Managing diversity in a Chinese-owned multinational IT firm

Company background

Established in 1988 in Beijing, Lenovo Group Limited (formerly known as ‘Legend Group Limited’) is the largest IT enterprise in China. Lenovo employs some 25,000 staff in all its operations in nearly 70 countries, but with the majority of employ- ees working in China. In 1984, with an initial capital of RMB 200,000 funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government-funded institution, 11 researchers formed the parent company of Lenovo. It was the first company to introduce the concept of the home computer in China. Lenovo’s main business activities are in the sale and manufacturing of desktop computers, notebook computers, mobile handsets, servers and printers. Lenovo is a stock-listed company, with the Chinese government holding over a quarter of its shares. In April 2003, the group adopted a new logo and the English brand name ‘Lenovo’, replacing the original English brand name ‘Legend’ in order to appeal to the international market. The English company name was also officially changed to ‘Lenovo Group Limited’ a year later. In December 2004, Lenovo spent US$1.25 billion to acquire IBM’s PC business. This was the largest cross-border acquisition in China’s IT industry (China Business, 13 December 2004). The acquisition process was completed in May 2005. The marriage of IBM and Lenovo created one of the world’s largest PC powerhouses. IBM possessed strong competitive advantage in the higher end of the customer market in its distribution channel, high quality customer resources, which complemented that of Lenovo. The two companies have main- tained a long-term cooperative strategy since the acquisition, with Lenovo having access to some of IBM’s key resources, such as technology, sales force, PartnerWorld, Global Finance and IBM Credit. The continuing expansion and globalization of Lenovo has brought a number of challenges to its HRM function, including the alignment of corporate HR strategy and DM after the acquisition of IBM’s PC business. Below are some of the issues that illustrate the challenges.

Managing foreign employees in China

Lenovo’s growing global presence in the IT sector has in recent years attracted an increasing number of non-Chinese citizens who wish to work in its operations in China. This is in part because they want to spend time in China to gain wider work experience and a deeper understanding of the country. These foreign citizens are employed by Lenovo under the same employment conditions as those offered to Chinese citizens. Free working meals and company-subsidized accommodation are some of the benefits that Lenovo offers its employees. These are traditional and typical workplace welfare provisions of Chinese firms. Under the housing scheme, newly recruited single employees are provided dormitory accommodation. Since housing is expensive in Beijing, this often takes the form of one bedroom shared by a few employees of the same gender. This arrangement is normal and acceptable to Chinese employees – Chinese students also share their dormitories in schools and universities, and in sweatshop manufacturing plants the situation is far worse where ten or more rural migrant workers are crowded in a room with poor facilities. However, foreign employees, though only very small in number compared with the Chinese employees, find it difficult to get used to this idea because of the lack of privacy. Lenovo (China) has no special policy to accommodate their needs. Different management style is another source of cultural shock to foreign employees. According to an HR manager, foreign employees all emphasize their cultural shock when they come to China. However, Lenovo (China) has not developed a formal policy to manage these cultural shocks. This has led to the turnover of a few of the foreign employees and the company has made no effort to retain them.

Managing Chinese graduate returnees from overseas

Since the early 2000s, an increasing number of Chinese who went abroad for their higher education have been returning to China to seek employment and career development. The majority of Chinese overseas graduate returnees (known as haigui in China) are keen to work for multinational firms, and are often the favourite candidates. Lenovo is among the top employers of choice for which haiguis want to work. These repatriated Western educated and trained graduates bring with them different life styles, perspectives and (often unrealistic) expectations that may depart from Chinese norms. Some of them are said to be complacent and consider themselves superior to other graduate employees who have not been abroad for education or training. They expect high salaries up front, fast promotion, flexibility and autonomy in their work. Turnover is common among haiguis when expectations are unmet or better offers are available elsewhere. How to recruit and manage overseas graduate returnees effectively is an important issue for MNCs operating in China. Companies are now reportedly more cautious in recruiting and managing these returnees because they are seen as ‘demanding’ employees who are difficult to retain. Lenovo shares some of these issues. Although turnover has not been a major problem, how to harmonize the relationship between haiguis and home- grown graduate employees is sometimes a challenge for line managers.

Gender equalities

Prior to Lenovo’s acquisition of the IBM PC business unit, Lenovo had more women at the senior management level. The proportion of women in senior management has actually declined since the acquisition because it is now part of a bigger inter- national operation. Two main reasons are attributed to this change. One is that there is a lower proportion of women at senior management level in the acquired business unit of IBM than in the Chinese operation. Another reason is that Lenovo has been through successive rounds of senior management restructuring after the acquisition, partly to do with the post-acquisition integration and partly to do with the poaching of senior managers among IT firms in China. Cultural clashes triggered by the post-acquisition integration have led to the departure of a number of senior managers. When new managers are recruited, they tend to bring their own people and HR initiatives with them, which will later be displaced by their successors when those managers depart. As an HR director observed, ‘It is organizational politics, rather than equal opportunities, that we consider in the recruitment of senior managers. You need to be competent as well as well connected to get the senior management’s job, and men tend to be better connected than women in the IT sector in general.’

Developing a global diversity management strategy

According to informants from Lenovo (China), diversity is not a key issue in the workforce in China. Therefore, it is not a priority of the company. The major task is post-acquisition integration to align the organizational cultures and become a truly international company. Nevertheless, Lenovo (China) does emphasize the need for employees to respect other employees’ rights and privacy. Aggressive or discriminaory behaviours are forbidden, even as jokes. These expectations are written in the business conduct guidelines for employees. However, Lenovo (China) does not have any specific equal opportunities or diversity management programmes to enforce these clauses. The acquired business unit of IBM has good HR practices, for example, WLB and DM. These have not yet been transferred to the Chinese operation due to staff shortages. There was a corporate initiative (stimulated from the US side) about grouping women at international level together to have a global forum to discuss diversity issues in 2006. Unfortunately, budget constraints meant that the plan was set to one side. The HR directors from Lenovo (US) are well aware of the challenge they face in transferring their US-developed diversity management programme to other branches across different countries and cultures. The US HR team are the people who are familiar with the concept and responsible for promoting its global diffusion, and they are approaching the task with extreme caution. This is in part, as they admit- ted, due to their unfamiliarity with the local environments in different parts of the world, although they are planning to visit Lenovo (China) for the first time. How to accommodate the diversity of the global workforce and leverage it to enhance the performance of the firm on the one hand, and how to develop a strong corporate culture that all employees will identify with on the other hand is their main HR con- cern, and a solution has yet to be found. According to all managerial informants, the corporate priority is talent management. A new scheme called ‘Mobility Plan’ has been implemented at the international level. The purpose of the plan is to give managers an opportunity to work overseas to gain international experience to be able to lead at a global level. It is not aimed at Chinese managers in principle, but in reality has mainly involved sending Chinese managers to the US for development.

Questions:

1: Identify and explain the main issues in this case study

2. What are the key issues of diversity management in this case study and how are they manifested?

Suppose your work for the university of Michigan. The university wants to implement an email spam filter. So use the mbox.txt file that we used in class, build a filter system that filters emails into several categories of security levels: level 1 is the email from Uof M (@ umich.edu), level 2 is the email from other North American universities (@ xyz.edu), level 3 is the email from other educational institutions around the world (.uk, .za, etc.), and level 4 is the email from other email services (g m ail, etc). Please print out these 4 levels and also list all the senders (only those in the "From" lines) in each category. Example output: Level 1: zqian@ umich.edu Level 2: louis@ media.berkeley.edu ray@ media.berkeley.edu mmmy@ indiana.edu Level 3: antranig@ caret.cam.ac.uk david.horwitz@ uct.ac.za Level 4: gopal.ramasammycook@ g mail.com

Answer both questions

9.) (ch 6) Suppose that Danielle’s wage-schooling locus is given by

a) Derive the marginal rate of return (MRR) schedule. When will Danielle quit school if her discount rate is 10 percent?

b) Suppose the government imposes an income tax of 20% on both labor earnings and interest income. What is the impact ofthis income tax on Danielle’s educational attainment (will itincrease or decrease)? Explain your answer.

10.) (ch 6) Peter has just graduated from HS. He will live for three more periods, and he is considering three alternative education-work options. He can start working right away, earning $100,000 in period 1, $110,000 in period 2, and $90,000 in period 3. He can also go to college in period 1 spending $10,000 in that period, and then earn $150,000 in periods 2 and 3. Finally, he can go to college in period 1 and get an MBA in period 2. This last option will cost him nothing in year 2 (books and tuition are covered by a research assistant position). After getting his MBA, he will earn $300,000 in period 3.

a) If Peter’s discount rate is 0.20, which path will maximize his net present value of his lifetimeearnings?
b) Why is it realistic that his wage for option one decreases to $90,000 in year 3?

1. When an individual becomes infected with HIV, what symptoms will he or she exhibit?

2. How many types of HIV are known to be in existence?

3. How did HIV arrive in the human population?

4. Because infection with HIV does not result in elimination of the virus by the immune system, does this mean that the immune system does not respond?

5. What happens to T cells in an individual who is infected with HIV?

6. What is the difference between a primary immunodeficiency and a secondary immunodeficiency?

7. As of 1999, what are the statistics in terms of how many people are infected with HIV and mortality associated with the virus?

8. What is the recommended treatment today for AIDS?

9. Cite a couple of reasons why there is no effective vaccine for AIDS .

1.Which of the following scenarios would it be appropriate to use a normal approximation for the sampling distribution of the sample proportion?

Select one:

a.) A researcher wishes to find the probability that more than 60% of a sample of undergraduate students from UNC will be female. She samples the first 42 students that walk into the gym on Monday morning. The population proportion of undergraduate females at UNC is known to be 60.1%.

b.)A researcher wishes to find the probability that less than 5% of a sample of undergraduate students from Appalachian State University will be between the ages of 25 and 34. He randomly samples 50 undergraduate students from the student database. The proportion of undergraduates between the ages of 25 and 34 is 5.3%.

c.)A grad student at NC state wants to know how likely it is that a group of students would be made up of more than 27% graduate students. She will randomly select 38 students and ask them if they are a graduate student or an undergraduate student. The population proportion of grad students at NC state is 26.6%.

d.)A full-time student at Fayetteville State University wants to know how likely it is that a group of students would be made up of less than 70% full-time students. She will ask 30 people that she sees parking in the parking deck if they are full-time or part-time. The population of full-time students at Fayetteville State is known to be 72%.

2. In the general population in the US, identical twins occur at a rate of 30 per 1,000 live births. A survey records 10,000 births during Jan 2018 to Jan 2019 and found 400 twins in total. Which of the following are true?

Select one or more:

The proportion of twin births during Jan 2018 to Jan 2019 is .03.

The proportion of twin births during Jan 2018 to Jan 2019 is .04.

The probability of twin births among the general population is .03.

The probability of twin births among the general population is .04.

Pr(observing a sample proportion of twin births from a random sample of 10,000 live births <= 0.04) = 0.03.

Pr(observing a sample proportion of twin births from a random sample of 10,000 live births <= 0.04) = 0.5.

Pr(observing a sample proportion of twin births from a random sample of 10,000 live births <= 0.03) = 0.04.

Pr(observing a sample proportion of twin births from a random sample of 10,000 live births <= 0.03) = 0.5.

please,short answers

A. Majdi has a degree in accounting from BZU and works for a local accounting office. He was asked by a friend to prepare Financial statements for a small company in Ramallah. To help his friend Majdi prepared the financial statements and a report indicating that the financial statements were audited by him. What standards were violated and why? Is there a violation of the elements of audit quality control, briefly discuss?

b.Mira A Certified Public Auditor licensed in Palestine is the partner in charge of Ooredoo audit. In order to save cost, she hired a group of students from Al-Najah University to help her conduct the audit. A month later Mira received the audited financial statements and the report from the students. She signed it and send it to the board of directors of Ooredoo. What standards were violated and why? Is there a violation of the elements of audit quality control, briefly discuss?

A. Majdi has a degree in accounting from BZU and works for a local accounting office. He was asked by a friend to prepare Financial statements for a small company in Ramallah. To help his friend Majdi prepared the financial statements and a report indicating that the financial statements were audited by him. What standards were violated and why? Is there a violation of the elements of audit quality control, briefly discuss?

1. Mira A Certified Public Auditor licensed in Palestine is the partner in charge of Ooredoo audit. In order to save cost, she hired a group of students from Al-Najah University to help her conduct the audit. A month later Mira received the audited financial statements and the report from the students. She signed it and send it to the board of directors of Ooredoo.

What standards were violated and why?

Is there a violation of the elements of audit quality control, briefly discuss?

Discuss the pros and cons of a US based domestic company aggressively investing in emerging economies. You may use a particular company (by name) and a particular emerging economy (by name) to provide your examples. (International Management

Why is economic growth important to us and what are the most important/critical factors that contribute to growth?

What is holding the US economy back from achieving the desired 4% growth?