How Culture Is Related to Failure or Success

A student writes an analytical summary of the Harvard Business Review Article "Expatriate Assignments: Enhancing Success and Minimizing Failure"

Nowadays expatriate assignments have become a common practice for different kinds of multinational companies, especially when they have foreign operations or want to have different strategies to expand market share in a specific country. But what companies don't know is that this practice can be a “double edged sword” and the success of itself is related to the culture.

The article “Expatriate Assignments: Enhancing Success and Minimizing Failure” is an excellent article that shows with strong studies and figures the rate of success and failure for two different cultural groups: The American culture and the European & Japanese culture. The two cultural groups are very different in key aspects which are drivers of success or failure such as: ethnocentrism, self reference criteria and the role of companies within the culture.

Ethnocentrism is the belief that the own culture or company has the best way to perform or do things. A self reference criterion is the unconscious reference of cultural values, experiences and principles to make decisions. Role of the companies within a culture: how companies perform and influence the behavior of people. Starting with a description of the American culture, the following facts can be enhanced:

• Americans have a high ethnocentric feeling. They are narrow-minded in terms of thinking that the best way to do things is their own. 
• Americans are individualists and each person thinks in his/her own benefits even if those are above the community benefits.  
• Americans are competitive and want to excel in many cases regardless of how they obtain results.
• Americans are “immediatists” and want results in short terms in all life aspects, like when a person wants to lose weight and start a diet, he/she will expect results at least in a month otherwise he/she will get frustrated.

Since companies are part of the culture, they also want short term results. Companies are only the place where you work and only a temporary place to stay at until you find a better opportunity. According to the previous facts, American companies have expatriate assignments with a preparation that in some cases is not the best one, often leading to failures. American companies, from the beginning of the selection process, choose people with high technical skills no matter how good the personal skills are, and the trainings given are basic, including some political, geographic and financial information. Once the person gets into the new country, he/she realizes that the training was not enough and that he/she is expected to perform well and obtain good results immediately, but the reality is different: the results take more time and the expatriate needs more time to adapt to the new culture first.

The second cultural group analyzed is kind of the opposite from the American, and so are the results that are obtained. The European & Japanese culture can be described with the following facts:

•  European & Japanese culture has an ethnocentric feeling as well, with the difference that they are open-minded and in most of the cases people want to learn about different cultures. A good example of this behavior is that the majority of the people know at least a second language since high school. 
• European & Japanese, especially Japanese, are group oriented, and they think first in the community benefits than in their personal ones.  
• The competitiveness feeling is not as strong as in the American culture.
• European & Japanese culture don't expect immediate results. They are conscious that the good things take time to be achieved.
• Companies are like the second home. They are very paternalistic. Since people there have really low rotation rate, the employees have a high sense of belonging.

The mentioned facts are the strongest reasons why the expatriate assignments for this kind of culture have a lower failure rate than for the Americans. European and Japanese companies start the selection process based on the personal skills rather than the technical. The training given is focused on the foreign country culture, experiencing with real people from the foreign country and coexisting with them in a training environment. Not only is the political, geographic and financial information given but also the language, beliefs and behavior.

The support from the home company is stronger, and the community feeling is the sense that will make people make things work for the community welfare. People from Europe and Japan also have the challenge to adapt and perform well to the new culture. The preparation, the support from people who have passed thought the same experience and the low pressure to obtain short term results are the key to get easily adapted.

Once the person gets adapted he/she can start to perform well and the rest will flow naturally!

Natalia

Replies to Ivan

3/3

Quite a trip, huh?

I hope you enjoyed the duty free Dubai stores during the time you were there. Such a long run must have been exhausting, but I guess that's how you should feel after crossing the whole world!

Over here everything seems to be under control. Joni and I have managed to decipher the Iambicness of GRE, nothing to worry about!

The first days are always challenging, but you certainly grow after those experiences. Are you getting used to shifting gears the other way? That must be something!

Hope your experiences so far (and the ones that are coming) are shocking good rather than just shocking.

Best wishes for you from the distance. Make yourself sure you get to know many places, try different food, work hard, study.... er... the list is kinda long, but I don't think you'll regret later for doing all these things. Keep it all cool!

Hope you keep in touch!

Best Regards,

Ricardo

2/3

Hey Ivan!!

It's so nice to hear from you. It had passed some time so I was wondering how you were doing there, although I suspected very well as I can read in the lines you wrote. Let me tell you that regardless of all the time that you spent sitting in the plane it was worth it, and you have fun stories to tell. Now you can say you've seen the only 7-star hotel in the world! I loved all the differences that you have found so far, and for sure they won't be the only ones. I have to say it's very common to find things so different, but that's what makes you stronger and richer in cultural matters.

I've lived something similar since I moved to Cali. Not just the weather and the geography were different, but the people, the speaking and all the “slangs” that are used. My first memory was one day when someone called a friend “Pirobo”. Oh, that was a huge offense for me and I thought "mmm how rude people are here". It was like one year later that I discovered that “Pirobo” is not a bad word here but I haven't completely understood the meaning yet. That was in my school time, but I still have expressions in my job such as “Cañengo”, that I can't figure out the meaning of. I think I understand what the people are talking about when mentioning it, but I can't give any definition. Anyway, you can live with it. Besides, you start behaving and talking in the same way people do, and that's the only way you realize you have immersed in the culture and that all the complete experience was worth it.

Finally, I send you all my best wishes and I’m sure this is just the beginning of an amazing experience that you will live there! Enjoy, Learn, Laugh and try all kinds of food!!!!

Natalia Ruiz

1/3

Ivan:

Hi! How are you? It was nice reading your greeting on the blog. As you may know, I could finally continue my English classes with Joni. We’ve been doing very well and I enjoy his classes as much as yours. I’m glad you are already settled in Perth, but I can imagine that it will take some time to adapt to a new lifestyle. I would like to know how you have liked the course so far. Has it fulfilled your expectations?

About your trip, it was definitely very long, but also an opportunity to at least see Dubai from the plane, something that I have always dreamed of. 

Ivan, take care and enjoy this experience as much as you can! That, of course, I know I don’t even have to say. You are preparing yourself professionally, but you are also having an opportunity to grow as a human being from many different aspects.

Keep in touch!

Sonia

Analytical Essay: Technology and Loneliness

A student writes on the topic: “Both the development of technological tools and the uses to which humanity has put them have created modern civilizations in which loneliness is ever increasing."

Through the last two centuries, diverse technological developments have taken an ordinary person’s life to a whole different level of complexity at social, intellectual and even biological levels. Let’s think about the world 200 years ago: It was a more tranquil world without any doubts, no global warming, no economic oscillations, and of course, no need to text your girlfriend every hour to keep her happy.

The society of the 19th century was simple: you were either poor or rich, it seemed that your capabilities, attitudes, knowledge and the people you were related to, were predefined when your world comprehended nothing but your crib. Had you had luck, your last name could precede yourself with the bravery, wisdom, perhaps a novel title and no worries other than having a family or trying to keep god with a smile upon your face. Otherwise, you could work for the previous guy, struggling just to learn how to do your job, just if you were lucky enough not to be born a slave, with a load right on your back.
On the other hand, the society of the 21st century is not as simple as it used to be: you have contact with your beloved ones several times a day, without even seeing or talking to them. “Contact with your beloved ones … without even seeing or talking to them”, that’s a curious sentence, huh?

When one comes to realize that one can be physically alone but mentally accompanied, one must recognize the effect of technology and the change of mindset that has occurred exponentially since industrial revolution. But the initial statement might be as weak as the steadiness of people: the way that everyone assimilates the possibility of being globally connected to people can be as different as a horse and a zebra. It just takes to browse a few minutes in your facebook page; you probably will find people with more than a thousand friends. Can he/she talk to everyone online as you would when you run into a long-time-no-see acquaintance? Perhaps not! On the other hand, you might find people with some dozens of friends, but really close friends who he/she’d chat with if had a chance. To me, it seems that being balanced is the more adequate way to go: that way you can keep track of the acquaintances you share time with every once in a while, and keep close contact with your friends, not just virtually, but using the fast and wide communication opportunity to arrange meetings or events.

Was social contact so important 2 centuries ago? That’s another question. Back to those times, it should have been enough for you to have the approval/blessing of 1 or 2 important people in order to have your life settled; but if you tried to do that very same thing, you may (anyway) encounter walls as high as the empire state. Was it so important 80 years ago having the fancy controlled air flow tennis shoes to improve the way you play sports? Not likely. You were the good your skills were. That was it.

Right at this point, you stare at a fact that has been increasingly noticeable in the last decades: People have more needs now than several years ago. That fact is essential to the lifestyle held nowadays. It has become important to have an mp3 player, a nice portable computer, a cell phone where you can set appointments and check your schedule in a matter of seconds. These newly important devices follow a pattern: they either keep you from “wasting” time in those activities that don’t add value or make you feel more comfortable during the daily life.

As we can see, tech and dev have had an effect in everyone’s life. But when it comes to contact, has traded quality personal contact with a few people for impersonal contact with many people. Still, a life without quality personal contact can be shallow as the Dead Sea and lead to a life with no significant shame, but no significant glories.

A person, in order to avoid the excess of shallow impersonal contact, normally gets to choose part of the people they’re involved with, and spend quality time with them. And the more choices you have, the harder is to choose who you want to spend some quality time with; determine priorities. If you get to choose at least a few people who want and care about personal contact, you will be that kind of person in the end. I think that’s the healthiest way to go. That way, one can be aware of the close people’s worlds as well as aware of the highlights of the not-so-close ones. Having only impersonal friends will certainly lead to an impersonal life, which is curious, because that way, wanting company could result in no company at all as the physical world seems far away.

As you see, there are several details that can have impact in the big picture. That’s why it is important to learn the importance of people around you, not because of what people mean to you, but also because of what you mean to them. Discerning about the type of welfare that might result out of using technology is the key in order to avoid a fake sensation of company or solitude, which can lead someone’s life to try to solve a problem that’s never been there, or to ignore a bigger problem .

Tech itself can’t lead you to loneliness, it is each person, and his/her free will that can lead him/her there, as long as that person doesn’t use the benefits given by the modern world the way they were meant to be.

Ricardo Segovia
Johnson & Johnson

Last Weekend

A student writes about her last weekend

Last weekend, on Saturday, I went to Kilometer 18. I invited my best friend to come with me and my family because he had never been there. However, he didn’t go with us. It took one hour and 15 minutes to go from my house in Jamundi to the place we stayed at for a while. During the drive there, I caught up with all the news about my family. I was told that my cousin had moved to a small town and that my other cousin had gotten married.

My grandmother came to visit us and to see the new house in Jamundi. She said the house was beautiful but couldn’t stand the heat and the weather there. That’s why it was decided that we leave Cali.

On Sunday we went to the “Caña Museum”. It was a nice place where I had never been. My dad gave my grandmother the possibility to choose between going to the “Hacienda el Paraiso” or to the museum. If I could have chosen, I would have decided the “Hacienda el Paraiso”, but it was a great trip anyway.

Anonymous
Company Y

Training People

A student writes about her experience from a Train the Trainers Training

Three weeks ago, I had a training with a few coworkers from the Human Resources area and some other areas of my company. The training was called "Train the Trainers", and from it I learned about some tips and strategies of how to speak in front of a group, how to handle difficult situations during a training, such as: people falling asleep, speaking with each other or just not paying attention to the speaker.

The training implied two days of learning how to train people and I understood that if I had known those tips and strategies when I was working with training people in occupational health, I would have had more successful training sessions.

After these twoo days, my coworkers and I decided to replicate that training to the rest of the Human Resources group, so we prepared a five-hour-session to teach them all the things that we had learned, or at least the most important things that they would need to make a presentation in front of a group.

In fact, we had the opportunity to apply all the things that we had learned in the Train the Trainers training one week ago. Last Saturday, for the whole day, we gathered all the operators, who we call “colleagues”, in Hotel Radisson to receive information about Quality, Safety, KPI’s and Human Resources politics and benefits, which was the hardest part, because they started the day at 8:00 a.m. and the training that we gave was at 1:45 p.m., after lunch and in the middle of a very hot day. We had almost 500 people in the place, divided in groups of 30 people and, in some cases, using a very small room. I think that if we’d had a better air conditioner in the rooms, we would have maintained the people more concentrated on the things that we were trying to teach.

But at the end of the day, I think we reached our goal, which was to use strategies and apply some techniques to handle a group without fears or doubts and to give all the colleagues in the plant information about the new things that we are going to do for them and about their benefits during all this year.


Carolina
Company X

New Services - English Online

Skype Services

• Business Topic Conversations
• Business Presentations
• Listening Practice: Interviews and Speeches
• Listening Practice: Movie and TV-Series Clips
• Free topic conversations
• Multiple Person Conference Calls
• Job Interview Simulations
• Online Business Meetings Simulations
• Among many other things. You name it, we make it happen!
  

Online Writing (free editing and publishing!)

Writing is an excellent way of activating your passive vocabulary and improving your general fluency in the language. We help with editing and publishing your texts.

We welcome you to take an active approach in developing your vocabulary and language fluency by writing to us and at the same time becoming a hobby writer, for example with:

* Analytical Writing
* Article Writing
* Blogging
* Book Reviewing
* Business Plans
* Business Proposals
* Communications Writing
* Content Editing
* Content Writing
* Creative Writing
* Documentation Writing
* Entertainment Writing
* Essay Writing
* Financial Writing
* Journalism
* News & Journalism
* Research
* Reviews Writing
* Technical Writing
* Travel Writing

Online Reading

Practice your reading skills, pronunciation, fluency, tone and melody as well as increase your confidence in reading everything from professional reports to fairy tales.

Invite your children and have them read with you, with the confidence of a language consultant on the other side of the Internet assisting, motivating and helping in your language process.

Write an email to bloggers@eslaconsulting.com with your request.

My First Day

A student writes about her first day at a new company

My first day at Company X was just great. I started on Friday. When I arrived, the Human Resources team received me with a breakfast, in which all of them made a small presentation about their position and something about their personal life, and then I introduced myself to them. At the end, we took a picture with all the team.

Then I started the induction, where they explained to me the most important things about the company, like the philosophy, values, rules, benefits and the products that the company produces.

Later, I had the visit to the plant. It was really amazing! We saw all the processes of all the products.  It is full of colors and forms. Very nice! I also had the opportunity to meet some operators and they were also really nice to me.

I can say that even if I was very happy with my job in Company A, I am really happy here. It is a company that cares a lot about their employees, have great human practices and for that reason it results great for me to work in this area, for this great company.

Carolina M
Company X