REI 6611 - INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Instructor Radu Calomfirescu

Globalization and the increasing presence of multinational enterprises (MNEs)  and  global organizations highlights the importance of understanding how people are managed in different cultural and regional contexts. This has implications for many stakeholders in global business today, including employees, managers,  HR  practitioners, unions, policy makers and academic researchers. REI 6611 introduces students, through theory and practical examples, to the complexity of international human resource management and cross-cultural issues within global management.

This course aims to:

• Introduce the field of international human resource management (IHRM) and the concept of cross-cultural/global management
• Present key theoretical concepts and examples of IHRM issues in practice today Explore the impact of national culture within organizations and how HR practitioners and  managers  can  develop  key  global  competencies  (e.g.  cultural  intelligence, managing global talent through technology)
• Provide an opportunity for students to understand their own potential as an effective global leader and to consider building a future global career

Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to: 1) Understand HRM in an international or global context and implications for policy in multinational or global organizations, 2) Analyze the impact of cultural dimensions on people’s behavior in work settings, and cultivate a global mindset for effectively managing staff worldwide, 3) Understand different forms of global work and implement this knowledge for strategic global HRM and one’s personal career development, 4) Implement effective communication techniques and managerial strategies for a global workforce, and 5) Conduct research in the international HRM field by investigating and networking within a multinational or global organization.

Course themes include (subject to change):

• Introduction to international HRM and the global context of work/business
• Interpreting culture (country-level, organizational)
• Global talent management (staffing, sourcing, training and development)
• Global mobility issues (adjustment, compensation, work-life balance)
• Global careers and diverse global workers
• Global business ethics

REI 6629 - GLOBALIZATION AND LABOUR RELATIONS

Professor Ian MacDonald

Globalization is one of the major forces restructuring the world of work. Technological change and international trade and investment agreements have allowed multinational corporations to stretch production networks across the globe in order to access a massive increase in the world’s workforce as well as rapidly expanding consumer markets in the developing world. Meanwhile, financialization and new forms of corporate organization have squeezed workers and unions and forced nation states to adjust labour policies, both in the Global North and in the Global South. A critical and carefully empirical account of these changes will reveal that labour market actors – including corporations, nation states, and labour unions – face not only challenges in this period, but also choices between alternative strategies. Are multinational corporations free to move production to lowest cost locations, or are unions and local states able to influence investment decisions and industrial relations practices? What varieties of labour relations regimes are being developed to adjust to global competitive pressures, and which achieve better social and labour market outcomes? What forms of global regulation will be adequate to re-balancing power relationships in the world economy?

This course is an advanced introduction to the issues and debates that arise in the globalization of labour relations. We begin with a critical and concrete examination of the contours of the world economy, paying attention to the key structures and agents. We turn in a second section to a comparative analysis of how labour relations are being globalized in the major centres of the world economy, including Europe, North America and China. Here we develop an understanding of how domestic labour relations are being globalized as countries adopt new laws and domestic firms respond with new IR strategies to competitive pressures, while domestic labour movements, states and multinational firms seek to transfer labour relations from one context to another. Building on our understanding of the structures of global production and the strategic options confronting labour market actors, a final section turns to the emergent global relationships between unions, multinational corporations, and international institutions which will shape the future of globalization, with particular attention to current debates on global labour standards, labour strategies and labour policy.

By the end of this course, students will have mastered the key debates surrounding globalization and will have a strong understanding of how labour relations are adjusting in the majors centres of the world economy. Students will have gained a command of the main contributions to the academic literature in the field, as well as national-level policy options and implications for local industrial relations practices in the global economy. They will be prepared to apply this knowledge as workplace professionals or develop their understanding in further graduate study.

Course themes include:

• Contours of the global economy
• Globalization and labour in long historical perspective
• Globalization and shifting employment structures and relationships
• Multinational Corporations (MNCs) as strategic and embedded actors
• The state, free trade agreements and labour law
• Labour relations and the globalization of finance
• Labour relations and economic development in global production networks (GPNs)
• Varieties of capitalism, varieties of IR regimes
• The globalization of labour relations in liberal market economies (US, UK, Canada)
• The globalization of labour relations in coordinated market economies (Europe)
• The globalization of Chinese labour relations
• Restructuring and collective bargaining in MNCs
• The social regulation of MNCs and global value chains
• Transnational labour alliances and global union federations
• Global debates on labour policy reform after the crisis