of imporiving its own operations.

Exporting Jobs:

Competitive pressure and the search for greater effencies are also prompting more employers to export jobs abroad. For example, in 2003, Merrill Lynch said it was planning on having some of its security analysis work done in in India; IBM shifted several hundred systems analysis job abroad; and one hospital in Boston even began a program in which radiologists abroad read digitized x-rays for the hospital's patients.

The nature of work:

Techonology is also changing the nature of work. Even factory jobs are more technologically demanding. For example, "knowledge-intensive high tech manufacturing in such industries as aerospace, computers, tele communications, home electronics, pharmaceuticals, and medical instruments" are replacing factory jobs in steel, auto, rubber, and textiles.