International business processing and call centre operations are to experience increasing convergence in their international human resource management, making country laws less of an issue, an Indian study predicts.
Hanish Jain, a visiting professor from Canada`s McMaster University at the UCT Graduate Business School, says Indian affiliates` implementation of human resource practices closely matched their international parents, having a knock-on effect with local Indian companies.
"There is also an inflow of practices to Indian companies that have established their own offshore operations in other countries," he says.
Recently, Jain conducted a study into international human resource management of the Indian IT sector with Mary Mathew, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science. The study is unpublished.
He says understanding the HR practices of the business process outsourcing and call centre industries was important for developing countries, especially those, such as SA, that see an opportunity in these sectors.
Business process outsourcing and call centre development has become a cornerstone of the South African government`s economic policy and it wants 100 000 jobs generated in the sector by 2010.
Similar worldwide
"What is apparent is that IT HR practices generally, seem to be very similar around the world. This is possibly because this sector is very standards and outcome driven," he says.
Jain and Mathew`s study also shows the level of influence HR managers have within the call centre and BPO sectors. HR people often have board level representation, but their main objective is staff recruitment, the study shows.
Another finding was US multinational companies operating in India had high goal achievement, high employee productivity, high customer satisfaction and higher parent to affiliate knowledge transfer than their non-American counterparts.
The study also says virtual organisations (linked worldwide by communications technology) mean multinational IT companies are likely to see their HR practices become increasingly standardised and have few localisation issues over time.
"This means the labour laws of the host nations will become less of a factor," he says.
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