Failure to Meet Specific Needs of Learners
Failure to Meet Specific Needs of Learners
The learners from different cultural backgrounds can have different types of needs and expectation from the training and development session. In this way, it can be extremely tough for the human resource managers of McDonalds to identify the training and development needs of the employees from different cultures.
Little Acceptance from the Learner
While working with staffs across the culture, there is always high potential of cultural clashes between the human resource managers and the staffs from different culture. In case of McDonald, the staffs from different cultures involved in the training and development program may be unwilling to accept the human resource managers because of their differing culture.
Lack of Collaborative in Training Group
There can be lack of collaborative training group in the training and development session, where the staffs are involved from different cultures. Likewise, the human resource managers of McDonalds can also face the issues of lack of collaboration among the training staffs, as the training staffs from different cultural background may be unwilling to cooperate and collaborate with each other.
Ineffectiveness of Overall Training and Development
The trainees from different cultural backgrounds are not highly willing to be engaged in the training and development session. In this case, the employees from different cultural background may not understand the true objective of human resource managers because of differing culture. In this way, the overall effectiveness of the training and development session gets disrupted.
The Honeymoon Stage
In this stage, the manager of McDonald may find it exciting and new in the foreign country. Nothing seems to be wrong to the manager in the different culture of overseas country. In this stage, the manager of the organization may feel infatuated with the new language, new culture and new foods of the foreign country.
The Frustration Stage
This stage is likely to occur within two to six months after going to overseas country. In case of the manager in McDonalds, the manager would like to maintain a balance between what he understands to be normal and what is new normal. In this way, the manager can be highly stressed to understand the new gesture, sign and language of overseas country.
The Adjustment Stage
In this stage, the manager of McDonalds may feel more familiar and comfortable with the new culture of the overseas country. The friends and community support are established and details of languages of the foreign country get recognizable to the manager.
The Acceptance Stage
In this stage, the manager of McDonalds can be able to integrate completely with the host culture of the overseas country. He can be able to celebrate with his cultural difference and be the part of new culture in the new country.
Togetherness and Trust
The main element of an effective team structure is togetherness and trust. The team members of an effective should work together with each other for achieving the common organizational objectives. Therefore, the managers of McDonalds should always keep in mind the importance of togetherness for engaging the team members in the overall organizational goals. The managers should also establish a trusting relationship with the team members for enhancing the engagement level of the team managers in organizational goals.
Little Acceptance from the Learner
Accountability
Accountable team members are always likely to show more dedication in the success of organization. Hence, the managers of McDonalds should be concerned about establishing accountability among the team members. In this way, the team members with high level of accountability will show high level of dedication towards achieving the success level of the organization.
Results
The effectiveness of teamwork always comes through the result oriented nature of the teamwork. Hence, the managers of McDonalds should always be concerned about making the teamwork result oriented. It will make the team members highly focused on the direction of organizational success.
Commitment
Trust based environment and commitment level of the team members are the key for the success of teamwork. Hence, the managers of McDonalds should always keep in mind about the level of commitment of the team members. Moreover, the committed employees are always engaged and highly committed to achieve the success level of the organization.
Language Barrier
Language is an extremely complex thing is communication. Language gets extremely difficult, when it comes about the communication between people having different languages. Hence, in cross cultural workplace, the participation levels of the employees get distorted, while they do not understand the language of others. Apart from that, language is an effective way of looking at the world. The skilled translators often find it difficult to understand and convey the complex emotions and concepts (Cramton and Hinds 2014). In this way, in cross cultural workplace, the employees can find it tricky to understand and convey their emotions to others from different cultural background. Hence, it can lead to misunderstanding among the employees leading to lack of proper employee participation at the workplace.
Hostile Stereotypes
Hostile and inaccurate stereotypes of the people from other places can lead to a barrier to the communication in cross cultural workplaces. Stereotypes are the assumptions, which the people perceive about the traits of specific groups of people. The danger in stereotypes is that an individual is thought to posses the traits or characteristics, which are actually ascribed to their group members. However, prejudging an individual beforehand can result in misconception and barriers in communication at cross cultural workplace. It can lead to gaps among the employees from different culture unnecessarily (Colomo-Palacios et al. 2014). Hence, hostile stereotypes can hamper the ultimate level of employee participation among the employees with high level of misunderstanding among them.
Behavior Difference
The behavioral difference among the employees of different culture can result in misunderstanding among them in cross cultural workplace. Every culture has specific guidelines regarding their appropriate behavior. Getting right to the point at the business meeting can be impolite in some culture, where it is preferred to have some small talk before conducting business meeting. In some culture, looking directly at the eye of someone during talking is considered as rude, while in some other culture, refraining from doing so in somewhat disgraceful. In this way, such differences can be barriers to the effective communication, if those are not recognized properly (Wei, Thurasamy and Popa 2018). Ultimately, such barriers hinder the level of employee participation at the workplace.
Lack of Collaborative in Training Group
Emotional Display
Appropriate display of emotion can be different from one culture to other. In some countries, display of fear or frustration and anger at the workplaces may be considered to be inappropriate in business settings. The employees from such culture are bound to keep their emotions hidden and discuss only the factual aspects related to their jobs. On the other hand, in some other culture, the employees are free to express their emotions in a discussion. In this way, when the employees display strong emotion at the workplace, where it is restricted can lead to misunderstanding among the employees leading to disrupted employee participation at cross cultural workplaces (Tenzer and Pudelko 2015).
Dress Code in China
In usual daily life, Chinese people usually dress in Western cloths. Moreover, traditional cloths are not usual for the Chinese people apart from the big festivals. In such situation, the workforce relocated to China from Asian countries may face cultural shock of dress code in this country.
Language Barrier in China
Language barriers in China can be a big barrier for the expatriates relocating in China. Apart from the official language in China, which is Chinese Mandarin, there are also some other dialects in this country (Dingsoyr and Smite 2014). The expatriates relocating to China can face extreme difficulties in learning the Chinese Mandarin language.
Time in China
In real scenario, China stretches over several time zones. In some provinces, there can be exist two version of time zone like the official one and the local one. Huge traffic jam and other conditions on the road can make it difficult for the expatriates to predict the accuracy of time. Hence, the expatriates relocating to China may face cultural shock issues in fixing the time of appointments.
Religion in China
Religion is not quite common in China and religion is mostly found in the rural areas instead of big cities. Most of the people in this country belong to Buddhist and Muslim, but limited numbers of people belong to Christian religion. Hence, the initial workforces belong to religion and relocating to China might face the issue of religion clash with others.
Women in China
Although the perception of people in China has changed, still the ancient concepts exist in the minds of several Chinese people. Nowadays, Chinese women play significant roles in the management of Chinese companies, but they are highly expected to fulfill their expected roles to their home and children. In such situation, the women are often ignored to get the higher position and are assigned to big job responsibilities to their organization (Neukam 2017). Hence, the initial women workforces relocating to China might face the issue of lack of priorities provided to them at this country.
Change and Adaption
More often, the repatriates expect their home to be just the same as it was previously, when they left their home country. The natural changes during the time, while they were outside, can now be shocking to them at their home country. Moreover, the adaption of foreign cultural practice may change the perception of the repatriates about their home. The living experience in the overseas country can be a life changing experience for the repatriates that can affect on their feelings, attitude and relationship with their home. Hence, initial workforce might have to relearn patterns and routine of their home that they have forgotten after living long in overseas country.
Ineffectiveness of Overall Training and Development
Criticality
The depth of reverse cultural shock is always associated with the critical judgment of the repatriates about their home. The renewed unfamiliarity with the culture of home and their unfamiliarity with their home routines can lead to frustrating and unpleasant experience for the repatriates (Lisak and Erez 2015). They are more likely to compare the pleasant things of overseas countries with the unpleasant aspect of their home.
Marginality
The overseas experience can significantly impact on the identity of the repatriates, while they return to their home. The repatriates immerse themselves to the new culture of overseas country and open their minds to the new cultures. In such situation, when they return to their home, they feel increasing tension existing between their new identity and mainstream society. Moreover, the initial workforce might not feel fit in their home after returning from overseas country.
Overexertion/Exhaustion
The repatriates after returning to USA must have to pay deep consciousness and attention to perform the basic job functions, as there are increasing numbers of patterns, routines and customs in USA culture (Gilson et al. 2015). In this way, such increasing routines and functions in the home country may lead to exhaustion for the repatriates.
Resistance/Self-Doubt/Depression
It can become the common reaction for the repatriates to resist to readapting the home culture, as they get disconnected from it during their overseas live experience. With all such frustration and disillusionment about the home culture, it is more common for the repatriates to make a self-doubt about themselves for their capability.
Lack of Trust
Trust is an extremely essential factor for leading the success of global teams. Team members must have to able to understand and rely on each other for achieving the common organizational goals. Trust also acts as the glue for the virtual workplaces and leading the success of virtual team members. Lack of trust may lead to the fear of admitting mistakes and weaknesses among the virtual team members. It also discourages the virtual team members to ask to help from each other (Neukam 2017). However, with lack of face-to-face interaction among the virtual team members, it becomes quite difficult for them to trust on each other.
Stifled Diversity
Virtual team members lead to stifled diversity among the employees that can hinder the actual advantages of diverse workforces. Moreover, virtual team building acts as force-fitting universal process for leading increased organizational productivity. In such process, organization tries to incorporated irrelevant and dissimilar workforces for exploring the new possibilities associated with the virtual team members. However, in such process, the virtual team members from dissimilar culture are not likely to cooperate and share innovative and creative ideas with each others. In this way, such force fitting universal process ultimately becomes the hindrance for the creativity of the organizations.
Old School Leadership
In case of virtual work team, the virtual team members may have different and unique views of power and organization. In such situation, command and control style of the leaders may not be appropriate for the virtual team members. Moreover, the virtual team members in different countries may be associated different types of leadership style. In such situation, the global leaders may face extreme difficulties in applying the right leadership style for leading and managing the virtual team members. The virtual team members may not also have proper understanding about the power structure associated with their organization (Lisak and Erez 2015). Hence, it can be extremely confusing to accept the commands and controlling instruction coming from the global leaders.
The Honeymoon Stage
Time Zone Resentment
The global team members can face the issue of time zone resentment that can hamper their job morale. Moreover, conducting a meeting constantly in the middle zone can lead to resentment from those team members having to respond in the early morning or in late evening. In this way, the global team members face inconvenient job experience with different time zone associated with their respective countries.
Global mindset concept is suggested to influence the ability of the global team members having different social, intellectual, social and psychological knowledge to cope up with the global culture of the people. Instead of the traditional adage of “think globally and act locally”, it is now preferred to “think and act both globally and locally at the same time”. It means that it is not enough to recognize the time, when it is important to create global standard, but also the employees should have in-depth understanding regarding the differences in local culture, changing context and crossing culture (Tenzer and Pudelko 2015). Moreover, it is quite important to simultaneously identify the situation, where both the demands of global and local elements are persuasive. Combination of openness and awareness of cultural diversity is extremely important for synthesizing across the diversity in global markets.
The global team members having global mindset can have deeper understanding regarding the difference between the local and global cultural. In this way, such employees can better adjust their behaviors and culture with the foreign culture for better managing the global communication. Apart from that, the employees having global mindset have in-depth understanding regarding the preferences of the global customers. In this way, such employees can provide customized products and services to the global customers for meeting their customized needs and preferences. Hence, they can better recognize and capitalize the related opportunities for expanding in the market. On the other hand, the employees having global mindset accept heterogeneity and diversity as natural and as the important source of strength and opportunity for the organizations. In this way, the employees having global mindset can better lead to business property and success for the overall business for their organizations.
While applying the concept of global mindset in this case, it can be set that the employees as well as the leaders must have deeper knowledge regarding the cultural difference between USA and China. While the virtual employees and leaders will have in-depth understanding about their own behavior as well as the behaviors of Chinese, they will be better able to adjust their behaviors and cultures for managing their global teams successfully. Apart from that, the leaders having global mindset can be able to apply suitable leadership style for managing the global team members.
Reference List
Colomo-Palacios, R., Casado-Lumbreras, C., Soto-Acosta, P., García-Peñalvo, F.J. and Tovar, E., 2014. Project managers in global software development teams: a study of the effects on productivity and performance. Software Quality Journal, 22(1), pp.3-19.
Cramton, C.D. and Hinds, P.J., 2014. An embedded model of cultural adaptation in global teams. Organization Science, 25(4), pp.1056-1081.
Dingsoyr, T. and Smite, D., 2014. Managing knowledge in global software development projects. IT Professional, 16(1), pp.22-29.
Gilson, L.L., Maynard, M.T., Jones Young, N.C., Vartiainen, M. and Hakonen, M., 2015. Virtual teams research: 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management, 41(5), pp.1313-1337.
Lisak, A. and Erez, M., 2015. Leadership emergence in multicultural teams: The power of global characteristics. Journal of World Business, 50(1), pp.3-14.
Neukam, M.N., 2017. Managing the fuzzy front-end in multicultural teams. European Journal of Innovation Management, 20(4), pp.578-598.
Tenzer, H. and Pudelko, M., 2015. Leading across language barriers: Managing language-induced emotions in multinational teams. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(4), pp.606-625.
Wei, L.H., Thurasamy, R. and Popa, S., 2018. Managing virtual teams for open innovation in Global Business Services industry. Management Decision, 56(3), pp.570-590.