Do managers resist close study of their jobs in the same way line‐workers have resisted time studies? Why is so little known about what the manager really does? Who is to blame for the lack of progress since the days of Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management?

It may be that an assessment center predicts potential for higher level management even better than performance at the first level of supervision.

Based on a survey of EMBA students in China and South Korea, this article examines how two sensitive but potentially salient criteria—race and gender—affect the selection of an executive to head the (a) foreign operations of a U.S. multinational in China and South Korea and (b) newly acquired U.S. operations of a Korean multinational. The results reveal a fairly complex picture of how gender, race, and the interplay of these two factors might affect these decisions. In the Korean sample, competencies mattered more than race and gender in a senior executive appointment to the U.S. operations of Korean multinationals. Also in the Korean sample, race and gender outweighed competencies in assignments to Korea. In the Chinese sample, competencies outweighed race and gender in a senior executive appointment in China. Overall, Koreans had a more positive attitude toward foreign‐born Koreans than the Chinese toward foreign‐born Chinese for senior executive appointments. Implications for international human resource management and diversity management, both theoretical and applied, are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Organizations have to contend with growing diversity in their managerial and professional ranks, both cross‐nationally and intranationally. This article examines the similarities and differences in processes and dynamics of managing diversity in cross‐national and intranational contexts. Similarities include the acculturation process and the styles and patterns of communication. Differences revolve around legislation, magnitude, and time horizon. Training programs designed to raise consciousness/awareness and to improve communication competency are presented. The implications for human resource management practices are then discussed. © 1993 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This paper examines the impact of a joint GM/UAW ceremony on changes in the traditional labor‐management culture. Ceremonies can help change corporate culture when the actual event is transformed into an organizational story. Stories help motivate change because they provide purpose and clues to new behavior patterns.

The efficient operation of a multinational enterprise is contingent upon the availability and effective utilization of numerous strategic resources—technology, capital, know‐how, and people. It is my contention that human power is a key ingredient to the successful operation of a multinational, without which all the other aforementioned resources could not be effectively and efficiently utilized or transferred from corporate headquarters to the various subsidiaries in the world; hence the need for multinationals to devote greater attention to the strategic management of human resources as part of the overall planning and control process in a firm. This article identifies the most common pitfalls to human resource planning in U.S. multinationals and offers guidelines for the development of a paradigm for the strategic management of human resources in the multinational enterprise.

This article shows how informally told stories and human resource systems help create strong company cultures which can support a corporate strategy. It explains why stories are so powerful in creating company culture. It also suggests how managers can deal with negative stories and encourage the telling of positive stories both through their personal behavior and through the human resource systems they manage.

A critical issue confronting business management in the 1980s is how to successfully manage organizations and human resource issues at a time of rapid changes in markets, products, technology, and competition. These issues are aggravated by changing social values, government legislation, and international economics which impact on human resource managers even more. This article argues for a new type of professional, one who combines expertise in aligning the organization structure and culture with human resource systems and business strategy. The organization and human resource professionals (O&HR) role described is not totally new but a logical next generation extension of a role currently found at General Electric.

The value systems of different generations is bound to be at variance, so if a job is to be redesigned to attract young men, it must be redesigned on the basis of what the young man needs, not on the basis of what today's mature manager needed at that age.

How often should a man be inducted, socialized, trained, developed, and then promoted or transferred from one department to another? The answer should depend to some extent on the average learning time for the manager's new job, and the company's feeling about a “break‐even” or “pay‐back” period when the employee works to “pay back” the organization for providing him with the job learning opportunity.