Book excerpt: MANAGING THE GLOBAL WORKFORCE In today’s highly competitive global business environment, organizations need to aggressively compete for new markets, products, services, and top human talent in order to develop and sustain competitive advantage in the global arena. For many years, international firms have effectively managed their financial and material resources globally, leveraging economies of scale, low cost production, currency fluctuations, and the like. Human resources, as all other resources in multinational firms, are now being managed on a global scale. In our ever-increasing knowledge economy, winning in the global arena will largely depend on how well firms can leverage, attract, develop, engage and motivate the strategic capabilities of their human talent globally