Part -1:

Case Assignment

Instructions

Arik Air is one Nigeria's largest airline and one of the largest airlines in all of Africa. Their employment situation is a bit unique in that close to 10 percent of their 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, DC. [Proquest]

Nigeria loses N500 billion annually to expatriate pilots. (Jan. 24, 2014). AllAfrica.com. Washington, DC. [Proquest]

Fajana, S., Owoyemi, O., Elegbede, T., & Gbajumo-Sheriff, M. (2011). Human resource management practices in Nigeria. Journal of Management and Strategy, 2(2), 57. [Proquest]

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 U.S. 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 four to five page paper, present a strategic human resource plan considering the following issues:

1. Go to Hofstede's webpage (http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html and look up the cultural values for both Nigeria and the U.S. Look up the scores of individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. What major differences do you see between the two cultures? What kind of implications will this have for how the American airline company manages their Nigerian employees?

2. Overall what kind of human resource strategy do you think the American company should take to manage Arik Airlines? A geocentric approach, polycentric, or ethnocentric approach? Explain your reasoning, and cite Dlabey, L. & Scott, J. (2006) or Dias (2012) as part of your answer.

3. What kind of mix between Nigerian employees (host-country nationals), American employees (home country nationals), or third country nationals do you think should be hired? What challenges do you see for hiring each type of employee? Explain your reasoning, and cite Dlabey, L. & Scott, J. (2006) or Dias (2012) as part of your answer.

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 it to apply the background materials to the specific issues that would be faced by an American company if they were to purchase Arik Air.

Assignment Expectations

- Answer the assignment questions directly
- Stay focused on the precise assignment questions, don't go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials

- Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the internet, make sure it is from a credible source.

- Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper , including pages 13-14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the "Writing Style Guide", which is found under "My Resources" in the TLC portal.

Part -2:

For the Session Long Project for this class, first choose a country interests you other than the United States (you need to learn about another culture other than your home culture for this assignment). You can pick any country you want other than the United States among those included on Hofstede's webpage:

http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html

You will be looking at a different aspect of doing business in this country in each of your Module 1-4 SLPs. For this first SLP, you will be focusing on the culture of this country and how it differs with the culture of the U.S. You can start by looking at the cultural values of this country as shown on the Hofstede webpage linked above.

Keep in mind that it is controversial to try to quantify national culture, so don't rely only on Hofstede for this paper. Do some additional research and try to find additional information about the cultural aspects of doing business in your country. Then write a two to three page paper addressing the following issues:

1. Go to the Hofstede webpage and look up the values of individualism, power distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance for both your chosen country and for the United States. What are the main differences between national culture in the U.S. and your chosen country? What implications might these differences have on doing business in your country?

2. What other information besides Hofstede have you been able to find about culture in your country? How do these aspects of culture impact doing business in your country?

Overall, does the national culture of your country make it easy or difficult to business? What cultural pitfalls might an American company investing in your country face?

SLP Assignment Expectations

- Answer the assignment questions directly.

- Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; do not go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing background materials.

- Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.

- Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the "Writing Style Guide," which is found under "My Resources" in the TLC Portal.