BUSI 607 Week 7 DB Forum 7 Example

Discussion Board Forum 7: Key Concept Report

BUSI 607 Developing Global Markets, Discussion Board Forum 7 (key concept thread)

Thread by [Student Name]

The key concept and the company example are composites written for this sample; the research cited is real, page numbers for the textbook depend on the edition a student uses and are left to the student, and the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 607.

Key Concept Report

Companies that expand abroad must decide who will manage their foreign operations, and many send experienced employees from home, called expatriates, at least for the first years. Geringer et al. (2016) discuss the advantages of expatriates, such as knowledge of the company and its systems, and the challenges they face, including high costs and difficulty adapting to a new culture. The key concept of this report is expatriate adjustment, the degree to which an employee working abroad becomes comfortable and effective in the new setting, and a capability that research links to adjustment, cultural intelligence.

Black et al. (1991) integrated earlier research into a model of international adjustment that remains widely used. They distinguished three facets: adjustment to the job, adjustment to dealing with local colleagues and neighbors and adjustment to the general environment, such as food, housing and transportation. They also separated anticipatory adjustment, which occurs before departure through accurate expectations, prior experience, training and careful selection, from in-country adjustment, which depends on the individual's skills, the job, the organization's support and non-work factors such as the family's adjustment. Their model implies that companies can influence adjustment at several points, rather than leaving it to chance.

Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al. (2005) tested these ideas in a meta-analysis combining many studies of expatriates. Language ability, relational skills and the adjustment of the expatriate's spouse were among the strongest predictors of adjustment, while the novelty of the host culture made adjustment harder. Adjustment, in turn, was related to job satisfaction and performance and to lower intentions to leave the assignment. Prior international experience mattered less than many managers assume, which suggests that a previous posting in a very different country does not guarantee success in the next one.

The meta-analysis suggests that the family's adjustment can decide an assignment as much as the employee's skills. Ang et al. (2007) offered a way to measure what makes some people better at this than others. Their construct, cultural intelligence, has four parts: thinking about one's own cultural assumptions while interacting (metacognitive), knowing how other societies' norms differ (cognitive), wanting to engage across cultures and believing one can (motivational), and adjusting speech and gestures to fit the setting (behavioral). In their samples the parts did different jobs. The two thinking-related parts went with better judgments in cross-cultural situations, the drive and action parts went with smoother adaptation, and on-the-job performance tracked the planning and action parts.

Consider a composite U.S. manufacturer sending a production engineer to start a plant in Vietnam for two years. The research suggests four steps. First, select using cultural intelligence and relational skills as well as technical ability, since technical skill alone does not predict adjustment. Second, involve the engineer's spouse and family in the decision and in preparation, including language training and support for the spouse's own work or study. Third, provide language and cross-cultural training before departure, building accurate expectations about work practices and daily life. Fourth, pair the engineer with a Vietnamese manager who can mentor the engineer on local practices while learning the company's systems, which also prepares a host-country national to take over when the assignment ends. Companies often invest heavily in relocation logistics and too little in these steps, and the research suggests that this is where assignments succeed or fail.

References

Ang, S., Van Dyne, L., Koh, C., Ng, K. Y., Templer, K. J., Tay, C., & Chandrasekar, N. A. (2007). Cultural intelligence: Its measurement and effects on cultural judgment and decision making, cultural adaptation and task performance. Management and Organization Review, 3(3), 335-371. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-8784.2007.00082.x

Bhaskar-Shrinivas, P., Harrison, D. A., Shaffer, M. A., & Luk, D. M. (2005). Input-based and time-based models of international adjustment: Meta-analytic evidence and theoretical extensions. Academy of Management Journal, 48(2), 257-281. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2005.16928400

Black, J. S., Mendenhall, M., & Oddou, G. (1991). Toward a comprehensive model of international adjustment: An integration of multiple theoretical perspectives. Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 291-317. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1991.4278938

Geringer, J. M., McNett, J. M., & Ball, D. A. (2016). International business. McGraw-Hill Education.