International HRM insights for navigating the COVID-19 ...

1 EDITORIALI nternational HRM insights for navigatingthe COVID-19 pandemic: Implicationsfor future research and practicePaula Caligiuri1,Helen De Cieri2,Dana Minbaeva3,Alain Verbeke4,5,6andAngelika Zimmermann71D Amore-McKim School of Business,Northeastern University, 312C Hayden Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02124, USA;2 Monash Business School, Monash University,900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, VIC 3145,Australia;3 Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej14, Copenhagen 2000, Denmark;4 HaskayneSchool of Business, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4,Canada;5 Henley Business School, University ofReading, Reading, UK;6 Solvay Business School,Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium;7 School of Business and Economics,Loughborough University, Ashby Road,Loughborough LE11 3TU, UKCorrespondence:D Minbaeva, Copenhagen Business School,Kilevej 14, Copenhagen 2000, Denmarke-mail: show the relevance of extant International business (IB) research, and morespecifically work on International human resources management (IHRM), toaddress COVID-19 pandemic challenges.

2 Decision-makers in multinationalenterprises have undertaken various types of actions to alleviate the impacts ofthe pandemic. In most cases these actions relate in some way to managingdistance and to rethinking boundaries, whether at the macro- or distance and rethinking boundaries have been the primary focus ofmuch IB research since the IB field was established as a legitimate area ofacademic inquiry. The pandemic has led to increased cross-border distanceproblems ( , as the result of travel bans and reduced International mobility),and often also to new intra-firm distancing challenges imposed upon previouslyco-located employees. Prior IHRM research has highlighted the difficultiespresented by distance, in terms of employee selection, training, support, healthand safety, as well as leadership and virtual collaboration. Much of this thinkingis applicable to solve pandemic-related distance challenges.

3 The present,extreme cases of requisite physical distancing need not imply equivalentincreases in psychological distance, and also offer firms some insight into theunanticipated benefits of a virtual workforce a type of workforce that, quitepossibly, will influence the new normal of the post-COVID world. Extant IHRM research does offer actionable insight for today, but outstanding knowledgegaps remain. Looking ahead, we offer three domains for future IHRM research:managing under uncertainty, facilitating International and even global work,and redefining organizational of International Business Studies(2020)51,697 altered every person s reality overnight. Individuals,cities, economies, countries, and continents have experienced theshock of lockdown and the fear of unknowing. Managers have hadto make many decisions in a very short period of time decisionsabout who should stay at work and who should go home; how andwhere people could be moved into digital space; and what thepriorities are and how those priorities can best be communicated toemployees.

4 In 2019, Ernst & Young surveyed 500 board membersand chief executive officers (CEOs) globally and found that onlyOnline publication date: 2 June 2020 Journal of International Business Studies (2020) 51,697 713 2020 Academy of International Business All rights reserved 0047-2506 of the executives surveyed believed theircompanies were prepared to respond to a largeadverse risk (EY,2020). A few short months later,the COVID-19 pandemic crisis arrived and provedthat their concerns were well founded. Concernsrelated to global supply chain vulnerabilities andfinancial resilience have come to the fore duringthe COVID-19 pandemic, along with significantstrategic human talent concerns. BCG has calledthe ongoing COVID-19 pandemic a people-basedcrisis. We Economistnoted that just as the financialcrisis in 2007 2009 highlighted the role of talentedChief Financial Officers (CFOs), the COVID-19pandemic is highlighting the role of Chief HumanResource Officers (CHROs).

5 They wrote: When the financial crisis rocked the business world in2007 2009, boardrooms turned to corporate finance good CFO could save a company; a bad one might bury COVID-19 pandemic presents a different challenge and highlights the role of another corporate function, oftenunfairly dismissed as soft. Never before have more firmsneeded a hard-headed HR duties of chief people officers, as human-resources headsare sometimes called, look critical right now. They mustkeep employees healthy; maintain their morale; oversee avast remote-working experiment; and, as firms retrench,consider whether, when and how to lay workers off. Theirin-trays are bulging. (The Economist, March 24th, 2020).The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed a massivenumber of employees, who were already facingstress from the health risk itself, to working fromhome.

6 Compounding this stressor, many managersare now leading remote teams for the first sudden change has exacerbated the challengesof collaborating and leading from a distance,challenges we in the field of International business(IB) understand well, but that have remainedlargely unaddressed in management practice. In2018, RW3 surveyed 1620 employees from 90countries regarding their experiences working on global virtual teams in multinational enterprises(MNEs). While most of the respondents identifiedtheir work on global virtual teams as important forjob success, only 22% received training on how bestto work in their geographically distributed teams,90% of which had two or more cultures repre-sented. The picture is not much better at theleadership level. Among the virtual team leaders,only 15% described themselves as very effective with less than 20% receiving training on how tolead from a distance (RW3,2018).

7 The field of IB has long accounted for thechallenges associated with significant global threatsand issues concerning geographical distance. Fromthe lens of IB generally, and International humanresource management (IHRM) specifically, we canrecast the issues emerging from the current COVID-19 pandemic in terms of the existing academicknowledge base. By holding up this theoreticalmirror, we can more clearly see the issues and offerinsights to MNE managers facing challenges inleading their people through this crisis. In thisEditorial, we will distil the knowledge and experi-ence IB scholars, and more specifically IHRM, haveaccumulated over recent decades to offer some keylearnings on managing people from a distance. Ouraccumulated body of knowledge in IHRM hashelped us understand the challenges people facewhen placed in a wide range of MNE workarrangements, such as expatriate assignments, vir-tual International work, global project teams, andfrequent International travel (Shaffer, Kraimer,Chen & Bolino,2012).

8 This academic knowledgeis particularly useful for human resource managerstoday, as they face new challenges and difficultdecisions during this purpose of this Editorial is not to conduct acomprehensive review of the literature; rather, thegoal is to select a few key themes and opportunitiesfor quick wins that could be immediately appliedin MNE managerial practice. At the end of thisEditorial, we go back to the academic literature andoffer suggestions for future research in IHRM. Thesesuggestions represent the topics where practicewould be better served from a deeper knowledgebase. Thus, our suggestions for future research inIHRM relate to the broader gaps in the IB literaturethat, if filled, could help answering the next bigquestions in IB (Buckley, Doh, & Benischke,2017).HANDLING THE COVID-19 CRISISI nsights from IHRM s Selection, Training,and Employee Support LiteratureThe field of IHRM has long understood that whenemployees are in novel or uncertain contexts, theyexperience stress (Anderze n & Arnetz,1997;Richards,1996; Stahl & Caligiuri,2005).

9 To respondto such stress, employees leverage their disposi-tional traits and coping responses (Shaffer, Har-rison, Gregersen, Black, & Ferzandi,2006; Stahl &Caligiuri,2005). Stress affects employees ability toempathizewithothers,considerplausibleI nternational HRM insights for the COVID-19 pandemicPaula Caligiuri et of International Business Studiesalternatives, remain open-minded, engage in cog-nitively challenging tasks, and expand one s expe-riences to learn and grow. As the literature suggests,when individuals encounter periods of stress andanxiety, they have a tendency to seek out and findcomfort in the familiar, the people, places, andeven food that are the most predictable; this is thereason there are expatriate communities, demo-graphic faultlines, and comfort food in everyculture around the COVID-19 pandemic has produced tremen-dous novelty and uncertainty which is affecting themental health of many people around the world(World Health Organization,2020).

10 Even as thehealth risks of the pandemic begin to wane in somecountries and the probability of a vaccine appearshigh, the novel ways of working remotely and thefears around the global recession will continue toproduce a state of uncertainty. In their stress-induced, cognitively reduced state, employees willhave a particularly difficult time working effectivelyin different countries and with people from differ-ent cultures, especially in instances of high unfa-miliarity. There is not enough bandwidth, so tospeak, for even greater novelty and more uncer-tainty. Based on knowledge from the IHRM litera-ture, a number of selection, training, and supportpractices can positively mitigate the concerns has taught us that some people are naturallybetter than others at managing stress and uncer-tainty, enabling them to make better decisions andwork more effectively across countries and cultures(Shaffer et al.)