The Role of Human Resources Management in Promoting Agility, Excellence and Globalisation: Some Lessons and Examples

As the globalization of markets continues at a rapid pace, the challenges for managers increase. Human Management practices vary between countries, sector, size and ownership of organizations. As a result Re-source it is important to acknowledge that what are largely considered to be ‘Western’ style HRM practices may not be relevant in other cultures. Despite this, some lessons may be learned from organizational experiences that can be transferred across countries and cultures. This paper draws on research and consulting experience to provide lessons and examples regarding how some organizations are attempting to utilise HRM strategies in order to promote agility and excellence and, in some cases, globalize the business. While drawing on several practical examples the paper focuses particularly on a group of over 80 and engineering companies based in Australia. Referred to as the Alliance, this group of companies manufactur-ing joined together in order to improve their competitiveness through sharing management knowledge, training costs and programs in order to incr ease their market share. The paper reports on how this occurred, and how the Alliance experience may be applicable for other industries and countries. The paper also reports on preliminary research carried out on two clusters in Dubai - Dubai Internet City and Dubai Knowledge Village and how information is being shared amongst the trading partners based there.