Managing globally competent people

Executive Overview Transnational firms need transnational human resource management systems. This article recommends global human resource changes at two levels: individual and systemic. First, it presents a set of skills needed by individual managers to be globally competent, highlighting those which transcend the historic competencies required of expatriate managers. Second, it suggests a framework for assessing the global competence of firms' human resource systems. Based on a survey of fifty major North American firms, the authors find today's human resource strategies to be significantly less global than firms' business strategies. To overcome this gap, they identify a series of illusions preventing firms from creating human resource systems which are sufficiently global to support transnational business strategies.