Introduction

To go global is the main theme of multinational companies for the coming decades, as the world had become more integrated. However, conducting businesses in different regions of the world can be challenging and complex. Although the world is becoming more integrated, the social, culture, economic and legal situations in different nations around the world do differ greatly. The best human resource management (“HRM”) practices in a single country may not be relevant to be applied in the other country in other part of the world.

This essay is about if the best HRM practices applied in a particular nations can be transferred to manage human resources in other nations. For illustration purposes, HRM practices of Google will be discussed, and the issues that may prevent the transferability of these best practices to a host country, namely Malaysia will be articulated. Specifically, this essay will discuss if those well-known key success HRM practices in United States, are transferable to country such as Malaysia. The discussions will be useful to illustrate how bets practices may no longer be relevant in other part of the world.

Company Background

Google, known as a highly creative and innovative company, has its own way to manage the employees. The company is famous for its fun and flexible workplace designed to enhance workforce creativity and innovations (Falcioni, 2006). The success of Google is largely dependent on its vast human talents available to the company. And more importantly, how Google able to manage these talents, which ultimately lead to unleashing of the creativity and capabilities of the workforce are what lead to the success of the company. Indeed, it is widely understood that both the founder, Larry and Sergey from Google take the HR function of Google very seriously. For a couple of years, Google had been ranked among the top ten Great Place to Work by Fortune magazine (Basu, 2007).

Since the incorporation of Google, the company has been growing very fast. Today, it had operations in many part of the world. In order to deliver local contents as well as customized the Google services for the people from each nations, Google set up offices in various countries. Workforce are hired to customized and deliver more targeted search engine as well as better internet related services to the local people (Goss, 2010). Effectively, the staffing or HRM process in Google is largely a hybrid of polycentric and geocentric. The organizational structure is largely decentralized. People are expected to make flexible and relevant decisions. The subsidiaries of Google in other countries are largely expected to follow the main Google’s HRM practices and organizational culture.

Human Resources Practices in Google

In terms of staffing (i.e., including both employee selection and recruitment), Google is famous for it stringent criteria used to screen applicants. This is not surprising as due to the success of Google, many talented people are applying to join Google to offer their services. At the first stage, hiring will be based on resumes solely (Badawy, 2008). This will screen out many of the candidates. Besides, another method often used is to link with the university. Google is known for keeping close relationship with the professor in many universities to ask for recommendations for top students in their class. Apart from that, it is also mentioned that Google will only hire the people that embody the Google’s corporate values, as well as an intense desire for unlimited amounts of information (Orr, 2007). It is emphasized that such a HR practice is crucial to ensure the employees being hired had a similar goals with the corporation in the future (Manyika, 2008). Interview processes in Google are also highly different that those from traditional companies. The interview processes are designed to test for flexibility and unconventional thinking among employees. For example, it will be arranged so that the seating arrangements in the meeting room to have all sorts of seat, ranging from a conventional leather-upholstered chair to a beanbag. Those candidates that prefer bean bag will be preferred, as they are perceived to have unconventional thinking (Basu, 2007). Besides, the candidates are also being intensively tested for their ability to think. In the interview process, analytical intelligence of a candidate is a highly important factor being evaluated by the management (Manyika, 2008). Overall, from the perspective of employee selection and recruitment, Google has very strict hiring policies. Many times are being consumed, and the difficulties of the interview process essentially ensure only quality candidates to be hired. Such a strict policy has been contributing to low turnover rate in the corporation (Shipman, 2006).

From another perspective, the employee benefits and compensation are highly attractive. This is particularly true when we consider the benefits provided to the employees in workplace. It is widely known that many on-site benefits are provided by Google, for example: on-site hair cut, car wash, dental services, laundry facilities, full time chefs, recreational facilities, work-out room, snack room, pool table, ping pong table, assorted video games, massage room, and even a small cinema. The job design is also highly different. Employees are allowed a lot of opportunities to undertake the project they love, and being encouraged to take calculated risks (Manyika, 2008). Yet, the workplace design in Google is even more outstanding. Workplace is designed to be dynamic, young, flexible and fun. It is meant to deliver a sense of campus like environment. In workplace, there are no/ loose HR policies to guide the behaviors and attires of the employees. For example, employees are allowed to come to office with informal attires. More than that, they are allowed and even encourage to work and play together, to the extent that employees are allowed to bring pets to the office. Employees have a lot of freedom and flexibilities as long as they can perform their job effectively (Shipman, 2006).

Background of Malaysia

Malaysia is a unique country in the world as there are multiple races living together in a pretty harmony manner in a single small country (O’shannassy, 2011). This makes the cultural analysis of the country particularly harder, as a lot of different culture and societal habits co-exists in a single nation. In the following paragraphs, the economic, societal and cultural climate of Malaysia will be discussed.

Economic Climate in Malaysia

Malaysia is an emerging country located in Southeast Asia. It is one of the more developed nations in the region. Generally, the Malaysian economy is a fast growing one, with the GDP growth rate averaging around 5% - 7% in the past decade. The economic pie of Malaysia can be easily divided into three segments, namely agricultural, industry and service. Around 5% of the population is below poverty line in Malaysia. Up to date, Malaysia is depending on exporting and Foreign Direct Investment for economic growth (whereby growth is primarily guided by electronics segment) (Ministry of Culture, Art and Heritage, n.d.).

With a population of roughly 20 million people from diverse races and background, most of them are middle income earners. Malaysia is a market-oriented economy. It is also a democracy country. The government is largely pro-business, and welcomes foreign investors to make investment in the country (The World Fact Book, 2010). Prior to the emergence of huge economic power such as China and India, Malaysia had been one of the focuses of FDI around the world (O’shannassy, 2011).

Societal Climate in Malaysia

Overall, the literacy rate of Malaysia is relatively high, compared to other developing countries. As a commonwealth country, many of the population can speak and understand English. English is indeed taught in secondary schools in the country, and is widely adopted as the language for businesses communication in large cities. Malaysia has been a country producing a lot of human talents. There is relatively larger pool of knowledge workers, with understanding on the applications of latest technologies as well as business management philosophies (Lim, 2011). Today, the Malaysian government is working hard to transform the Malaysia economy from a production based to a knowledge based economy.

Malaysia is a country consisted of vastly different ethnics groups. Currently, the biggest ethnic group is Malays. Around half of the population in Malaysia is Malays. All of the Malays are Muslim (i.e., religion of the Malays are Islam). Then another quarter of the population is Chinese. Chinese has been traditionally playing important roles in trade and business development in the country. Majority of the Chinese are Buddhist, Christian, Taoist or free thinker. Last but not least, the third largest group of ethnic is Indian. Other minority ethnics include Telegu, Malayalam, Punjabi, Gujarati, Iban, Kadazan, Thai, Portuguese, or Middle East descent and etc (Deraman, n.d.).

Cultural Climate in Malaysia

As Malaysia is a multi-racial society, a rich cultural heritage can be observed. For this, Malays often embrace the teaching of Islam. Majority of the Malays emphasize on the values of courtesy, moderation, tolerance, harmony, and family relationships. Bahasa Malaysia is the national language. The Chinese have a more different culture. Many of the Chinese however, place greater importance on education, hard working, entrepreneurial and are more materialistic and realistic than the other races. In contrast, many Indian may not place greater importance on education, but are nonetheless are involve in business activities as well. Anyway, most of the population is friendly, polite and helpful. They may be shy to express themselves, but once someone gets to know them, they will treat their friends honestly and nicely (Deraman, n.d.).

In order to understand Malaysia culture in greater details, the Hofstede’s Cultural Model will be applied (Daniels et. al., 2008). Mostly, many of the Malaysian has high-context culture, as people may not talk directly about their feeling, opinions or preferences. They tend to give more implicit or non-verbal messages and expectations. Ability to read body languages may be crucial to understand their implicit meanings. They are largely group-conscious. They may not make fast decisions, but once a decision is made, they tend to stick to the decision. Persistence and hard works are valued (Al-Tmeemy et. al., 2010). Besides, from another perspective, the power distance among Malaysian is high. People tend to respect and follow their boss, without really having the tendency to questions the directions of the boss. Rich or powerful people are respected. Successful businessmen are honored by the public. Employees are not expected to cross the boundary, and tend to keep a comfortable distance from the big bosses. Similarly, managers may not want to see the lower level employees to become too friendly with them (Lee, 2010). From the uncertainty avoidance dimensions, Malaysians are largely exhibiting weak degree of uncertainty avoidance. They are more passive, but adaptable to changes. Apart from that, in contrast to the Western society (largely individualism), most of the Malaysians exhibit a collective culture. They place greater importance on feeling, emotions as well as group benefits (Osman, 2011). They will take their friends, family members and the public into consideration in making decisions. Then, Malaysians does exhibit some degree of masculine culture. Last but not least, from the time orientation perspective, many of the Malaysians have long term focus. Particularly for the Chinese, they are thrifty, plan for the long term, respect tradition, and stick to traditional Chinese values (Lee, 2010). However, despite our discussions presented above, there are also evidences that the cultural aspects of Malaysians are changing, as the younger generations are influenced by the Western style of thinking and behaviors (O’shannassy, 2011).

Transferring HRM Issues to Malaysia

In this section, those HR practices that we had identified in previous section will be assumed to have transferred to subsidiaries in Malaysia. The transferability and the appropriateness to diffuse these practices will be discussed.

Firstly, many of the HRM practices can be adopted in Malaysia. For example, the stringent criteria used for employee selection and recruitment process, the use of resume to screen out non-qualified candidates, hire only the best talents, keeping close relationships with local university professor to tap into their best students, as well as to select only those that able to embrace Google values. Apart from that, the practices used in the interview process can also be transferred to Malaysia. For example, testing for IQ, unconventional thinking capabilities, as well as having the passion to handle a large amount of data can be useful criteria to select the most suitable talents in Malaysia. Apparently, all these HRM practices related to employees selection and recruitment can be transferred to Malaysia. When all these criteria are applied, it is reasonable to expect that the most suitable candidates can be hired, and in the long run, leading to low turnover rate in Google’s subsidiaries in Malaysia.

Regarding the issues on employees’ benefits, many of the practices can also be transferred to Malaysia. For example, good benefits as well as on-site facilities provided to the workforce will definitely enhance the employees’ morale; while at the similar time attract the very best talents to work in Google. After all, in a developing country, working in a lucratively paid worldwide popular company can be the dream of many young adults. The practices of workplace design can also be easily transferred to Malaysia, as everyone will surely love the flexible, work and play concepts. Indeed, those who are recruited to work in Google under such kind of benefits and work place arrangement can be envied by their peers. Again the workplace arrangement as well as compensation or benefits practices can be transferred to Malaysia, as all of these practices will likely to be loved by the Malaysian.

The HR practices that may not be transferred to Malaysia can include the legal frameworks and labor relation issues applied in United States. For example, Malays workers should be allowed to go for praying for 2 hours every Friday, there are more public holidays in Malaysia because the various festivals of various races are celebrated and given holiday status by the government, the specific insurance and defined benefit pension plan of the workforce and some other issues. However, all these are not something hard to do, as with minor adjustment to the HR practices in this context, Google can easily execute new practices according to the relevant legislation. As the legal issues are mostly clear cut, this should not present challenges to HRM functions in Malaysia.

The more challenging issue perhaps is concern about the people management and leadership issues. Initially, it is expected that Google expatriate from United States will be required to set up a new team there. Most of the issues then will be concern to how the local workforce can be trained and developed to fit into Google culture, to adopt Google style and to more freely share and express their ideas or unconventional thinking. Cultural factors may cause this to be challenging, as Malaysian are largely found to be having high context culture, shy, keep large power distance with the boss and tend not to express their selves especially when their ideas are conflict with the others (i.e., a focus on relationship, harmony and group-consensus). Thus, the training and development program should consider such issues, and to be reformulated and redefined to incorporate the methods required to change the workforce attitudes and behaviors to fit into the Google culture. New hires can be reallocated to headquarters of Google in the United States to learn up the new culture. Given the fact that the workforce of Malaysia can perform well in other Western multinational companies, such as Intel, AMD, IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Infineon, Altera and many others (Long, 2011), it is reasonable that they too, can adapt and assimilate Google culture in a short period of time.

Conclusion

Overall, it is shown that may of the Google HRM practices can be transferred to Malaysia. However, it is openly acknowledged that if these HR practices will be the best practices to be applied in the country remain unknown, although it is reasonable to believe that these will become the best practices in Malaysia as well. It is however can be confidently concluded that many of the HR practices will not create serious conflicts in subsidiaries in Malaysia, as long as the hiring process is perform in a strict manners. When the correct people are selected, fewer issues will occur in the future. Cultural factors however, may cause the Malaysian to take more time to adjust their selves to the Google culture. They may be shy to express themselves, and may not openly express their creativity. People may not openly argued with the boss, or tend to agree the manager’s opinions, due to a sense of respect and the nature of high context culture. Even when they are encouraged to think freely, they are bounded by traditional values and constraints. It will certainly take time for new Malaysian Googler to assimilate the Google culture.

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