Change management has long been an undervalued and poorly understood field. But recently, it has come into its own as both a business function and an organizational competency. Recent survey results and discussions among members of the Three Faces of Change Working Group reveal that change management has never been more important or more complex.

Encounters with the 'Other' – including strangers, foreigners, and speakers of other languages – are an ancient feature of the social and psychological reality of human beings and an ancient topic for humanistic research. But the march of time and technology has greatly accelerated the rate at which we have such experiences. The set of social, commercial, and communicative phenomena that is subsumed under the term globalization constitutes a qualitative change in the human environment; there now exists a growing population of people who live, work, converse, and interact in multiple cultures, countries, continents, and communicative contexts. They travel internationally, live outside their home countries for extended periods, speak more than one language, and function within multiple cultural settings. Of course, such experiences vary tremendously from individual to individual, in terms of duration, intensity, the countries and languages involved, and so on. This entails varying levels of acculturation, accommodation and assimilation.

With the ever-accelerating speed of change and the ever increasing demands placed on global business, our world is both expanding and shrinking -- expanding by promoting broader, more extensive contacts among countries and individuals, and simultaneously, shrinking through faster and easier access to information and people from different cultures around the world. While these paradoxical forces provide increased business opportunities, they also create more occasions for cross-cultural conflict and misunderstanding.

This article first provides a brief history of the modern organization and discusses the various types of global organizational models that are common today. The main tenet of this article is that HRIT needs to move to the collaborative transnational organization model in order to deliver services more effectively in the age of Web 2.0.

In the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and losses of sensitive financial and personal data from well run companies as well as government agencies, and daily threats from outside computer viruses, it is no wonder most of us have risk on our minds. This is especially true for small or mid-sized companies involved in the global marketing, production and sales of products and services.

Adroit human resource (HR) professionals are continually striving for ways to improve HR service delivery and demonstrate greater value of the human capital function to their enterprise. As a result, many organisations are beginning to take advantage of emerging and maturing Web services technology. While Information Technology (IT) units are the initial beneficiaries of Web services applications resulting from lower cost of technology ownership and improved infrastructure management, business units also benefit through greater business agility and improved business process management. Human resource units, in particular, are able to do their jobs better and improve service delivery to their clients (e.g., employees, company management, business partners) through the deployment of applications that enable HR professionals to easily configure, orchestrate, and modify company business processes in line with changes in business strategy, economic/ political environment, and/or regulatory and compliance requirements. One key dilemma facing organisations embarking on a Web services initiative is which delivery model should they consider for the company's Human Capital Management Suite (HCMS): the Software as a Service (SaaS) model or the owner-maintained model -- both can make effective use of the same Web services technology.

If the shifts in the workplace demographics over the last 40 years or so haven't changed most managers' behavior, one wonders what will. Civil rights legislation was passed in the 1960's; females now account for almost half of all workers; the workforce is graying and baby boomers are retiring from the workplace and being replaced by younger techno-savvy workers; and immigration is altering the ethnic makeup of the American citizen. These forces have also changed neighborhoods, people's buying habits, approaches to media, as well as the expectations and interests of the newer workers.

Prediction is tricky when analyzing the human resource information systems (HRIS) scene in Europe, because of the many conflicting forces the continent is subject to. In general, these forces can be summarized as dialectic of two trends. On the one hand, Europe has many nations, languages, cultures, histories, and nationalistic tendencies that are pushing it in one direction; on the other, there are significant 'Europeanisation' forces that are pulling it in another, more unified direction with the subsequent emergence of a pan-European business environment.

In spite of the recent economic slowdown, the worldwide business process outsourcing (BPO) market, according to the Gartner Group, is continuing to grow by 9.5 percent (compound annual growth rate) and is projected to reach $173B in 2007.1 During the same period, the Asia/Pacific IT outsourcing market, says International Data Corporation (IDC), will experience modest growth, driven primarily by China and Korea. As vendor offerings for the region are maturing and competitive pressures increasing, BPO markets, particularly in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore are moving into a rapid growth stage.

Getting the right people in pivotal roles at the right time should be nothing new to HR professionals,but done effectively, talent management can create long-term organizational success. Here, Lynne Morton and Chris Ashton show how to align talent management strategies to business goals, integrate all related processes and systems and create a "talent mindset" in your organization.

Talent Management (TM) is now one of the hottest topics in business, and one of the most complex. With everyone rushing to do it, there is much confusion as to what "it" is and just as many approaches to doing it - plus scores of "technology solutions." As if that isn't enough, when adding a global dimension, there is an even larger host of additional, potentially confusing, aspects. However, just as things may seem to be getting more complicated, a way to see through the clutter has also become apparent. In fact, using a new model, it’s possible to reduce global talent management to a group of just seven major challenges.

Much has been said and written about 'globalizing' HRIS over the years, but has much been achieved? If the answer is 'yes', what has been the nature of those achievements? Consider the following: What global or even pan-European compensation programs exist that pay managers on the same identifiable, quantifiable performance metrics across all countries (while of course not necessarily on the same scales due to the varying economic situations and standards of living)? How many global HRIS organizations exist that manage worldwide HRIS issues on an ongoing basis? (Think about how many global teams are broken up and redeployed into the local business units once the implementation is declared a success.) What truly global software solutions exist that can manage HR, benefits and payroll needs on an integrated (not 'interfaced') basis, for all countries (or even for the major economic powers) and handle all the different linguistic, cultural, financial, legislative and taxation requirements?

As Charles Handy observes in his book, The Age of Paradox, we are entering the 'age of unreason'. We are no longer in the position of being able to choose between various opposing business strategies; we have to develop multiple strategic competencies that may at times appear to be in conflict. According to Handy, today's organizations need to be like both the 'elephant' and the 'flea': they need the size, the reach, and the power of an elephant, but, at the same time, they must remain small, agile, and quick like a flea. To be competitive today, organizations have to be both large and small, both global and local, both centralized and decentralized, sensitive to the needs of local units, and simultaneously responsive to the demands of head office. Instead of choosing one or the other, organizations must learn how to reconcile what were formerly considered 'opposites'. They must find a way to combine multiple contrasting strategies and avoid situations where they have to neglect one for the other.