Newcastle University > Postgraduate > Find a Degree > Module

• Offered for Year: 2022/23

• Module Leader(s): Dr Faten Baddar Alhusan
• Lecturer: Dr Sawlat Zaman

• Owning School: Newcastle University Business School
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Aims

This module aims to enable students to understand the dimensions that influence human resource management (HRM) policies and practices internationally, and to gain awareness of how conceptual debates in international HRM translate into practical challenges in organisations in different countries.

HRM is bound and influenced by national context, both culturally and institutionally. Cultural context includes manager/employee relationship, boundaries between work and home life, and preferred approaches to teamworking and remuneration; while institutional factors include employment law, the welfare state, business systems and industrial relation systems. This module will explore how people are managed in different national contexts within the HR fields of recruitment, remuneration, performance management, learning, and working hours.

In addition to the cross-comparative HRM focus of the module, we will also explore aspects of managing work at an international level, including managing expatriates, outsourcing, offshoring and managing diversity. The module will also discuss how multinational companies address global labour market issues.

Outline Of Syllabus

Topics covered will typically include:
- International HRM theory and practice
- National culture and its impact on HRM policies and practices
- Institutional influences on global HRM
- Employment relations at a national and global level
- Employment and the role of the state
- Recruitment, selection and reward
- Performance, development and learning
- Changing demographics as a global issue

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

- Lectures provide basic information which is then used to work through country specific case studies
- Principles will be illustrated and developed by case-study-based seminars.

Ongoing debates about international and comparative HRM highlight the need to discuss its scope and limits in order to shape it as a distinct area of study. As such, combining lectures and seminars is deemed appropriate so that students have the opportunity to engage in discussion of content, which is a good way to promote knowledge and understanding. In addition, given that the module has a group project element, the seminars provide a good opportunity to engage students and monitor their progress in relation to the skills-based outcomes. Providing space for content discussion is a good way to support students advance with their projects as the seminar sessions would be targeting links between themes in the lectures and the project they have to complete for the module.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Formative Assessments

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The combination of group and individual assessments is deemed to be pedagogically strong and the most suitable in order to facilitate that students gain knowledge and understanding of IHRM, which is the aim of the module. The preparation and delivery of a podcast will enable students to enhance their digital skills and build upon their 'normal' presentation skills used in other modules. In terms of the intended knowledge outcomes of the module, the assessments focus on examination, critical evaluation and reflection; this is central to the analytical approach of the module and its objectives. In relation to the skill-based outcomes (teamwork, written and oral communication and critical analysis), these are reflected in the core of each of the assessed components of the module.

Reading Lists

• NBS8074's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• NBS8074's Timetable