Arik Air is one Nigeria's largest airlines and one of the largest airlines in all of Africa. Its employment situation is a bit unique in that close to 10 percent of its employees are expatriates. Recruiting and retaining expatriates to work as pilots or other positions in Nigeria can require higher salaries than are typically paid to local workers. However, disparities in wages between expatriates and local employees can lead to resentment. Overall, the human resource situation for a company that operates globally and hires globally such as Arik Air can be quite complicated.
Do some research on Arik Air and the human resource situation in Nigeria. Below are a few articles to get you started:
Arik Air customer base soars (Jan. 31, 2014). AllAfrica.com. Washington. [Available in ProQuest]
Nigeria loses N500 billion annually to expatriate pilots. (Jan. 24, 2014). AllAfrica.com [Washington] 24 Jan 2014.
Fajana, S., Owoyemi, O., Elegbede, T., & Gbajumo-Sheriff, M. (2011). Human resource management practices in Nigeria. Journal of Management and Strategy, 2(2), 57.
Now suppose that Arik Airlines has been purchased by an American company, which now has to develop a plan to address the issue of hiring and maintaining a well-qualified pilot staff and making all of Arik's employees feel welcome under the new American parent company. Also, suppose that you have been tasked with coming up with a solid human resource plan for the new American owners of Arik Air. You need to make major decisions such as how much to rely on local staff, how much to rely on employees from the United States or other countries, and how to deal with the sensitive issue of how an American company manages local employees who may be resentful of their new owner. In order to do this, you will need to use what you've learned in the background materials in this module as well as what you've learned in the previous modules about assessing the local environment of a country.
In a 4page paper, present a strategic human resource plan considering the following issues:
- The economic/political environment in Nigeria-how will this influence the difficulty in hiring local staff or recruiting expatriates to come work in Nigeria? How will this influence your strategy?
- Nigeria's national culture-what implications will cultural differences between the United States and Nigeria have on your strategic plan? What difficulties do you anticipate, and how do you propose to deal with them?
- How much should the American company rely on local pilots and managers vs. expatriate pilots and managers? Keep the issue of potential local resentment of expatriates in mind.
Remember that your paper should reflect an integration of both what you learned in the background materials about the key general aspects of international human resource management, and what you've specifically learned about the unique issues involved in managing human resources in an airline in Nigeria. Your task is to apply the background materials to the specific issues that would be faced by an American company if it were to purchase Arik Air.