Can you provide the explanations of the three approaches in

Can you provide the explanations of the three approaches in \"Staffing Policy\" which are \"Ethnocentric, Polycentric, and Geocentric approach\" and provide examples?

Solution

Ethnocentric staffing involves hiring the most important positions in foreign subsidiaries with the nationals of the parent country. This is usually preferred over other staffing techniques as the nationals of the parent country are believed to better represent the interest of the home office and also because they are well versed with the unique features of the home country. Most of the employees in this system are selected from the parent country and deployed to its subsidiary companies. The example for ethnocentric staffing companies is Nissan’s whose earliest exports were cars and trucks that had been designed for mild Japanese winters; the vehicles were difficult to start in many parts of the United States during the cold winter months. Here it is observed that most of the products which are made in Japan are exported to US along with the engineers who are from the parent company.

Polycentric staffing: In this kind of staffing, the company will employ the host country employees for all the positions. This is based on the assumption that local country officials will be able to guide the company on local market conditions, politics, law and culture at each foreign location. However, this is most profitable in countries such as European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan where highly specialised employees can be easily located. One more advantage of this system is that the company will be able to garner the trust of the host country as it shows its commitment towards the host country by employing the people from there.

Examples of Polycentric staffing include companies like John Deere and Cisco which are following de-westernizing of their business model by employing people from the host countries where their subsidiaries are located.

Geocentric staffing: In this approach to staffing, the company hires candidates based on their skills and talents irrespective of their nationality. In this day and age when the world has become a global village, this is the most suitable approach to staffing. However, the only disadvantage this approach could have is finding the suitable candidates who can adopt to multiple styles at once. Most of the organisations in US and Europe are following this kind of staffing and deriving the benefits out of this approach.