Global Team Acclimatization
The following Course Outcome is assessed in this Assignment:
MT203-5: Apply cultural literacy in personal and professional environments.
Assignment
Introduction: Cultural literacy is critically important when it comes to sending personnel overseas to live and work. If there are family members also moving overseas, their adaptation to the new environment may affect the employee’s ability to perform successfully abroad.
Read the scenario and then address the checklist items.
Scenario:
Jorge, as the global team manager, was hired to manage some new global teams for AlternativeSource Inc. (ASI), an alternative-energy company implementing wind, solar, and water-generated energy systems throughout the globe. Jorge had worked previously for a gas exploration company in North America, so he simply hired many of his previous company’s employees who had worked for him at the gas exploration company. Jorge deployed the teams along with their families to work with Indian nationals and clients in India. Since India is such a large country, although there is some autonomy for the teams, all decisions were made by Jorge and then subsequently communicated with the teams.
After 5 months in the field, the teams are not performing well. The team members are frustrated by what they termed as internal conflicts and “the clients’ lack of cooperation,” and their families seemed to be unhappy in the new environment. The ASI executive management team is beginning to ask questions not only regarding the team’s performance but also regarding the hiring process used. ASI has an employee handbook saying that the company hires people based on abilities from a diverse pool of candidates that also represent their diversity of global clients.
After completing your chapter reading and reviewing the Learning Activity regarding culture and global human resource management (HRM), address the following checklist items.
Checklist:
● Describe the problems you discern in this situation from the brief facts provided.
● Describe how the global teams in India are managed versus how they should be managed.
● Apply global HRM concepts from your reading to the hiring of the teams.
● If you had been Jorge, how would you have applied all of the cultural adaptation concepts from your Reading and Learning Activities areas that would fit this scenario at the outset to help the team members and their families be successful in adjusting to India?
