Introduction
International business is expanding due to the effects of rising globalisation. More and more non-traditional and diverse markets are opening up to allow foreign investment in their own markets. As a result, many companies, especially from the Western world are looking for and investing in markets for various benefits that are associated with crossing of borders. Such a situation has resulted in employees working in markets that are very different from their own in terms of values and culture. The investing companies have a mix of staff from their home country, the host country and those of other countries. The general trend is to hire local people for non-managerial or even bottom and middle level management. The top managerial positions are usually reserved for experts from the home country itself. This has resulted in the growing importance of understanding of different and diverse work cultures that exists in different areas. For example, a manger who is from the United States and is deeply rooted to the values and work culture of that country may find the situation in a Middle East country very different and difficult to understand. A workshop on foreign employees working in alien cultures, in this case the Middle East was conducted and presented by me and my colleagues. The area of study involved cross cultural training. This paper is a self critique on that particular workshop.
Overview of the Workshop and workshop materials
This section is a brief overview of the workshop with reference to workshop materials. The study was regarding certain problems faced by a leading company from Europe operating in the three Middle East countries of UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The company runs a chain of hotels across the globe and has a presence in the above mentioned three countries. Three qualified HR managers, all of them from Western backgrounds, were sent to the Middle East markets where the company was operating to act as HR department heads. By the end of five years a number of problems had cropped up and two of the five HR heads returned home completing only one year. We could detect the following specific problems from analysing their reports. They include time commitment, difficulties to deal with the public sectors, working styles, and some personal issues such as living and interacting with the society. This cross cultural training workshop was organised to address the problem of living and working in alien cultures.
According to my opinion, a lot of background research was conducted for the purpose of this study. The workshop materials form the background for the preparation of the actual workshop. Different theories of learning and culture were examined and its results included here. One of the best sources for cross cultural studies is from work done by Geert Hofstede, who is an authority on the subject. “Hofstede’s cultural model is well suited for empirical research because a score for each individual member of the culture can be computed unambiguously”. (Related Work, Ravi Vatrapu, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones, Culture and Usability Evaluation: The Effects of Culture in Structured Interviews, Vol. 1, Issue 4, August 2006, Journal of Usability Studies). We have extensively researched materials from his works namely ‘Culture Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values’ and ‘National culture revisited.’
The objective of the session was also clearly stated. They include, maximise cultural sensitivity of foreign managers, review of historical, political, educational, and economic background of the host country, living in a foreign land, communication and how to handle culture shock. Our investigation of the problems faced by the hotel have also been well documented. Our analysis show that the problems have risen due to lack of cross cultural understanding on the part of both the western HR managers and the local staff. “The objective of cross-cultural training is to teach members of one culture to interact effectively with members of another culture, and to predispose them to a rapid adjustment to their new positions.” (Cross-cultural Training, Marios I. Katsioloudes, Spyros Hadjidakis, Page 411, International Business: A Global Perspective, Published by Butterworth-Heinemann).
Lack of training regarding this area is the cause of the issues arising in the first place. A workshop like the present one would have been extremely beneficial to all the stakeholders concerned. We have also made a deep review of available literature to substantiate our findings. To backup our workshop, we have made a detailed study of the importance of cross cultural training. We have found that this area of study was given low importance in the 1970’s after an initial interest. But it is now making a strong comeback due to increasing international investemtns across the world. Since training is an integral part of cross culture working, a Training Needs Analysis was also incorporated. “It considers the skills, knowledge and behaviours that your people need, and how to develop them effectively”. (Training Needs Analysis, UK Workforce hub). Stakeholders are important to any organisation and the stakeholders in this context has been identified and listed. The job of the HR managers has been described with all aspects of the job being given in detail. The data collection methods mainly through questionnaires and interviews have been described. I feel that adequate effort has been done regarding this aspect. A couple of learning theories namely the ‘Social Learning Theory’ and the ‘Experiential Theory’ have also been studied and incorporated so that more theoretical strength is available. The activities of the workshop by individual members of the team have also been worked out.
Critique
Looking back at the workshop and the workshop materials, I have found that there are certain positive points and a lot of shortcomings to the work. A critical evaluation of the work with regard to the good points as well as the shortcomings is given below.
Coverage of the topic
Even though the theories and models selected were analysed in great detail, I now feel that more relevant theories should have been added. A mentioned earlier, only one theory of Hofstede and two social learning theories were included. This is in spite of the good feedback of the coverage given by other teams. Additional theories that could have been incorporated will be given in the recommendation section about improving the quality and content of the presentation. Another drawback of the workshop was that actual measurements of the four dimensions mentioned by Hofstede could have been given. This is available from relevant sites in the web. Moreover it is available for all the three countries given in the study. A PowerPoint presentation should also include more charts and figures. I felt that the inclusion of the map of the Middle East along with maps of individual countries have given the audience the location in terms of the world. A world map showing the general area of Middle East was a weak point in the presentation. Overall, I agree with the audience response that the presentation was good.
Quality of the presentation
The quality of the presentation was very good. The presentation was done in a simple style with pleasing colours. The slides were well laid out. We did not resort to too many tricks because this is a serious presentation and such tricks would only appeal to a lay audience. “Cheesy is bad. Simple and elegant is good.” (Rule number 6, Chris Hakim, Essentials of Effective PowerPoint Presentations — PowerPoint Presentations That Work). By cheesy, the writer means silly sound effects, irrelevant clipart, ridiculous and time consuming slide transitions and text effects. We did not clutter the slides with a lot of text and information was given was clearly laid out points. The response from the viewers about our presentation was also good.
Best Features: The Middle East is an area which is not very well known to a Western audience. Because of this a lot of questions were asked specifically about this area and we were able to answer them to the satisfaction of the audience. The examples in the workshop were well appreciated and the explanations were found to be very informative. The inclusion of maps and photographs about interesting places in each of the countries were also well appreciated.
Weak Points: There were several weak points in the presentation according to the viewers. Their view is taken seriously since we were the people doing the presentation and hence not in a position to judge the weak points accurately. But we could feel that the audience were getting restless during some parts of the presentation especially the theory part. As per audience response, the handouts were not up to the mark and the presentation took too much time since a lot of emphasis was given on theoretical aspects. They were also of the view that overall design was monotonous. I personally do not agree with this point and still feel that the design was good and relevant to the occasion and the topic being discussed.
Improvements and learning outcomes: This will be discussed later in the paper.
Overall Rating: the response from the viewers was very good and most of them felt that the presentation was very valuable. I now think that a lot of improvements mentioned above and later in the suggestions section would have made the presentation much better.
I feel that in spite of the drawbacks we did mange to achieve what we planned in our workshop.
Suggestions
Firstly, a look at the feedback of our viewers on improving the workshop will be given. It is to our relief that they have not been very critical about our workshop presentation. The main suggestions were that the time taken should be brought down and that more activities should be incorporated. At this stage of writing, I feel that the following improvements can be made. Emphasis on detailed theory should be reduced. More theories and research studies should be incorporated. Charts and study figures should be there. Most of all actual measurements using Hofstede dimensions could have been included. For example Egypt has a power distance of 80 which is indicative of “of a high level of inequality of power and wealth within the society”. (Geert Hofstede Analysis – Egypt).
The country has also a low level of tolerance for uncertainty indicated by a high score of 68. This shows that the there exists tough laws, policies and regulations. Inclusion of such figures would have made the concept of understanding cultures much easier for the employees and for our audience. It would also have saved time in explaining about cultures and values of each country.
Conclusion
Three factors have to be taken into consideration in concluding this essay. The first is whether we have achieved our initial objectives in conducting the workshop. My personal opinion is that we have been able to do so because of the quantity and quality of work we have done in the creation of the workshop. It is true that the workshop would have been much better if the above mentioned suggestions were already present. Secondly I have used the feedback from our viewers which tallies with what I have said above. Overall we have been able to achieve our objective about educating our viewers about the importance of cross-cultural training with reference to three countries in the Middle East. The research work by Hofstede from where we took the majority of the study is very relevant to the topic. I feel that it can be taken solely in studying cross cultural relationship and training. His four points are very effective in analysing and finding a solution to cultural differences. The importance of understanding cultural differences can be understood from Hofstede’s own words “Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.” (Greet Hofstede Analysis).
Since learning is an essential part of training, the two learning theories are also relevant. The two theories discussed were the ‘Social Learning Theory’ and the ‘Experiential Theory’. Understanding Social Learning theory is essential for expatriate managers because they will have the facility to observe directly a foreign culture and learn from it. “It considers that people learn from one another, including such concepts as observational learning, imitation, and modelling. Among others Albert Bandura is considered the leading proponent of this theory.” (Social Learning Theory).
Kolb’s Experiential Theory is also very valuable for people to learn practically about cultures. His four stages involving concrete experience (CE), reflective observation (RO), abstract conceptualization (AC), and active experimentation (AE) can be experienced by employees on an overseas mission. “It proposes that the learning of concepts is undertaken in cycles which involve four processes”. (Kolb’s Learning Theory and the Learning Styles Inventory, John Heywood, Page 130, Engineering Education – Research and Development in Curriculum and Instruction, Published by Wiley).
I agree fully that there is room for improvement. To conclude I can say that our efforts did not go waste and we had an appreciative audience who agreed that they benefited from the experience.