Table of Contents
Introduction
As much as the international Companies managers enjoy various privileges, they also experience challenges in their day to day operations. They also come across personal challenges brought about by their nature of their work. The challenges that the international Corporations managers experience portray the lifestyle they need to abide by at all times. The challenges include the following.
Culture
Different countries have different cultures. As such, the employees working in the international organisation profess different cultural backgrounds. The manager is faced with various challenges in adapting to the cultures portrayed by various employees in the organisation (Deresky 2017). It becomes difficult also to adapt to the new cultural exercises in every country that one goes to. One must keep on changing the lifestyle, diet as well as languages to fit the new areas of work and the people around.
Time factor
When one works as an international manager, he or she is bound to travel from time to time across many nations. The manager will have to visit countries that experience different time zones. It thus becomes difficult to set his working hours effectively due to the frequent change of location. Some of the managers work from the same location but are expected to manage employees across the world. It becomes difficult to determine the working hours of all the employees due to the different time zones. The manager’s working time could not match the working hours of all other employees.
Family
Family matters have been a challenge to most of the International Corporations managers. Most of the managers travel a lot across different countries. As the managers travel frequently, it becomes difficult for them to be able to put up with the prevailing family matters. At times, the international managers are required to shift from one country to another as a form of transfer. It becomes hard for the managers to travel with the entire family from time to time due to the affection of the normal lives. Many are therefore forced to stay miles away from their loved ones.
Software and hardware support
The international Corporations managers have the responsibility of coordinating different subsidiaries from the same point of operation. This is enabled by the aspect of cloud computing that has made work easier. However, it has been an issue that some of the clouding software receive better support in some countries better than others. Therefore, there lacks the consistency that is needed in the use of software in the conduction of the same job. For instance, it is possible to find that a software receives great support in France, while the same experiences major challenges in Italy. This is a major concern for the smooth management of the organisation.
Regulations
Different governments in the world have different rules and regulations that they require to be followed in the course of business. The iInternational Corporations managers have no choice but to concur with the regulations of all the countries that they work in. One of the major areas that are affected by the regulations includes the purchase of software (Crane and Matten 2016). A manager is therefore expected to purchase software that meets all the regulations provided for in the countries that it is expected to be used in. This becomes a challenge to the managers as quality is a priority in the selection of the best software as well as hardware to use.
Language barrier
International managers have the role of receiving information and disseminating the same on behalf of the company. The manager’s coordinate work across different countries, and therefore the need to use different languages to enhance better understanding. As much as the manager may want to deal with the language barrier problem, they find challenges. For instance, an international corporation manager could hail from France and thus speak French. Therefore, such a manager will have challenges in conversing with the employees from Italy and other non-French speaking nations due.
Different IT factors
The ability of the International Corporations managers to work well depends on the level of technology in their various companies. Different countries have different levels of development and thus that of the IT. Some of the countries that the managers operate in have high speeds of IT performance. On the other hand, some may have slow speeds of IT performance. It, therefore, becomes difficult for the managers to coordinate the activities in all the countries while the IT infrastructure, as well as speed, differs.
Different commodity standards
Different countries have different levels of development. In the same way, they have different standards of quality of products that they allow into their markets. Some of the countries may allow high levels of quality while others may be willing to take in lower quality products (Story, et al., 2014). It, therefore, becomes difficult for the international companies’ managers to work inconsistency with the different levels of standards that are required by all the countries under consideration.
Conclusion
The challenges that managers of international corporations continue to face are immense. The different countries in the world are growing at different rates. This becomes one of the main challenges leading to many smaller challenges. An amicable solution is, therefore, necessary to address the same issues. The international community needs to come up with global standards that could be applied by the managers of such organisations to reduce the many unnecessary challenges that they face.
- Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
- Deresky, H., 2017. International management: Managing across borders and cultures. Pearson Education India.
- Story, J.S., Barbuto, J.E., Luthans, F. and Bovaird, J.A., 2014. Meeting the challenges of effective international HRM: Analysis of the antecedents of global mindset. Human Resource Management, 53(1), pp.131-155.