It seems working in change management has probably never been so important or so complex. To help managers navigate, this report presents models and methods derived from the collective wisdom and experience of working group members and survey participants. It is hoped the knowledge gleaned from this research will help organizations know more about what they need to make change management work.

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 lectures presents a model for understanding cultural differences and building awareness of the effects that culture has on language. It discuss the aspects of the international business environment and the role that culture and language play, and illustrates the application of various analytical perspectives and models from linguistics and the social sciences on international business communications with the goal of demonstrating the interdependence of the social science disciplines -- sociology, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics -- and to show their effects on various business situations.

Wherever in the world your company has operations and employees, you need reliable economic indicators and compensation planning information in order to make equitable, competitive, and cost-effective business decisions that align with your global workforce strategy as well as corporate goals, policies, and practices. Knowing the right market-driven questions to ask anywhere in the world regarding salary trends, unemployment rates, inflation outlook, and anticipated GDP is critical to the success and profitability of your global organizations.

The business world continues to globalize. No longer limited by geography or national boundaries, companies of all size are ‘going global’—compelling HR professionals and other decision makers with significant line-of-business and value creation responsibilities to enter the unchartered territory of sustaining competitiveness worldwide using new tools in new markets. The truth is, building a world-class borderless enterprise is difficult to conceptualize, visualize, and support. The complexities of acculturation as well as the barriers of language, business practices, and international regulations contribute to a lack of organizational clarity when transcending boundaries.

The organizational demands in the era of globalization, digitization, expanding networks, and eroding boundaries provoke the perennial question as to whether we should organize our operations locally, regionally, or globally. In the past, a standard globalization strategy has been to take a global solution built by the headquarters office and roll it out locally, country by country. Yet, this approach goes about globalization completely the wrong way. The slogan, "Think Global, Act Local," originally created by Canadian futurist Hazel Henderson to describe how small local actions can have large global impact, is completely the inverse of what we should be doing to globalize our HR organization and supporting systems. Rather, we should first "Think Local" to truly understand the needs of our local business communities and then "Act Global" to seamlessly knit together diverse business functions and systems into a holistic approach if we want to build an effective, efficient, and competitive HR organization that will thrive in the 21st century.

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.

I wonder if the new millennium watch will be able to provide us with any more warning of what Y3K will bring than we had about Y2K? If only we could consult an oracle or fortune-teller to find out what the future holds... Why can't consultants help us better prepare for the future?

Developing shared services in a single country presents a familiar range of challenges that are common to any large new initiative: developing cost-benefit analyses, building organizational structures, selecting locations, managing change and transition, etc. Doing this in a global context brings additional challenges that are not simply incremental but transcend the domestic issues, substantially multiplying the complexity of the undertaking.

HR Outsourcing (HRO) is expanding and evolving at a phenomenal pace. Every day there are new developments in outsourcing appearing in the business news -- new vendors and alliances being formed, new deals and partnerships being cemented (or dissolved), new products and services offered, all the hype around offshoring. Outsourcing is unmistakably the Next Big Thing, and human resource outsourcing has captured the attention of today's business managers. But, how is one to make sense of it all? What works and what doesn't? How can one separate fact from fiction -- hype from hard reality?

In the age of increased global mobility, falling trade barriers, and explosive growth in international business, global expansion is on the agenda of most large enterprises. The question on every global company's mind is (or should be) how can they best organize themselves for international operations. Can you do business around the world the same way you do business around the corner? Or are substantially different organizational and management approaches required to meet the demands of global business? When the company as a whole faces such questions, the HR organization needs to anticipate emergent human capital needs in order to meet the challenges created by the company's globalization goals.

The term 'global HRIS' (human resource information system) has been used to denote many different types of organizations, systems and environments. Indeed, the word 'global' has become one of the hottest buzzwords of recent years. With the accelerating pace of change brought about by the Internet and by high-speed communications and transportation, distances are shrinking and borders are breaking down. Every organization is now running into so-called global issues. A direct outcome of the Digital Age, there are two major trends that are having a profound effect on the way we do business.

In the age of increased global mobility, falling trade barriers, and explosive growth in international business, global expansion is on the agenda of most large enterprises. The question on every global company's mind is (or should be) how can they best organize themselves for international operations. Can you do business around the world the same way you do business around the corner, or are substantially different organizational and management approaches required to meet the challenges of global business?

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.

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.

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.

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.