Cross-Cultural Influences on HRM Practices in an African Context: Global Entrepreneurs in Senegal

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This study is an attempt to illustrate the cross-cultural influences on HRM practices in an African context. Based on the managerial background of the authors, they found the global HRM as avery sensitive and important area of management studies. International human resources have different cultures, and multicultural environments are usually associated with several concerns, misunderstandings and conflicts among the staff.In this study, the authors review several articles about cross-cultural effects on HRM practices across the globe to support the literature review of this manuscript. Furthermore,the authors distribute a set of questionnaire among 25 international SME (Small and medium enterprises). The respondents of the study are selected among owners of restaurants, hotels as well as some import/export companies in Dakar .The results of the questionnaire are analyzed carefully in order toelaborate the opinions of the respondents.In the findings section, the authors summarize most important issues due to the gathered opinions.Finally,the authors provide a summary of the study and the results on conclusion part and recommend some points for further studies in future. I. Introduction 1. Background The global business management became one the most interesting areas of trade,especially for international contractors who are capable to export engineering activities as well as for investors and entrepreneurs who are interested to establish a factory in other countries. They may enjoy lower manufacturing overhead or labor costs.Nowadays there are several engineering export companies who are active in the fields of oil and gas, electricityas well aswaterprojects.Due to the profitable nature of the job, the number of service exporters is increasing so fast.Furthermore,the governments provide lots of advantages and incentives for exporters to promote the domestic economy.In addition to governmental supports,the international banksas well as Chambersof Commerce are alsokeyfacilitators to motivate engineering companies to conduct more and more projects across the globe.But in spite of the aforementioned supports and facilities,the global business management could be considered as a veryhard and challenging task. It is a kind of professional activity and several aspects of the managerial knowledge must be consideredin such activities. It is necessary to establish several disciplines to fulfill the objectives of the business in the framework of the assigned budget and time schedule to satisfy the all the stakeholders.Between managerial aspects, the human resource management (HRM) is a very sensitive subject that has an important roleing lobal businesses (EBERLEIN, 2008). It is clear that local people of each country have their own ideas, ethics and religions which some of them are considered as cultures and the others are sub - cultures.The major obstacle of an overseas project communication with new people with unrelated cultural behaviors and different languages.Managing multicultural human resources who come from different beliefs, languages,legends ,religions, and social behaviors is a very complicated task.In addition, it is not possible to follow the same procedures and disciplines of HRM in every country because regional cultures are not similar in many cases,sothe effect of human behavior on organization is unforeseen. Because of the importance of global HRM , several researches are conducted , but again there are many areas of concern regarding cross-cultural influences onglobal HRM practices .Due to the potential markets in Africa and several intensives for the global investors , many international companies became interested to establish new businesses in Africa .So, it goes without saying that several investigations must be conducted to understand more about the cross-cultural influences in Africa context. In this study,the authors focus on HRM practices in Senegal .