According to Lundly, global organizations contend with various cultures, political situations, languages, national boundaries, size of the organization, customer needs, functional specialization, products and services mix.
Despite the fact that the 2008 economic recession negatively impacted on organization, it was realized that the event could be utilized to build the discipline of becoming more effective for future survival, vitality- the capacity for survival/continuation of a meaningful/purposeful existence (Dictionary.com, 2009).
To counter the impact of recession, organizations engage in slimming/trimming down, reorganizing, striking a balance between retooling products and services and internal efficiency and not seriously emphasizing on products and services modification. It will only be sound to carry out a survey on what employees deem to help future management success of the organization.
Employee confidence (EC) is what helps us to evaluate an organization’s performance as an employee knows how the organization is faring (Cohn et al., 2009). The information gathered will not only predict what is happening in an organization but lead to organizational improvement. EC is measured by asking employees their perceptions within to aspects related to performance of the organization and two aspects to do with an individual’s personal situation in the place of work.
Organizations place more emphasis in striving to improve their financial performance rather than macro-economic improvement. Most organizations are faced by a myriad of problems ranging from ethics crisis, leadership, engaging employees, regulations issues, weak financial discipline, progressive sustainability interests to cultural and language problems. All these can be addressed by maximizing current performance and developing future potential.
Vitality factors that help improve organizational performance are working within ethics and transparency, employing the right people, and having a confident engaged workforce among others. Generally vitality helps organizations to counter the challenges they face as a result of heterogeneity in the entire world informed by culture, politics, legal restrictions, economy and human population (Bledow et al., 2009).
Best Practices for Training Intercultural Competence in Global Organizations
Due to globalization, a large number of individuals flock to other countries to look for work or send to work-expatriates, most often, as a result of poor adaptability to cultural differences they deem to fail in performing. Thus there is a need to address this issue through ‘intercultural competence training’ (Shen and Lang, 2009). To attain the desired goal of harmonizing expatriates with the cultures of the countries they are to go and work, there is need to follow these best practice guidelines;
Develop skill based and affective outcome in addition to cognitive outcomes as this will not only improve effectiveness of an employee but rather develop emotional and behavioral aspects of intercultural competence. It is also important to use culture-generic training, especially when trainees have the potential of interacting with a multicultural environment, this then helps supplement culture specific training (Shaver, 2009). Consequently, match the design of training and learning outcomes to work situations when employing culture specific training this will help in “yielding more bangs for the bucks”.
Use of longer, more complex training for longer, more complex tasks will help allocate more time and other resources to those expatriates that will stay longer than those who are on short time duties. Use time properly, if need be the training can be individualized after considering trainees acculturation this will help to allocate resources on the basis of their needs, in addition, provide the trainees with an advanced organizer that is aimed at providing guidance to the trainee.
Using an integrated training approach aimed at getting the best of both worlds by not limiting intercultural competence training to any approach and choosing components on the basis of trainee’s need. It’s important that learning takes place during training and a means for the trainees to provide feedback opt to be in place. Finally, evaluation of intercultural competence training which tests trainees after the training to establish the skills acquired (Bjornberg, 2009).
References
- Bjornberg, L. (2009). Training and Development: Best Practices.
- Bledow, R., Frese, M., Anderson, N & Farr, J. (2009). Dialectical perspective on innovation: conflicting demands, multiple pathways and ambidexterity.
- Cohn, A., Fredrickson, L., Brown, L & Mikels, A. (2009). Happiness Unpacked: Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction By Building Resilience. Emotion. 9(3), 361-368
- Dictionary.com. (2009). Definition of “Vitality”.
- Shaver, P. (2009). Culture Center- 2009: Classes on Culture.
- Shen, J & Lang, B. (2009). Cross-Cultural Training and Its Impact on Expatriates Performance in Australia MNEs, Human resources development International. 12(4), 371-386