Cross-Culture Training - Essay Example

Cross culture Training Cross culture Training The world has become the global village; a number of organizationsare hiring people regardless of nation, race and religion. They focus on individual’s abilities, talent and skills in order to get the work done. They do not focus on the race, religion, culture of the employee. This is one of the main reasons, things are getting tough day by day. Competition has been raised a lot in past few years. Till the end of 1960s and 1970s, cross-cultural research suggested a new term, exploring topics like expatriate employment, differentiation between various cultures, and the link between motivation factors and the culture itself. Although cross-cultural study proceeded throughout the 1980s, the 1990s faced an ups and down in the account of research committed to Cross-cultural training. The increasing rate of economy globalization was one accelerator for the expanded interest in CCT. Moreover, research pointed to cross-cultural problems in the workplace has expanded in importance because researchers have been unable to find out the minor issues and to specify their research advances into an implementation. Particularly, multinational corporations (MNCs) have not yet designed many of the CCT policies that researchers present because the researches by the researchers have not completely solved the issues and the controversies lying under the goals, content, objectives of Cross culture training. The programs designed for encouraging cross culture environment is an objective to train people to live and survive in a cross culture environment. In early days, it was hard to cope up with different cultures at workplace. Usually, people from developing countries feel depressed while working at multi cultural environment. People feel more pressure especially people from under developed countries. There was a need to cope up with the cultural difference and to treat all employees on the basis of their work and progress, rather than rating them on the basis of culture, race and religion. First study on Cross culture training was done by Brislon with the topic “Cross culture Orientation program” (Brislin, 1981). In the end of the year, other researchers realized the fact that there is more effort required to train the people to live abroad comfortably, with the passage of time, the field is now being referred as Cross culture or intercultural training worldwide. Paige (1986) described cross culture training as the program designed to prepare people to live outside their country and to work with confidence without being in the pressure of other cultures. Other researchers define cross culture training as the program to prepare people for the success in their jobs and to improve their interpersonal skills. The main idea of the programmers is to train people for the moment when they deal extensively with the people belongs to culture than their own. There are several training programs are in progress under different organizations and groups. These programs are influenced by experts who have great knowledge about the range of issues people face while working in the cross culture environment. These programrs do not train people only for any other country but also for their home land. In 1950’s, Oberg introduces the term “Cultural shock” describing the issues people face when they deal with people from other cultures. He described the term” Cultural shock” as a disease of people who have suddenly been transported aboard and presented as the predicated by the anxiety that results from losing all familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse. Thus, he described the term as the issues people face while moving or dealing with other cultures. The symptoms of cultural shock include both physical and physiological complaints. Physical person may feel headache, dyeria and psychological a person might feel depression. The concept of cultural shock encouraged people to provide training in this domain. The contrast American Method, taps on cultural shock idea, of shocking people in attaining session by presenting values and behaviors that are almost the opposite of one’s own cultural norms. This concept states that the bigger the difference in two cultures, a person will feel more shock. Furham and Bockner (1986) presented a book discussing a culture shock and its effects on different people. The discussed that the effects of cultural shock may differ from person to person depending upon its own thoughts and stamina to communicate with others. For example, some people take so much depress when they feel themselves unfit in cross culture environment, some people become absent minded or have fits of anger when they feel themselves unfit in cross culture environment or at workplace. Research on culture shock has led to the development of person’s adjustment as a research field in past two decades. Hall (1959, 1966) proposed another set of conceptual tools on culture that helped the development of cross cultural training as a research field. According to him, programs should be designed in such a way to educate people and give them strength to deal with other cultural people confidently. He further says, an educator must be able to translate his idea, experiences, and practices in his lectures or training so that learners can gain a complete idea about real life experiences. He emphasized a lot on communication as he thinks that 90% misunderstandings occur due to miscommunication and wrong interpretation of thoughts. He further proposed that cross culture can be studied at three different levels Formal, informal and technical. The formal level refers to behavior or norms that everyone knows and takes as granted. For instance, general rules in USA; everyone knows that meetings start on time, end on time, no disturbance between meetings etc. Informal stage refers to the situations that vary from time to time and situation to situation. For instance, a term awhile, later and so forth are used in informal stage (Aycan, and Kanungo, 1997). Technical time refers that how researchers, scientists utilize time and it is likely a new thing to a layman. Hall discussed that how time and space can be studied at three different stages and how cross cultural training should be designed in order to transfer a complete knowledge to the learners (Bhagat, 1983). Usually, it is observed that the adult members teach to young people and when a young people make some mistake, adults guide them and ask them to change their behavior. Formal aspects of the culture are recognized by right or wrong without having space for any gray area. On the other hand, members learn the informal aspects of a culture from examining the behaviors of other adults (Braun & Warner, 2002). Technical aspects of the culture are only transmitted by reading or writing from a teacher to a student. Technical aspects are usually considered as explicit aspects, a teacher teaches a number of students at a same time (Cross, 1995). A Holy Book bible is an example of technical aspect of a religion, and it can be easily seen that how the text of bible plays its role for the people living in Non-Christian communities. Formal elements of a culture are most difficult to change and they take a lot of time to evolve. Harrison and Hopkins (1967) also contributed to this field and they proposed that a practical training would be a better idea than an oral training. Their suggestion led cross cultural training toward s a new edge. They justified their proposed “University Model” by giving five reasons, 1) It’s a passive method rather than an active method. 2) This method involves training in problem solving types of activities. 3) In class, people are encouraged to be calm and unemotional while in real life things work differently. 4) The model requires participants to read the material and produce an analytical report. 5) The method focuses on written rather than reading material. The method faces lots of criticism but it is still very popular because a number of people have applied this and found satisfactory results (Weaver, 1998). The method is flexible, easy to implement and inexpensive. In this method, trainers can use videos, visual slides which makes task much easier for the students and helps them in learning more quickly. With the expansion of business, there is always a need to update the policies, strategies including the development of international human resource management as per the requirements (Early, 1987). The expansion of the business of Australian multinational enterprises integrates them to implement the variety of approaches to staffing geographical dispersed and geographically dispersed operations (DeVellis, 1991). There are many reasons for an MNE using expatriate in its foreign subsidies, including managerial abilities in the host labor market. As per the policy, there was a need of individuals who continuously communicate with the headquarter regarding strategies and mission. The major problem is that there is a shortage of highly skilled, qualified PCN managers (Goldberg, 1972). A lot of PCN managers do not have the ability to work in culturally diverse environments. Due to which, many MNE have hired less skilled and under qualified PCN particularly those who are inexperience and posses less cross cultural skills, on international projects. A number of researchers suggest adopting the cross cultural training programs at workplace in order to deal with this situation (Selmer, 2001). They suggest that live training would be a good idea to educate them and help them in dealing with cross cultural environment (Shen & Edwards. 2006). Despite of the wide success of CCT programs, a number of organization in Australia do not pay attention to cross culture trainings for their staff. Not only in Australia, thousands of organization working in Asian countries as well as in Europe don’t own any cross cultural training program in their policies (Yamane, 1967). It has been observed that the past studies on cross cultural training do not provide adequate information as well do not pose tendency to encourage organization to implement it. It can be argued that the most past cross culture research has been theoretical in nature and a very few studies suggest experimental or practical training for cross cultural environments. A lot of frameworks have been proposed but none of them were properly tested and implemented. It can be easily observed that a very few modifications have been made and criticism continues to plague the literature in terms of goals, objectives, impacts and process of CCT (Tung, 1981). Researchers suggest that CCT training train people to interact confidently with other cultural people but as per new research CCT not only help people in dealing with cross cultural environment but also help in dealing with the same culture individuals. In China, a small attention is being paid towards the CCT training at workplaces (Shen, 2005). The past research focused on national training, there is a lack of focus on international short term assignments, a kind of higher level training. There is a need to focus on international short term assignments in CCT so that learners can get better idea about different cultures and dealing with different cultures (Tung, 1981). Very few researchers focus on the importance of communication in CCT, while it has been observed that communication is the most important factor while dealing with CC people. 90% misunderstandings are made due to miscommunications. There is a huge room for new studies to focus on the importance of communication and practical trainings in cross cultural trainings. Future Developments Considering the recent developments, it can be easily said that there is still a large room for this field. A number of researchers are still working on this field. There are chances that new techniques will be proposed in future. For example, people when go abroad they face issues and negative response from the host, but do not know exactly why. Therefore, a cultural shock seems an area where more research can be done. It seems possible that many more criterion measures will be developed in this field in upcoming years. For example multi media program in this field, requires the development of criterion measures in that media, which will help in evaluating the strength of these tools. References Brislin, R, w., (1981), Cross culture encounters: Face to face interaction. New York: Pergomon. Furnham, A., & Bochner, S.(1986). Culture Shock: Psychological reactions to unfamiliar environments. London: Methuen. Hall, E.T. (1959). The silent language. New York, NY: Doubleday. Hall, E.T. (1966). The hidden dimension. New York, NY:double day. Aycan, Z. and Kanungo, R.N. (1997), “Current issues and future challenges in expatriate Management”, in Sunders, D.M. and Aycan, Z. (Eds), New Approaches to Employee Management, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT. Bhagat, R.S. (1983), “Effects of stressful life events on individual performance effectiveness and work adjustment processes within organizational settings: a research model”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 660-71. Braun, W.H. and Warner, M. (2002), “Strategic human resource management in western multinationals in china: the differentiation of practices across different ownership forms”, Personnel Review, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 553-70. Cross, S. (1995), “Self construals, coping, and stress in cross-cultural adaptation”, Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 673-97. Early, P.C. (1987), “Intercultural training for managers: a comparison of documentary and interpersonal methods”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 685-98. Goldberg, D. (1972), The Detection of Psychiatric Illness by Questionnaire, Oxford University Press, London. Selmer, J. (2001). The preference for pre-departure or post-arrival cross-cultural training: An exploratory approach. Journal of Managerial Psychology 16, no. 1: 50–6. Tung, R.L. (1981). Selection and training of personnel for overseas assignments. Columbia Journal of World Business 16, no. 1: 68–78. Shen, J. (2005). International training and management development: Theory and reality. Journal of Management Development 24, no. 7: 656–64. Tung, R.L. (1981). Selection and training of personnel for overseas assignments. Columbia Journal of World Business 16, no. 1: 68–78. Shen, J., and V. Edwards. (2006). International human resource management in Chinese MNEs. New York and London: Routledge. Weaver, G.R. (1998), “Understanding and coping with cross-cultural adjustment stress”, in Weaver, G.R. (Ed.), Culture, Communication and Conflict: Readings in Intercultural Relations, Simon & Schuster, Needham Heights, MA, pp. 187-204. Yamane, T. (1967), Statistics – An Introductory Analysis, Harper & Row, New York, NY. DeVellis, R.F. (1991), Scale Development: Theory and Applications, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA. Read More