Developing Cross-Cultural Capability

Developing Cross-Cultural Capability
Developing Cross-Cultural Capability

Please envision you are the person who is responsible for the HR department of a company in a country of your origin (China) with an aim of developing cross-cultural capability.

Feel free to consider the realistic conditions of your current/previous employer; alternatively, create an imaginative scenario. In any case, please briefly describe the underlying conditions in your introduction.Provide a toolkit for developing cross-cultural capability.
In your function as HR head you are tasked to produce an internal report to your management that addresses the potential opportunities and possible challenges when seeking to expand your cooperation internationally.

Your current focus is your above selected culture, plus the target cultures of China, Nigeria, Brazil and UK. Please envision that the Headquarters of your [real or imagined] company seeks to establish sustainable and rewarding work relationships with colleagues in the above countries. Please clearly identify which opportunities can arise from that, but also which challenges do you associate with working across the involved cultures. Please do provide related context information in the introduction.
In particular, you want to address relevant issues around leading/managing people in those countries, if you can see clear preferences for certain communication styles, are those associated with cultural patterns (of all underlying cultures), and if so, do those advance or hinder the unfolding of good cooperation? How do you envision communication taking place (face-to-face or virtually, and which issues do you associate with those to formats? And, based on your own work environment, can you make practically specific and relevant suggestions that you consider would help the future cooperation? If possible, please do include the perspectives of the other cultures, as this will be important in order for you to create a more balanced understanding of the underlying case.
Following the seniority of your position and the target audience – the management of your company – you are required to academically substantiate your proposed considerations and solutions. Please do include academic and non-academic sources that can advance your case. In any case, do use proper referencing. While you can choose which referencing style you follow, you are encouraged to employ ONLY one referencing style, and, hence, need to make sure that you fit all references into that one style.
Your written document shall be approx. 2,500 words (+/- 10 %), and can be organized along the following structure (this is only a suggestion; feel free to choose your own structure):
Abstract (not included in the word count)
Table of Content (not included in the word count)
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical exploration of potential opportunities/challenges (draw from literature, i. e. Bennett, Hofstede, Trompenaars, Hall, etc.)
3. Discuss how the previously discussed opportunities/challenges fit into your underlying practically relevant scenario. Do you see any confirmation of literature, or any contradictions?
4. Conclusion
5. Recommendation
6. References
7. Appendix
Please make sure you comply with your work having consistent labeling and page and chapter/headline numbers, that you apply good sense in choosing paragraphs, that you inject elements of criticality and reflection, and that you have a well-balanced set of references that you indicate at the end of the document.

 

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