留学生作业：国际商务活动的趋势

Trend Of Conducting Business In The World 

 

在过去的几十年里，在世界上开展业务的趋势一直是增加国际存在的组织，建立和发展业务的目的是增加客户基础和提高生产率。目前，全球市场的要求，国际组织将合格的工作人员部署到外国目的地，以研究和培育业务线，可以增加价值的组织业务。一些外籍人士的职责；设立新的办事处，管理当地团队，打造公司品牌和赢得新业务。由于这个原因，员工部署到全球的任务需要在所有方面的组织，如金融标准，跨文化差异，不同的业务环境和预期的挑战可能会在新的位置有经验的培训。这些培训证明对员工的绩效有积极的影响，并且在他们的海外任务中决定员工的成功或失败。

 

The trend of conducting business in the world in the last few decades has been the increase international presence of organizations, to establish and develop businesses with the aim of increasing customer base and to improve productivity. Currently, global marketplace demands that international organizations deploy qualified staff to foreign destinations in order to institute and nurture business lines that can add value to the organizations operations. Some of the responsibilities of the expatriates include; setting up new offices, managing local teams, creating the company's brand and winning new businesses (Communicaid Group Ltd., 2010). For this reason, employees deployed to take the global assignments need to be well trained in all aspects of the organization such as the financial standards, cross cultural variances, different business environments and the expected challenges likely to be experienced in the new locations. These trainings prove to have positive effects on the employees' performance and determine the success or failure of the employees while in their overseas assignments.

Irrespective of the skills the selected employees for expatriation hold, training for global assignment is vital, since every culture has a distinctive set of tenets and working practices that can be challenging to comprehend, adapt to, or manage in case the employee does not acquire the appropriate standard of intercultural orientation, such as having the right understanding of cultural attitudes and how they influence business practices in other cultures. Training for global assignment in relation to intercultural preparation therefore helps to minimize cultural conflict, avoid time wastage and failed assignments (Reiche & Harzing, 2008). The priority of every organization is to maximize the capabilities of an expatriate's success in their foreign assignments. In this regard, an employee sent abroad needs to understand and adopt the new culture to be able to work effectively with the new colleagues, to avoid waste of time, effort and money.

Training for Global Assignments Prove to have Positive Effects on Employees

Organizations recognize the significance of training and employee development activities for global assignments to prepare expatriates for the opportunities and challenges related to living and working in foreign countries with new cultural environments and diverse teams (Windham International & National Foreign Trade Council, 2003). The objective of international organizations is to promote learning among the organizational workforce to develop knowledgeable employees who can enrich organizational global competitiveness and effectiveness irrespective of the environmental and cultural diversity.

 

Cultural Awareness Training is Critical for Global Assignments 文化意识训练对全球作业至关重要

 

Culture shock that results from complete change of environment is a major challenge expatriates normally experience when relocating abroad. This leads to severe performance issues if ignored by the expatriate and the organization and can result into huge financial loss in organisation (Communicaid Group Ltd., 2010).

In is also noted that culture extensively impacts working practices within organizations in relation to the ethical values, societal norms, management styles, communication techniques among others. For example, dress code within the organization may vary from one culture to another and their change may make employees very uncomfortable and unable to work. American women in this case dress in long trousers while their counterparts in Saudi Arabia cannot. Equally, Germans are strict time adherers, where work is done according to the time schedule. This is however not the case in an Indian culture where time is considered as circular and can perform several tasks concurrently in a haphazard manner. This means that an expatriate must be aware of these cultural differences before relocation to avoid unnecessary conflicts, frustrations and misunderstandings that may directly impact on their performance and loss to the organization. The cultural attitudes towards particular people such as racial segregation, attitudes towards authority, decision making or reward systems needs to be considered before taking over global assignments to prepare the expatriates on the expectation kin their new destinations.