Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MANAGEMENT
Brief Notes for Students
HRSB 353
Organizations Individuals
Employment Relationship
Government
Organizations Individuals
• Individual Employers • Unions
• Employer Consortium • Union Federations
Social Contract
Social Contracts and Pay Setting
Highly
Centralized
Austria
Belgium
Czech Republic Cuba
SOCIAL CONTRACT
Germany Hungary
India Poland
Argentina
Israel Sweden
Brazil
Canada Japan
France Korea
Hong Kong Slovakia
Mexico Slovenia
Singapore
U.K.
U.S.A.
Salary Taxes
Allowances
Housing and
Premiums
Common Allowances in Expatriate Pay
Packages
Family Support
The Balance Sheet Approach
Based on the premise that employees on
overseas assignments should have the same
spending power as they would in their home
country.
The home country is the standard for all
payments.
The objective is to:
Ensure cost effective mobility of people to global
assignments
Ensure that expatriates neither gain nor lose
financially
Minimize adjustments required of expatriates
Balance Sheet Approach
Equivalent Salary and Allowances,
Host Country
$10,200
Relocation
Bonus
$1,500
Home Country Currency
Laissez faire
Tax equalization
Tax protection
Ad hoc
Save the Global Bottom Line
Provide employees with assistance that
doesn’t show up as income
Provide some of the income in the home
country
Provide part of the compensation before or
after the assignment
Time the assignment to take advantage of
residency laws
Take advantage of incentives offered in the
host country
Issues in Designing a Compensation
Strategy for Multinationals
Establishing a worldwide
compensation system
Compensation of third-country
nationals
International benefits and related
taxes
Pension plans
Stock ownership plans
Summary
Anyone interested in compensation needs to
adopt a global perspective.
The globalization of businesses, financial
markets, trade agreements, and labor markets
is affecting every workplace and every
employment relationship.
Employee compensation is embedded in the
different political-socioeconomic
arrangements found around the world.
Compensation systems have a profound
impact on individual behavior, organizational
success, and social well-being. This holds
true within and across all national boundaries.
Review Questions
1. Rank the factors in the global guide according
to your belief in their importance for
understanding and managing compensation.
a. How do your ranks differ from your peers?
b. From international peers?
c. Discuss how the rankings may change over time.
2. Distinguish between nationwide and industry-
wide pay determination. How do they compare
to a business strategy-market approach?
3. Develop arguments for and against “typical”
Japanese style, German style, and U.S. style
approaches to pay.
Review Questions (continued)
4. Distinguish between global, expatriates,
local nationals, and third-country nationals.
5. Under the balance sheet approach to paying
expatriates, most of total compensation is
linked to costs of living. Some argue that
expatriate pay resembles a traditional
Japanese pay system. Evaluate this
argument.
6. What is meant by “the full house” or
“variations within a nation”? Evaluate its
importance in understanding and managing
global total compensation.