Global Managerial Skill Sets, Management Development, and The Role of HR: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of North American and Indian Managers

Abstract

Since Porter’s (1986) seminal study, many researchers have focused on the key factors that assure competitiveness in increasingly global marketplaces, including both business and human resource management (HRM) strategies. With respect to the latter, the importance of developing managers with global skill sets has been a persistent theme in the literature on competitive strategy and HRM over the last decade. This paper extends such research by employing a qualitative methodology to explore the need for and to identify these global skill sets from the perspectives of 56 senior executives from multinational organizations in North America and India. The role of human resource (HR) departments in developing the identified skill-sets for global managers is discussed. The paper also presents the implications for HR professionals and practitioners and provides suggestions for future research. Keywords: Globalization, Global Mindsets, Human Resource Management, North America, India, Management Development To cite this document: Subramaniam Ananthram and Alan Nankervis, "Global Managerial Skill Sets, Management Development, and The Role of HR: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of North American and Indian Managers", Contemporary Management Research, Vol.9, No.3, pp.299-322, 2013. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/cmr.9731