Cross-Cultural Training for Expatriates

Research Statement and Outline

Success in international business continues to be a daunting struggle for both winners and losers in the global business arena. The losers include companies that fail to train and empower international managers with cross-cultural awareness and competence fundamentally required in conducting business with another country for strategic growth and competitive advantage (Fromowitz, 2013; Gallant, 2012; International Business Guide, 2013). As Asamoah & Chovancová (2011, p. 1622) averred “culture plays a significant role in international business management in this current age of globalization where businesses are spreading across different countries.” Hence, this study seeks to establish the importance of culture and its implications on the adoption of expatriate employee training programs. In its thematic content, the study will examine the following: the theoretical context and dimension of national culture in relation to building cross-cultural competence; multi-level construct and dynamics of culture in relation to its impact on individual behavior and expatriate performance; the perception and reality about the effectiveness of cross-cultural training and cross-cultural compliance; and key considerations for sustainable cross-cultural training that can be generally leveraged as indicative guides to cross-cultural differences in foreign assignments. The study concludes that cultural dimension should influence the training of expatriate employees.

Significance of the Study

The significant emergence of trade agreements between global markets in the recent past has contributed to a significant change in business environment, leading to increased global mobility and business diversification. However, when opening new subsidiaries around the world, firms have faced a variety of human resource challenges, among them being the issue of culture shock experienced by expatriates (Brookfield, 2012). According to Guomundsdottir (2015), such issues affect the strategic objectives of the businesses because uncomfortable workers will not deliver the best input to the business. The current study will be of great significance to such organizations, as it will help them to figure out whether they should give a consideration to cultural issues when developing expatriate training programs. As globalization continues to thrive, business continues to become more competitive, creating an increasing importance of human resource management, especially at the international level (Heirsmac et al, 2015). Failure implement effective human resource management practices, including taking care of employee cultural comfort may lead to the loss of important expatriates to rival businesses in the host country. Therefore by evaluating the need for considering cultural dimensions in expatriate training programs, the study will be of great significance in helping business on how to reduce expatriate staff turnover by making cultural considerations in their training programs.

Within an organizational context, the concept of culture is dynamic and exists in the levels of individual culture, group culture, and organizational culture. However, because expatriates are meant to practice in other countries, considerations must be made on how the other levels of culture can be integrated with national and global culture (Soares et al., 2007). The study will be of great help in identifying the effective methods of integrating all these levels of culture through expatriate training programs.

Most companies invest a lot of time and money in training their expatriates, and in some cases, their families, to ensure that they appropriately integrate country and enhancing their performance in those environments. While the trainings are mostly pre-departure and post departure Herod (2012), organizations would prefer cultural sensitivity training delivered pre-departure, with most countries skipping post-departure training. However, some countries may not be willing to invest time and resources in the training protocols as they may not see their necessity. The current study may highlight the importance of pre and post departure training and why they should or should not include cultural aspects in the trainings. In summary, the study will give a clear verdict on the need for the training and why they should or should not have a cultural dimension.

Expatriate assignments are significantly costly to the organizations and therefore it is vital to ensure that they are successful (Hill, 2013). However, according to Kassar et al (2015), there is a likelihood that the assignments may not be successful if effective measures and not put in place – a phenomenon termed as Expatriate failure. Research by KPMG (2016) indicate that the causes of Expatriate are associated with the inability of the expatriates and their families to adjust t the new working environment, as well as other factors such as lack of interpersonal skills for interacting with new people in the new environments. However, according to McNulty & Brewster (2017), the most common causes of expatriate failure is the inability of expatriates and their spouses to adjust to new culture. By evaluating the need for inclusion of a cultural dimension in expatriate training programs, the study will make a significant contribution to the development of knowledge on how to reduce expatriate attributable poor cultural adaptation. The study will look into the possibilities of enhancing the expatriates and their spouses’ ability to achieve effective cultural adaptation by including cultural adaptation into their trainings.

The study will also be of great significance to the personal lives of expatriate. According to studies by Mullins & Gill (2016), expatriate experience stress attributable to culture shock whenever they move into foreign countries to work in new environments, especially in the initial months of their assignments. Ideally, they cannot hand things in the foreign countries the same way they would handle them in their own countries. This contributes to more stress and a vicious cycle of frustrations when they try to do things the ‘home’ way and fail (Okpara & Kabongo, 2010). By evaluating the need for a cultural dimension in the expatriate training, the study will be an important source of knowledge on how to manage culture shock and the stress that accompanies it.

From the 1980s, a variety of studies have been conducted on the topic of expatriate training, factors enhancing expatriate performance, and challenges experienced by expatriates on their foreign assignments (Pedersen et al, 2011). However, there is a paucity of research on the cultural dimension f expatriate training and whether they should be part of such programs. The current study seeks to fill the research gap by evaluating the inclusion of a cultural dimension in the trainings.

Literature Review

The Cultural Dimension in Expatriate Training

Previous studies have attempted to examine why expatriate may fail in their foreign assignments, and identified a variety of costs and negative impacts that may be associated with such failures, especially with regards to adjustment issues. As a remedy to the issues, Trompetter et al (2016) observes that organizations have paid attention to cross-cultural adjustments aimed at enhancing the expatriates’ performance outcomes. Thus, they have adopted cross-cultural training (CCT) programs in order to help them effectively adjust to the foreign cultures. Nonetheless, whereas some organizations believe in the value of CCT programs, others are still hesitant to implement them due to the time are resources constraints. Thus, there is an overall lack of conclusive evidence on regarding the effectiveness of CCT programs and how they contribute to expatriate success by enhancing the expatriates’ ability to adjust to new environments. Here, we review CCT and its variations, as well as its purpose. Furthermore, from a theoretical perspective, we evaluate the general adjustment process and what expatriate need to culturally adjust to their new working environments.

CCT are majorly aimed at minimizing the challenges encountered by expatriates in adjusting to new working environments which have different challenges created by cultural differences. The programs are usually conducted before the expatriate’s departure (pre-departure) and after their arrival (post-departure), consisting of different aspects of cultural adaptation.

CCT is a broad concept that comprises of a variety of motivational, sociological and psychological theories (Brookfield, 2012). However, Guomundsdottir (2015) asserts that in its basic form, CCT aimed at enhancing the expatriate’s cultural awareness and sensitivity; thus being able to effectively and impartially identify, appreciate and analyse the cultural differences between the host country and the home country. Therefore, CCT is not meant to change the expatriate’s life values when they move into a foreign country but rather, they are meant to develop their skills of interacting with people with different social and cultural background (Pedersen et al, 2011).

Some of the most common contents of CCT are cultural assimilation activities, language, field experience activities, didactic training and cultural assimilation activities that provide an opportunity to the expatriate to spend some time with people from the host country and learn their culture before embarking on their official duties (Pedersen et al, 2011).

Herod (2012) stipulates that it is rare for organizations to conduct internal CCT because most of them hire external service providers with extensive experience in CCT for the exercise. Furthermore, due to the increasing rate of expatriations among most organizations, there has been an exponential rise in the number of companies offering CCT services Guomundsdottir (2015), leading to an increased variation in the companies’ backgrounds. In fact, Pedersen et al, (2011) observe that some companies hire cultural scholars and researchers while others use former expatriates, individuals with extensive experience in foreign business, or psychologists to deliver the CCT services.

Existing literature shows that CCT can be divided into three main categories namely low, moderate and high rigour training. According to Mendenhall et al (1987), the chosen level of the training affects the time and methods allocated for the trainings. Nonetheless, low rigour training are adopted in situations when the company needs to send an expatriate on a short notice basis (i.e., when there is a sudden need for an expat) and there is a short window of time to conduct the training (Pedersen et al, 2011). It consists of basic level exercises and sessions targeted at providing the expat with basic knowledge about the foreign culture so that they can have a basic understanding of the foreign countries bureaucracy, customs and language (Brookfield, 2012). Furthermore, according to Guomundsdottir (2015), low rigour training involves self-study videos, books, and some one-on-one sessions. They last for less than a week and may be as short as one session.

Moderate-rigour training is applied when the expatriate is meant to go for a reasonably long (at least one year) assignment and the organization has the time and resources to facilitate the training. This level of training may involve cultural assimilation exercises, language training, and stress reduction (Pedersen et al, 2011). According to Herod (2012), moderate-rigour training is relatively more expensive than low rigour training but has a greater effect in improving the expatriate’s cultural adaptation abilities. Furthermore, it is considered the first ‘real’ step to improving the expat’s cultural adaptation abilities and hence requires a considerably more duration amount of time and interaction than low rigour training.

The third category of CCT is high rigour training, which involves training the expats for a considerably longer time (i.e., not less than one year), with more resources needed for the program (Brookfield, 2012). According to Herod (2012), this type of training is mostly initiated when the expat is critical personnel for the organization’s success, or when the expat’s duration of stay in the foreign country is relatively long. Some organizations use high-rigour training on manager-level employees, despite the notion that mangers do not need cultural adaptation training because if they were able to perform better in their home countries they should be able to achieve the same in a foreign environment.

Context and Dimension of National Culture

Failures in international business remain accentuated by companies whose cross-border managers failed to fully comprehend the context and dimensions of the national culture of the host country they work in (Carlson, 2013; Commisceo Global, 2016a). National culture relates to a framework of unique rules, models, customs, traditions, assumptions, and beliefs attributable to a specific country (Vinken et al., 2004) that serves as host to another country’s investment or business. According to Geert Hofstede, a renowned Dutch scholar and social psychologist, culture is “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1980, p.21). As Hofstede averred, there are six dimensions of culture, and these are: power distance (i.e. degree to which uneven distribution of power is accepted by the less powerful societal units); individualism vs. collectivism (i.e. degree of interdependence among members of society); masculinity vs. femininity (i.e. distinction of emotional indices between men and women); uncertainty avoidance (i.e. extent to which society treats unknown situations); long-term vs. short-term orientation (i.e. how society links with the past as it engages present and future opportunities and challenges; and, indulgence vs. restraint (i.e. the situation of being gratified or exercising control over human desires (Hofstede Insights, 2019). While Hofstede’s treatise on dimensions of culture has many critics, it is, nonetheless, considered one of the most extensively used references (Sondergaard, 1994), with profound application in the fields of business, marketing, and global trade, including cross-cultural training of expatriates before or during any foreign assignment (Taras, Steel, & Kirkman, 2012). Any organization that fields expatriates with inferior cross-cultural training or knowledge stands to encounter business difficulties because such omission causes significant financial losses (Fromowitz, 2011); impedes intercultural understanding, communication, and cooperation, apart from vitiating trust-based, competence-driven workplace relationship (Shockley-Zalabak, 2002); blocks the exercise of host country-defined business strategies and policies (Talpau & Boscor, 2011); and erodes brand equity and reduces brand value in the host country where unqualified or untrained expatriates operate (Ko & Yang, 2011; Meyer, 2015).

Cultural Dimension of Individual Behaviour and Performance

As Erez & Gati (2004) propounded, culture is a multi-level construct that engenders a structural dimension pertaining to a hierarchy of cultural tiers where the individual, as the core or innermost element, is nestled within groups, communities, organizations, countries, and the global culture. Culture also develops a dynamic dimension which concerns relationships and engagements among different levels of culture in a way by which they impact one another. Erez & Gati averred that culture has five levels, as shown Figure 1 which illustrates the multi-level cultural paradigm. As national culture impinges upon organization culture (Etgar & Rachman-Moore, 2011; Gerhart, 2008), with the latter impacting on the group culture and ultimately the individual, the influence of national culture on the values, sentiments, feelings, beliefs, and aspirations of people in one country, expatriates included, becomes evident and not difficult to appreciate (Earley, 1994; Erez & Gati, 2004; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

By way of amplification, organizational culture, as defined by Schein (1990, p. 5), is:

A pattern of basic assumptions formulated and adopted by a group of people, as the group acquires coping skills in addressing problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has proven useful and valid to be endorsed to new members as the correct way to perceiving, thinking, and feeling with respect to the relevant problems.

Based on the context of the bottom-up direction, where the individual remains the key actor, the dynamics of the cultural transition highlight the cardinal importance for the individual to be aligned with the context and dynamics of the host country culture (Alutto, 2002; Soares et al., 2007). This alignment is justified by the following realities: (1) global culture engages the national culture of host country; (2) national cultural factors, and not global, directly influence the context of organizational culture; (3) the organization may accept or reject national cultural dimensions; (4) if the organization rejects national cultural dimensions, a serious dichotomy or disconnect emerges between the organization and group/individual behavior, with the onset of culture shock on the part of an expatriate employee being one observed outcome (Naeem, Khan, & Nadeem, 2015); and (5) if the organization embraces the national culture dimensions, cross-culturally compliant behaviors and strategies evolve at the individual level (Kotler, 2001; Kotler & Armstrong, 2012), while expatriate employees demonstrate innovative performance, marketing propensity, customer-centric priorities, and positive learning attitude (Soares et al., 2007) – thus reinforcing the importance of cross-cultural training of expatriates.

Perception and Reality on Effectiveness of Cross-Cultural Training

As failure narratives of culturally non-compliant international companies abound, with major brands playing central role in the commission of cross-cultural blunders (Commisceo Global, 2016b; Amirsan, 2018), the general perception on the importance of cross-cultural training and cross-cultural compliance among global companies gravitate toward appreciation and acceptance, especially for those who have gone through systematic and integral training (Bean, 2008; Selmer, 2018). Studies show that training and development of expatriates on the complexity and dynamics of cross-cultural training has achieved marked effectiveness. With the positive link between cross-cultural training and expatriate performance established, companies offering cross-cultural training to expatriate employees significantly increased from 30% to 60% over a period of 10 years (Tjitra & Jun, 2011). The Hamburger University, established by McDonald’s as a holistic training center for the overall effectiveness and cross-cultural competence of McDonald’s international managers, represents a concrete institutional evidence of contextualizing cultural dimension in expatriate training. In fact, the University has graduated no less than 80,000 restaurant managers, mid-managers, and owner/operators all over the world (McDonald’s.com, 2016).

Key Considerations for Sustainable Cross-Cultural Training of Expatriates

In line with properly empowering expatriates with the most useful and productive cultural learning information, carefully planned and winning training programs include socio-economic, political, and socio-cultural characteristics of the host country. The training content mix also encompasses religion, food, health system, and education to give the expatriate employee a good idea of the environment of assignment; language, interaction, didactic, and experiential training; family adjustment, cultural awareness, and adaptability training; and cultural differentiation, which refers to upholding the host country culture while being connected with the native culture (Tjitra & Jun, 2011; Mulkeen, 2017; Diaz, 2018).

Methodology

Based on the provision of the Research Onion Diagram (Saunders et al., 2007) as shown in Figure 2, this study will adopt a qualitative and inductive research design, premised on an interpretivist philosophy that treats the world as a conglomeration of social constructions and meanings in human engagements and lived experiences (Daymon & Holloway, 2002; Gomm, 2008). The interpretivist paradigm works in dichotomy with the positivist model, which views the world as an embodiment of clarity, unambiguity, and verifiable reality that can studied only with total objectivity (Cavana et al., 2001). This study combines the rationalist and empiricist approaches and encapsulates concepts, theories, frameworks, and case studies in explicating the different research concerns, including objectives, questions, phenomena, and behaviors (Abend, 2008; Swanson, 2013: Weick, 2014). One case study that will be illuminated to put context on how cultural dimension has become a vital element of expatriate training is the McDonald’s unique creation of the Hamburger University. The massive investment infused by McDonald’s in the University not only dramatizes its commitment to training and empowering employees with cross-culturally compliant global mindset, but it also reinforces the truth that expatriate training cannot be complete without being fortified by notable cultural premium.

Based on the data generated from the use of the literature review and case study, to boost the quality of the research outcome (Crotty, 1998), the research process involves the formulation of a semi-structured questionnaire that will guide and support the conduct of semi-structured interviews with 15 key informants. Through referrals from the key contacts of this author, these 15 key informants will be carefully selected based on their possession of expert knowledge and experience in different relevant areas, such as human resources development, international business management, cross-cultural training, HR consultancy, global franchising, and international marketing. The results of the semi-structured interviews will be transcribed, organized, processed, validated, coded, and analyzed to determine the prevalence of important themes, a process called thematic analysis, to help address the research agenda. The interview results, including the predominant themes distilled from the interview responses, will be triangulated with literature review and case study findings to relate to the research issues, key questions, and objectives. The study will closely observe all ethical requirements of research and uphold the standards of originality and referencing (Grady, 2002), while ensuring impartiality and avoidance of research bias (Anderson, 2004).

Future Directions

As this author sees it, one of the most important subjects of future research relates to undertaking an indicative study of cultural differentiation, a treatise that propounds upholding host country cultural imperatives in achieving adaptability, but without losing the cultural values of the native country. The rationale behind this study pertains to the necessity that an expatriate, after a tour of duty in a host country, would necessarily go back to the native land, the country of origin where the expatriate generally enjoys being repatriated. Most cultural studies refer to perfecting host country cultural requirements but do not include the enrichment of original culture that will be the locus of the expatriate’s return. Another research direction is to investigate how cross-cultural communication improvement can be dovetailed to corporate training strategy of international companies and how training content and delivery can be rationalized to reach the greatest number with the highest possible level of learning impact.

Expected Results

Regardless of its uniqueness to others studies, the study is not expected to yield different results than previously conducted studies. Ideally, expatriations have a variety of challenges and employees sent abroad are likely to experience difficult time in adapting to the new working environment. These challenges are associated with expatriate failure, poor performance at work, or premature departure. Thus, it is expected that failure to include a cultural dimension to expatriate training maybe detrimental to the expat’s ability to adapt to the new country. We expect to find the inclusion of cultural training as part of the expatriate training programs to be the easiest way of facilitating a faster expatriate adaptation to their new working environments. Based on existing evidence regarding CCT training on expats’ cultural adaptation, we expect to find that cultural dimension have an influence on the outcome of expatriate trainings by facilitation the expats’ cultural adaptation.

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