Organizations have to develop an international Human Resources Management Strategy, when they expand globally. Which do you think is more critical for international Human Resource Management:

• Understanding the cultural environment, or
• Understanding the political and legal environment?

Answer:

Understanding the cultural environment is more critical for IHRM.

Explanation:

understanding of the cultural environment is critical when doing business and most importantly in dealing with human resource management on a global basis. human resource management is the function of managing employees to improve their performance and enable the organization to meet its objectives, which are important assets of the organization. a strategy that may work well in one country might have an opposite impact on another. this makes it crucial for companies to understand how culture works to ensure that the needs of all employees from all types of cultures are met.

culture is learned and is one aspect of social forms that is natural, most difficult to comprehend, take account of or even harness to advantage. it is therefore crucial for companies to study and understand the cultural environments of their employees because, in this way, it would be easy to treat them appropriately when it comes to hiring, firing, pay, benefits, training or in administration, while still considering their cultures.

when a company goes global it has to deal with workers from different cultures. this means that the company will attract new ideas, new ways of communication and new social practices and as a result, the company will have to come up with strategies that would address all these. for instance, an employee from Canada, compared to one from China, might have different ideas about how other employees are managed based on his experience back home.

the cultural environment is very complex compared to the legal and political environment of business and HRM on a global basis.