Introduction
Greenway has conducted an acquisition merger strategy to the Hotel Charme in France to become an MNC and depict Greenway’s worldwide mindset. Greenway has not owned a hotel in overseas countries; thus, it has to counter several challenges, particularly global human resource management issues (Dominguez and Mayrhofer, 2017, p. 1055). Greenway will face social, political, and legal institutional problems by intensifying its operations in France (Oppong, 2018, p. 13). This report will analyse the restrictions associated with cultural and institutional factors that firms face when opening operations in France. Greenway should use expatriates as the link between the two hotels in the short-term frameworks. As a long-term approach, international nomads will play a crucial role for Greenway in becoming an MNC in the future.
Challenges Analysis
France is the largest job maker in the hotel and catering industry compared with other nations. Nevertheless, various publications indicate several profound issues in France’s hotel and catering industry. The first issue in the industry is human resources which include over-dependence on informal hiring techniques, insufficient skilled labor, and high turnover. Hence human resource is an emerging concern in the French hotel business to hire workers and enable their commitment. Employment issues impact the hotel business in France due to their large expenses of training and replacing and declined sustainability performance (Pucik, Evans and Björkman, 2017, p. 56). Additionally, the number of hotels has been on the rise since 2012, which implies Greenway is likely to face a list of challenges in its plan to expand its operations in the French business.
The institutional factor will have a significant impact since Britain’s and France’s economies are almost similar. The UK and France maintain conducive bilateral cooperation, Greenway must consider Brexit. Britain’s exit from the European Union implies that Greenway’s application visa and immigration document will be based on post-Brexit background. Britain’s departure from the EU will distress Greenway’s labour mobility and attract new talents (Fernandez-Pacheco Theurer, Lopez Ruiz and Latorre, 2018, p. 2). It will lead to labour shortages. On top of that, Brexit workers who will be deployed to France by a UK-based company will enjoy Britain-sponsored health covers.
UK’s departure from the European Union will force Greenway employees to pay for their medical insurances to use healthcare like the French employees, or else; they will purchase private health covers. In addition, labour unions play a significant role in safeguarding the advantages of both workers of the UK and France (McGrattan and Waddle, 2020, p. 80). The collaboration between Greenway and labour unions will benefit both locals and foreigners. In France, individuals work for 35 hours approximately, while in the UK, they toil for more than 48 hours (PailhĂ©, Solaz, and Souletie, 2019, p. 814). Hence, this is a concern for Greenway to come up with appropriate working hours. Eventually, France had several liberal unemployment supports, and as an s result, the French people tend to be unreceptive. Therefore, Greenway must consider the institutional elements that affect their firms.
Long-term Strategic Approach
Greenway should utilize a resource-based view (RBV) as a long-term strategic method for obtaining their management squad in the French secondary corporation. The advantages of the resource-based strategy include developing a competitive advantage for the firm when conveniently applied (Zawawi et al., 2016, p. 89; Bromiley and Rau, 2016, p. 110). The approach will also increase the range of skilled human resources for Greenway irrespective of their geographical position (Kull, Mena and Korschun, 2016, p, 5554). Therefore, domestic workers will become familiar with the host nation’s political, economic, environmental, and legal conditions (Holm and Haahr, 2018, p. 180; Worm and Clausen, 2016, p. 10849). The various disadvantages the RBV strategy will have to the company include lowering the firm’s earnings and complex for the hotel to determine the effective analysis levels due to its wide descriptions.
HR Policy and Practices the Board Should Consider
The board should consider HRM and leadership when expanding their operations to France. For example, the board should consider offering training sessions to update the knowledge and skills of workers, hence maximizing their competency (Armstrong and Landers, 2018, p. 165). As the organization plans to utilize workers from the UK to control their business operations in France, it is appropriate for the firm to comprehend the cultural differences (Anderson, 2018, p. 140). The company should also understand the performance management/assessment, employee interactions/trade amalgamations, pay & reward, which may differ in France than Britain. The company should use Hofstede’s cultural magnitudes theory to examine UK and France differences (Minkov et al., 2018, p. 310). The theory involves dimensions such as collectivism, individualism, short-term orientation, long-term orientation, and indecision avoidance index.
The UK residents focus on individual achievements while France citizens focus on group attainments. In addition, the France tend to desire deductive approaches to inductive approaches, both in planning and thinking (Farahani, 2018, p. 80). UK citizens like enjoying life and having concentrated entertainment and work balance in their wellbeing (Clift, Gilbert, and Vella-Burrows, 2018, p. 100). Nevertheless, the board should avoid stereotypic and overgeneralization approaches and be aware of the existing norms exemptions. According to work objectives, France employees expect learning opportunities, and UK citizens consider job security more (Taylor-Gooby et al., 2019, p. 120). Moreover, France regard work conditions as vital; interpersonal associations are crucial for both nations, although not their objectives.
HRM
The board should pay more attention to language barriers and related issues. It should not focus on communication as an essential tool that facilitates its success in the target market. Language barriers may result in drastic business failures and prospective clients offering preferences to the less effective communicative companies (Aichhorn and Puck, 2017, p. 750). Therefore, the board needs to create educational chances for the workers; Language courses should be the key source of enhancing communication procedures for employees. The company should reconsider its present budget and fund its projects less than estimated to ensure every staff receives appropriate training (Aichhorn and Puck, 2017, p. 750). The company should not take more time training workers; three weeks will be enough since the workers will only require essential business French language knowledge to communicate with consumers successfully. These courses will enable the workforce to learn important French vocabulary and basic sentence constructing principles.
Leadership
The board should address leadership practices since an environment in need of drastic changes in terms of consumer communication technique and rapid skills acquisition related to high-quality conversation processes disorient and uninspired workers. The absence of employee motivation due to increased requirements and quality values may impact the company’s general performance. Quality and enthusiasm reduction among workforces trigger an inevitable increase in staff turnover (Lu and Xie, 2018, p. 135). However, the identified results impacts are somehow predictable; the present emphasis on offering workers necessary training will push the firm towards investing in new members. New investments will contribute to the company’s suffering in failing to recover its expenses and generate losses. Thus, it will be important to incorporate transformative leadership, charismatic, transactional, and situational principles into the sole context.
Leadership styles will operate as the basis for the company’s decision-making regarding HR and management options. Transformational leadership will establish role models who will mentor employees to attain organizational goals (Buil, MartĂnez, and Matute, 2019, p. 70). Hence, the practice will contribute towards creating the requirements for promoting changes in the target market. The boards should recognize direct communication principles with customers as the key areas to enhance transparency and complete clarity in the France context. Besides, it will be suitable if the hoards focus on quality challenges.
Defining, measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling (DMAIC framework) promotes changes by recognizing present quality challenges and delivering the elements that help decrease challenges within the approximated challenges. A charismatic leadership approach will help employees adhere to the company’s roles. Hence, decision-making processes will rely on ethical philosophies and values Greenway Hotel upholds (SmÄ™tkowska and Mrugalska, 2018, p. 595). Contrary, the transactional leadership technique will act as the basis for designing sumptuous motivation elements depending on the positive reinforcement principle.
Monitoring of Ethical Values and Ethics Compliance
To monitor ethical values and ethics compliance, the company will utilize the DMAIC tool, specifically the control segment, which will enhance efficient and safe observation procedures. The company should assess employee efficiency by collecting clients’ feedback through surveys or online feedback (SmÄ™tkowska and Mrugalska, 2018, p. 595). The company should create a platform that allows customers to give feedback about the services they obtain or rate the company. Afterward, the company can consider conducting quantitative analysis using the ANOVA test to interpret the results. The company can conduct further supervision on workers’ compliance with the help of Cause and Effect diagrams or flowcharts. Flowcharts will help the company to establish the origin of its challenges. The CAD framework will act as the tool for separating the elements that have high chances of causing challenges to the company.
CAD framework will help the company easily analyze its elaborate forecasts and quality management to ensure the corporation makes effective decisions. Furthermore, the analysis will help the company shape its logistics, customer associations, and marketing domains. Flowcharts will play vital roles in improving the company’s quality management processes since they will aid in determining the exact points that stimulated the emergence of a given issue. Equally, isolating the factors that may impact the company’s production processes, the company will easily determine the steps that may help address the challenge. The CAD tool will serve as the basis for structuring corporate mechanisms elements to form a single attribute.
Socio-Political and Cultural Circumstances the Board Should Consider
Cultural distinctions between France and UK are depicted using six Hofstede dimensions. According to the French norms, businesses are expected to differ in their hierarchical heights. Various studies regard the French to have an authoritative management design. French businesses usually have one, two, or more classified levels than their UK counterparts (Taylor-Gooby and Leruth, 2018, p. 40). Both France and the UK have high individuality; the power gap and individualism combination in the UK create contradictory and unique cultural features. In the UK, power detachment is right relative to individualism; nevertheless, uncertain avoidance dimensions depict the differences between the UK and French cultures.
For the French, the structure of people’s wellbeing relies on the laws, regulations, and rules set by communities, while the British often take risks and change flexibly. In addition, people consider France a nation with feminine cultures where citizens emphasize the quality of their lives. Contrary, researchers regard the UK as a masculine nation that drives businesses to success, achievement, and competition. Another factor the board should consider is the fact that the working attitudes of the French may not easily adapt to the British working attitudes (Taylor-Gooby and Leruth, 2018, p. 40). The British tend to easily adjust to new variations, while the French respect their traditions, norms, and values.
The French are restrained towards adapting to new practices, while the British easily adapt to new cultures. Therefore, Greenway will face various challenges in France due to the different cultural contexts. As contextual aspects, the British utilize obvious communication, adhering to task orientation ideas, while the French use implied communication and prefer relationship orientation. The board should also consider time notions since the UK has a monochronic culture while the British have a culture that focuses on accuracy, punctuality, and schedule.
The French utilize a polychronic time culture; they believe the time is flexible and therefore fail to utilize and use time effectively. Due to the infinite time concept, the French are often late in their meetings and lack meeting thoughts. In contrast, delay in the UK is considered unprofessional and rude (Mavrogenis, Quaile, and Scarlat, 2020, p. 415). Space is another circumstance the board should consider since the UK has a separate space, and the British consider privacy to be a vital aspect and do not support sharing of spaces. In contrast, the French regard space as communal and encourage sharing among companies. Additionally, the board should consider vaccinating all its employees against COVID-19 to avoid possible contraction of the virus among the workers or consumers.
Issues Related to the Expatriate Strategy
The restrictions of the expatriate strategy can drive Greenway into a financial crisis. The procedure of bringing French foreigners involves three phases: Pre-departure, which occurs during the foreigners’ stay and return; pre-departure is the first phase of expatriation strategy. Since Greenway must incur expenditures, half of the employees of Hotel de Charme will be limited (Zhu et al., 2018, p. 25). The second hindrance in this stage is the hardship in choosing the expatriate procedure, including the outsiders’ inability to adapt to the novel working environment, inability to attain family assimilation and acceptance, lack of eagerness to learn, and lack of technical ability. During the emigrants’ stay, the individuals of Greenway may encounter language differences and cultural hindrances. In addition, Greenway provides compensation like the expatriates’ healthcare, housing, and education.
Greenway should generally pay between 1680 and 1880 euros per month, including medical, housing, and kid schooling fees. France’s cost of living is ever increasing; therefore, Greenway should consider focusing on this issue. In major European states, MNCs, repatriation is an essential element that impacts the productivity of foreigners, and it is in most cases assumed by multinational firms (Narula and Pineli, 2019, p. 17). Hence Greenway should pay attention to these issues. Greenway’s expatriates may not be satisfied if the firm fails to pay adequate attention to their repatriation policies and processes. The restrictions of the Greenway process of repatriation are anticipated, including loss of revenue, direction, autonomy, and status, which accompany a notion that the low organization evaluates their global experience.
The International Compensation Package and “Global Mindset.”
Based on the matters associated with expatriates and geocentric strategy in the long-term approach, local compensation best suits Greenway company. Greenway’s foreigners will be paid based on France’s salary structure, including housing, medical, and education allowances. Local plus compensation will enhance Greenway to reduce inequality and expenses between expatriates working with the domestic workers (Goxe and Belhoste, 2019, p. 620). Besides, the compensation package will enable Greenway to develop a long-term approach to host nations. The package will also facilitate good international talent management since it reduces rates imposed on foreign individuals, enhancing workers’ commitment. Finally, local plus may strike an equilibrium between expensive expatriates and local packages.
Conclusion
Becoming a worldwide firm and penetrating novel markets means changing communication methods and the crucial shareholders, including suppliers, partners, and clients and changing the techniques to leadership and management. Predominantly, the process in which an organization communicates with its consumers and the rules it focuses on when making critical decisions should be frequently reentered. Greenway will perform well in the French market and the international business environment if Greenway managers focus on satisfying the needs of fundamental stakeholders, including employees and clients, initiate excellent standards, and monitor the team’s performance. The set principles ensure that the organization operates as per the laws set in its host nation. The firm should also avoid employee mishandling and tax avoidance issues to ensure its long-term operations in the French business. Lastly, Greenway must comply with the policies concerning environmental conservation since the major European nations are conscious of matters involving pollution.
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