Managerial training solutions essay
First of all, the issue of choosing a local manager or an expatriate to lead the branch/subsidiary in another culture should be decided depending on several factors, starting from the requirements for a uniform standardization of produced goods, local market knowledge, etc. MNCs typically face some problems with recruitment and selection of local managers in their offices. These problems may be related to the following factors (Bamberger & Meshoulam, 2000):
– application of inappropriate techniques and search tools on the local labor market (e.g., traditional ads in newspapers are not effective in all the cultures);
– application of inappropriate techniques and selection tools (selection are created within one culture and can be is invalid within the other);
– application of incorrect selection criteria;
– proposal of an uncompetitive compensation package for the representatives of given culture.
The cost of errors in attracting improper specialists from expatriates at the top position in another country is huge, and involves both direct monetary expenditures ranging from $250’000 up to 1 million dollars per an expatriate (including salary, housing, maintenance of relatives), and broken careers, divorces, psychological traumas, etc. (Chew & Horwitz, 2004).
However, the involvement of a one or another specialist may be unsuccessful not only because of an incorrect assessment of his/her qualifications or experience: the process of cultural adaptation also plays an important role (Stahl & Bjorkman, 2006; Zhu, 2008).
In today’s world, in order to implement management technologies and techniques, an employee must have cross-cultural skills, i.e., the ability to demonstrate the sequent behavior in a foreign or mixed cultural environment which leads to achieving the planned goals. Cross-cultural skills include (Giudice et al., 2011; Kohls & Knight, 1994):
understanding of the nature of culture and the ways how this culture influences the behavior of its representatives at their workplace;
understanding of the differences between cultures;
understanding of how cultural factors influence the organization of structures, systems and priorities;
ability to introduce the elements of one culture into another one;
understanding of how deeply the elements of one culture can be incorporated into another culture, and vice versa.
The contraindication for working as an international manager is the presence of ethnocentrism, the consequence of which is the desire to inscribe the representatives of another culture in the frameworks of one’s own culture and expect or demand them to meet these standards of conduct (Moodian, 2008; Shipper, 2004).
Thus, Laurent (1986) reviewed the expectations placed to the role of a manager in nine European countries and the United States, using 4 parameters: the perception of an organization as a political system, power system, role-playing systems and the hierarchy of relationships in the organization. The results of the research made it possible to identify three critical factors determining the different roles of managers in these countries (Laurent, 1986; Selmer, 1996):
Perception of the status of the manager outside the working environment;
Ability of managers to jump over the hierarchical levels;
Manager as an expert as opposed to the manager as facilitator.
Studies have shown that in France and Italy, the status of manager is also high outside the workplace (Doney et al., 1998), while Danish and British managers are less able to use their organizational status for their influence on non-business relationships (Derr et al., 2002).
Adler and Gundersen (2007) interviewed the executives from 13 countries of the dominant role of the manager. It turned out that in traditional Asian culture, a manager must be a highly qualified expert, a professional expert in the field. In English-speaking and Scandinavian cultures, a manager is primarily the organizer of work process, mediator, facilitator, the one who is facilitating organizational communication.
Generally, there are two areas of possible training of expatriates: training them on how to work in the given culture, and training on how to live in given culture (Moore, 2005). The best practices are to combine these two themes in one program of study. Thus, the training program may include the following sections (Culter, 2005; Stahl & Bjorkman, 2006; Zhu, 2008; Giudice et al., 2011):
Technical training,
Management training,
Cross-cultural training,
Language training.
Technical training includes the acquaintance with the technologies used in the branch office, local attitudes toward these technologies, possibility to transfer technology and innovation (Schaffer & Riordan, 2003).
Managerial training assumes the acquaintance with manager’s duties in the position, organizational structure and culture of the department, channels of communication within the subsidiary and the main office, with the strategy of the company and the branch, control system, the situation in other subsidiaries, local risk factors, business environment, situation with the staff in the company and on the local labor market, and local business ethics (Schaffer & Riordan, 2003; Stahl & Bjorkman, 2006).
Cross-cultural training includes three stages (Littrell & Salas, 2005; Littrell et al., 2006; Kohls & Knight, 1994):
attention: the manager gets acquainted with the behavior he/she needs to learn;
remembering: the behavior is encoded in the memory in a form of cognitive schemes;
reproduction: the manager should be able to reproduce the behavior and compare his/her achievements with the model.
In practice, it could be sometimes quite difficult for the companies to collect all the data on the culture, for instance on political and legal elements of entailing the market. Thus, if the company has to enter a new market for the first time, or it suggests switching from transactions on purchase/sale to, for example, direct investment, in these cases, it should definitely use the institution of independent consultants (Moodian, 2008). Otherwise, frustrations and conflicts with the law and, equally importantly, with local business customs are inevitable.
The study of the technical level of the other state can also in the broad sense provide information about the level of country’s development and market potential, the degree of development of its infrastructure (transport, energy, water, telecommunications, etc.) as well as about the degree of urbanization and development of industrial values among the population. In addition, such studies will assess the stability of the labor market, workforce’s ability to learn and the extent of its performance capacities, attitude towards science, innovation and cooperation with the business world (Giudice et al., 2011).
Conclusion
Thus, the main features of international management consist in the need to take into consideration and use in the corporate management the cultural differences of various national groups in order to achieve efficiency and success. Understanding of the cultural specificity of organizational behavior helps the manager make the right choice of technology in HR management of the company.
Thus, cultures vary in degrees of dominance of context, the length of the hierarchy ladder, attitude towards uncertainty, the predominance of individualist or collectivist values, male and female values, and attitude to time, change, achievement and wealth. Such variables as language, religion, social organization, level of education and technology, law and policy are also very important.
The above structuring of basic features of business culture makes it possible to classify countries on the specifics of their business relationships, extracting the most significant parameters, and timely pay attention to the critical nuances, thus avoiding costly mistakes.
In order to be ready to do business with foreign partners, it is necessary not only to have actual knowledge of the cultural peculiarities of the country gained from the proposed system of training and to show the partners the manager’s awareness, but also possess the skills of interpretation. The knowledge of business culture, the specifics of management, management methods of the country and the desire to adapt to the existing differences is an important component of success in the international market.
