Order Description
ASSIGNMENT:
SCENARIO –
You work for an international consulting company (invent a name), which provides bespoke training to a range of companies involved in international business. Your company specialises in cross-cultural training and has gained a reputation amongst peers and clients for developing and delivering high-quality training programmes.
Your company recently won a contract to prepare a manager from a new client company for a long-term overseas assignment. The new client is a UK-based maritime engineering company, called “Seagate Marine Construction” (referred to hereafter as “SMC”). Employing 120 people, and often working with local contractors, SMC design and build underwater gates and locks for marinas and harbours. They are also involved in the design and construction of hydro-electric schemes.
Recently, SMC won a prestigious design and construction contract with the port of Kobe, in Japan. The assignment to manage this project will begin on Mon 5th Sept 2016, and SMC have identified a manager, Anna Davis, whom they wish to appoint to the role of Senior Project Manager. The project is scheduled to last for two years and would see the manager working with a small team of SMC engineers and a larger team of Japanese construction workers. The role will also involve liaising with a range of stakeholders from the wider Kobe community.
Anna put herself forward for the role and is in her mid-forties. She joined the company six years ago and has performed exceptionally well, earning two promotions in that period. She is married, to John, and has two children, Isobel (16) and Henry (10). Since having children, she has worked only in the UK. However, as an Engineering student, Anna spent a year as an intern in a Swedish engineering company, and, after graduating, she spent two years in Dubai, working for a construction company. Before joining SMC, she had worked on several short-term overseas projects – all in Europe – the longest being 6 weeks. Anna has never previously visited or worked in Asia.
Despite this being her first long-term foreign assignment, SMC believe Anna has the credentials to be a highly-successful Project Manager in Kobe. They now want you to help prepare her – and perhaps her family too – for her Kobe adventure…
Based on the scenario – and following an appropriate model, as identified in the Unit – prepare a detailed outline, to be provided to SMC, of the cross-cultural training (CCT) programme your company would deliver for Anna, in order to prepare her for her assignment in Kobe, Japan.
Your Assignment should follow the established stages of CCT development, demonstrating an understanding of CCT design, including in respect of key analyses and evaluations, and applying this to the scenario. While you are free to apply any model of designing a CCT programme, following the analyses suggested in the model, if you are not sure which model to apply, you can use the model introduced in weeks 36-39 of the unit, with the recommended reading:
• Ibraiz Tarique and Paula Caligiuri, ‘Training and Development of International Staff’ in Harzing, A. and Van Ruysseveldt, J., eds., 2004. International human resource management. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications. – CHAPTER 11
International human resource management: policy and practice for the global enterprise, Dennis R. Briscoe, Randall S. Schuler, Routledge, 2004 chapter 11
To design the CCT programme more credibly, you will find it helpful to state some assumptions at/near the beginning of your Assignment, so that everything that follows is more authentic:
Firstly, using the information provided within the scenario, you are advised to state explicitly what assumptions you have made in respect of her assumed ‘readiness’ / cultural sensitivity. To do so, you are advised to assume (pretend) that you have carried out one or more individual needs analyses and state your hypothetical findings.
Secondly, you should state whether your CCT programme has been developed on the basis that she will travel to Japan alone or whether her family will accompany her. This has implications for the training programme.
Your Assignment should include – as an Appendix – a Training Schedule. This should be no longer than 4 pages of A4 (not included in the word count).
Your Assignment should conclude with two sets of recommendations:
1. For Anna (and her family)
2. For SMC
Parameters:
1. The Assignment should be presented in report format, 1.5-spaced, with Arial 11 font for the main body (12/14 permitted for headings).
2. The word limit is 2,500 words, excluding direct quotations, the Appendix and Reference List. Words in tables are included in the word count.
3. Only one Appendix is permitted: the Training Schedule. This can be formatted as you wish, with a smaller font permitted (must be legible). Must not exceed 4 pages of A4.
4. The Assignment must be referenced, following the Harvard Referencing System.
You must include a Reference List, i.e. a list of all resources used to compile the document, presented in the Harvard style.
