MHRM 6751 Week 11 Global HR Final Paper Example

Five American Settings Inside Ostrander's Plans for Its Overseas Design Office: Which to Adapt, Which to Drop and What Stays Fixed, Argued Practice by Practice

Student Name

Walden University

MHRM 6751: Global and Cultural Effectiveness

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Five American Settings Inside Ostrander's Plans for Its Overseas Design Office: Which to Adapt, Which to Drop and What Stays Fixed, Argued Practice by Practice

Five Settings, Listed First

Ostrander Engineering, a bridge and transit design firm based in Pittsburgh that opened an office of designers abroad early in 2026, carries five American settings inside its plans for that office. Headquarters does not think of them as American; they are simply how the firm works. They are: employment that either side may end at any time, individual performance ratings tied to pay, time off with no stated number, English as the only working language and headquarters sign-off on every drawing. This paper argues, practice by practice, which to adapt, which to drop and what stays fixed. The test throughout is whether the practice's purpose can survive in the host country and whether its mechanism can.

Why Some Practices Travel and Others Do Not

Rosenzweig and Nohria (1994) found that subsidiary HR practices most closely resemble local practice where law and custom are strongest. Pudelko and Harzing (2007) identified an opposing force: subsidiaries copying whatever is regarded as the world's leading practice, which frequently means the American version. Kostova and Roth (2002) showed that a practice adopted on paper may not be accepted by employees if it conflicts with local institutions. Ferner et al. (2005) found that US multinationals' policies survived transfer to Europe when their aims were preserved and their mechanisms reshaped. Each setting below is judged against that body of work.

Setting One: At-Will Endings, Dropped

At-will employment's purpose is flexibility for both parties. Its mechanism, ending employment without notice or reason, is not available in the host country, where contracts set notice periods and dismissal requires a justified reason. This practice should be dropped, not adapted. The design office will use written contracts that meet local requirements, drafted by local counsel, and a fair performance process that documents concerns early. The flexibility the firm wants is better pursued through careful hiring and a probation period that local law allows.

Setting Two: Individual Ratings, Adapted

The purpose of Pittsburgh's individual rating is to recognize strong performers and give clear feedback. The office's first six months showed that engineers accept individual technical targets and compete for difficult work, but object to public ranking. Pay in the host market follows seniority bands. The practice should be adapted: individual targets and private feedback stay; the public dashboard goes; pay follows the local chamber's bands, with a modest individual bonus tied to private targets; and project milestone reviews are held with the team, as local engineers expect.

Setting Three: Uncapped Leave, Adapted

The purpose of flexible time off is trust. In a country with a legal leave floor and a customary August closure, a policy with no number reads as no entitlement. The adapted policy guarantees 25 days, five above the legal minimum, ten of them during the August closure, with the rest taken flexibly. The purpose survives; the mechanism changes.

Setting Four: English Only, Adapted

English is the language of Ostrander's design standards, client contracts and cross-office reviews, and it should remain the working language for anything that crosses offices. But a rule that engineers in the design office speak English among themselves would serve no purpose. Neeley (2013) found that when a firm mandated English, staff working in a second language felt their standing slip, and their engagement suffered. The adapted rule: English for project documents and cross-office communication, the local language freely within the office, and language training funded in both directions, including host-language lessons for Pittsburgh staff who work with the office regularly.

Setting Five: Headquarters Sign-Off on Every Drawing, Partly Fixed

Headquarters sign-off has two purposes: public safety and the firm's legal accountability as engineer of record. Both are real and neither changes across borders. What can change is which drawings need Pittsburgh's signature. The structural design criteria and the final seal on every project for which Ostrander is engineer of record stay with a licensed Pittsburgh engineer. Detailed design within those criteria should move to the design office lead once that lead is licensed locally. Harzing (2001) described how multinationals can shift from controlling subsidiaries through direct supervision toward shared norms and trained local leaders; this transition makes that shift deliberately.

What Stays Fixed Everywhere

Three things do not adapt: Ostrander's design and safety standards, its code of professional ethics and its rule that no drawing leaves the firm without review by a licensed engineer. These are the firm's identity rather than American habits, and the design office's engineers, whose professional culture prizes technical rigor, are unlikely to object.

Order of Implementation

The changes should not arrive at once. Contracts and the leave policy come first, before the August closure, because they affect every engineer's legal position and summer plans. The adapted review follows at the first project milestone. The language arrangement can be announced at the same time, since it mostly confirms what the office already does. The shift in drawing sign-off waits until the office lead is licensed locally, which the chamber's route suggests will take about two years. Each change should be explained to the engineers before it is announced to headquarters, so the office hears it first.

Summary of Verdicts

Table 1

Verdicts on Five American Settings

Composite organization.

Conclusion

The office's first year has shown that most of what headquarters treats as normal is American, not universal. Adapting four of the five settings and dropping one does not weaken Ostrander; it keeps the purposes that matter and lets the office work in its own setting. The settings that stay fixed are the ones that define the firm as engineers, not the ones that define it as American.

References

Ferner, A., Almond, P., & Colling, T. (2005). Institutional theory and the cross-national transfer of employment policy: The case of "workforce diversity" in US multinationals. Journal of International Business Studies, 36(3), 304-321. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400134

Harzing, A.-W. (2001). Of bears, bumble-bees, and spiders: The role of expatriates in controlling foreign subsidiaries. Journal of World Business, 36(4), 366-379. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-9516(01)00061-X

Kostova, T., & Roth, K. (2002). Adoption of an organizational practice by subsidiaries of multinational corporations: Institutional and relational effects. Academy of Management Journal, 45(1), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069293

Neeley, T. B. (2013). Language matters: Status loss and achieved status distinctions in global organizations. Organization Science, 24(2), 476-497. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0739

Pudelko, M., & Harzing, A.-W. (2007). Country-of-origin, localization, or dominance effect? An empirical investigation of HRM practices in foreign subsidiaries. Human Resource Management, 46(4), 535-559. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20181

Rosenzweig, P. M., & Nohria, N. (1994). Influences on human resource management practices in multinational corporations. Journal of International Business Studies, 25(2), 229-251. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8490199