Colgate-Palmolive Promotion Policy C-P International Promotion

Colgate-Palmolive (C-P) has built vast global market share based on international deployment for the highest executives. This practice has had costs and benefits, but global environmental conditions, including technology, regulation of international flow of goods and capital, and quality of available human resource factors like education and professional development continue to evolve. At the same time, human cultural definitions of family, career and nationality change at different rates in different places where C-P values existing or potential competitive advantage. Therefore both the firm and potential executive employees will have to adapt to the complex multinational factors shaping requirements for promotion. Not all markets or potential employees are identical, and promotion policy and the candidates themselves will have to remain flexible as global conditions continue to evolve.

Strengths and weaknesses of Colgate-Palmolive's International Assignment Policy

The Colgate-Palmolive International Assignment Policy has strengths and weaknesses for both employees and the firm, but overall seems limited by a focus on tradition that may restrict competitive advantage as the world changes around it. Strengths of the expatriate executive policy for the corporation include diversity of cross-training for senior management and extensive pools of talent ready for deployment in new or existing areas of expansion. This has and should continue to ensure consistent leadership resources in times of executive transition. Weaknesses for the firm include high cost, growing dissatisfaction with international transfer due to family considerations like spousal career building or continuity of children's education and medical options. These complications reduce performance by generating unnecessary recruitment, training and frictional cost for benefits that may be available under different policy for less. The firm demonstrates leadership supporting expatriate executives, in compensation and noneconomic benefits for international executives, but cultural change drives the need to adapt beyond requiring international assignment for all senior management at the same time increasing global integration may require growing multicultural diversity. The increasing supply of potential talent in target markets presents opportunities to train indigenous...

Indigenous executives in new markets could achieve advantages from cultural familiarity at the same time delivering goodwill dividends by promoting local leadership in the regions where new product was deployed or expanding. If local or regional managers can achieve competitive advantage through their cultural literacy or connections in the markets they oversee, at the same time that brand loyalty increases from consumer identification with local or regional management from within the culture, the result may actually be dividends from reduced international management at the regional level where culture is important to the target consumer. That may be less important in markets with high levels of international integration like the European Union or Pacific Rim economies
Colgate-Palmolive and dual-career families may both need to adapt.

The simplest answer for the firm is to promote senior management based on willingness to travel, if international development is as important for the future as it has been in the past. Clear expectations acquiring junior talent for development would prevent wasted investment if increasing global education and communication resources meant a growing supply of potential candidates. What if the executive spouse not working for C-P was promoted abroad? How would the family respond if all firms increased international deployment? Family as well as corporate culture may have to adapt to changing environmental workforce conditions. There are, however, several areas for potential improvement on the existing policy once focus is shifted from tradition, toward such cultural adaptation. Regional promotion may get around the dual-career problem if increasing ease of travel and communications allow for international rotation within a continental geographic area. On the other hand, instead of compensating spouses with transfers for retraining or self-employment, C-P could simply hire them on under the assumption that if the executive talent was employable in the new international theater, then so would be the spouse. Likewise the duration of international assignment could be…