Human Resources
What is most critical for any manager and his family going aboard to live
is the urgent need to get away from any form of ethnocentrism as fast as
possible. The familiar refrain of many American expatriates especially is
"Like back in the U.S.A." and constantly comparing the country they are
moving to in the context of their lives in America. The quicker an
expatriate manager and his family can move from ethnocentrism to
polymorphism, as Mr. Watanabe is wisely doing in regards to visiting
France, learning the language and even visiting the Toyota factory in
Canada help to lessen the culture shock on him and his family. Expatriate
managers especially need to consider the new country as a learning
experience, one that must be immersed in to gain the greatest value and to
be of the greatest service to the organization they will be a member of.
For the French, this is very critical, as they as a nation are highly
nationalistic and will help expatriates who try to acclimate themselves to
their culture. The French in Europe are very unique in that their culture
is highly unlike the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy or Spain.
The cultural aspects of working in a new country cannot be read in a book,
nor can the pace and atmosphere of the office one will be working in be
analyzed from affair. For any expatriate manager to be effective they must
immerse themselves at a very visceral level, and become fully integrated
into the new environment. This is also especially true for the managers'
family, with his wife needing to find a role for herself yet also connect
with the other women in ther8i neighborhood. The societal norms and values
are more easily learned by spouses however, as they intermingle with other
wives and mothers who are busy teaching these values to their children as
well. Women find it generally easier to become polycentric as they are
more apt to ask for assistance and less apt to feel their authority is
somehow undermined by asking for assistance. The critical point of all
this is that any new expatriate assignment needs to be taken on within a
sense of duty to the staff there and a willingness to move quickly out of
an ethnocentric perspective and more into one that embraces and celebrates
the new culture.
