International human resource management: global business teams

DIRECCIÓN INTERNACIONAL

Topic #4 Case Study: Jensen Environmental Management Inc.
(International Human Resource Management: Global Business Teams)

Hans Jensen founded his company, Jensen Environmental Management Inc., in 2002, shortly after his graduation in marine biology from the Centre for Science Education at the University of Copenhagen. When he graduated he decided to seek outsmall contracts on his own and to confine his activities to the Danish market. At that time there was a great deal of public interest in the sustainability of the North Sea; indeed, public pressure had resulted in legislation requiring environmental assessments prior to any commercial activity, particularly with respect to oil exploration, in the waters surrounding Denmark. Hans met withconsiderable success.

However, in the mid-2000s his business prospects began to shift as his industry began to feel the forces of globalization. In the particular field of environmental assessment the big shift was in the nature of the assessments themselves. With the dramatic advances in knowledge management software, environmental consulting firms were increasingly able to gain access to technicalreports from all over the world. Now, for example, experts conducting research into the effects of a particular industrial activity on the wildlife in the North Sea, could quickly compare the effects of a similar activity in the Russian area of the Bering Straits or in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast in the United States. Importantly, clients were increasingly demanding this kind ofbreadth and depth in the reports they purchased.

This development led to another, related one: firms in the environmental assessment business were beginning to form cross-border alliances for the purpose of completing assessment contracts. Hans was well aware that the industry was moving in this direction: he had already been approached to contribute to foreign firms’ projects on three or fouroccasions. It was his particular expertise in the North Sea that had prompted other firms’ interest in his work.

Hans had only reluctantly worked on these projects because he preferred to work on his own. However, the experiences had been positive, and he realized that he was going to have to become accustomed to this approach since it was rapidly becoming the norm. Typically a firm anywherein the world needing an environmental assessment would issue an RFP (Request For Proposals). Environmental assessment firms would typically begin contacting each other immediately in order to put together a team with the kind of expertise needed to fulfill the terms of the project; usually the firms would draw on expertise from all over the world. There would be a great deal of manoeuvring andpersuasion involved as the firms with the best chances of being awarded the lead in the contracts attempted to convince various individuals to join their group. Once the lead firm was awarded a contract, this firm would organize its team in order to successfully complete the project within time and budget constraints.

More often than not, a team would be scattered in several differentlocations around the world, each with a different language, a different time zone, different business norms, etc. Those times when Hans had participated in projects, he had marvelled that the required report was completed at all, never mind that it was done on time and within budget. Although his participation had been straightforward, he had been aware that some of the other parts had not been soeasy to complete: people had disagreed over the importance of some issues, had challenged each other’s data, and had failed to complete their respective sections of the report in the agreed manner.

One afternoon in early March 2009, Hans read an RFP posted on the Internet by the multinational oil company, ExxonMobil. It was ideally suited to his North Sea expertise and to team completion with...