Interview Write-Up
Each student will interview an international student, faculty, or businessperson
regarding his/her experiences in the United States. The interviewee must have
come to the U.S. after the age of 16 and be currently living in the U.S. You should
select someone to interview who is from a different culture than your own. If you
have trouble finding someone to interview, please let me know as soon as possible,
and at the latest 4 weeks before this assignment is due so I can try to find someone
suitable for you to interview.
For this assignment, focus specifically on expatriate issues such as cultural
challenges faced in the U.S. (e.g. cultural and day-to-day challenges), unexpected
differences (e.g. the interviewee’s stereotypes of the U.S. not being upheld), the
experience of culture shock, and methods used to facilitate adjustment to the new
culture.
To aid in your understanding of the interviewee’s experience, you should conduct
some research on the interviewee’s home country and culture as well as the United
States. However, your write-up should focus on how your interviewee’s experiences
relate to topics and theories covered in class and should only briefly discuss country
information based on separate research when interpreting your findings. Note that
this assignment is NOT meant to be a country or cultural comparison. You may
mention how country differences influenced the interviewee’s experience, but you
BUS 431: Cross-Cultural Management 4
should focus more on the experience itself, ideally relating this more to
International human resource or other topics than national cultural dimensions or
institutional differences.
Thus, the purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate your ability to apply class
concepts, particularly those related to expatriates, to real-world situations of
someone from another culture. You should ask general questions of the interviewee
to subtly address key expatriate issues (i.e. do NOT define concepts and ask the
interviewee for his/her/their perspective), and then interpret their responses based
on your understanding of key expatriate issues and topics. Appropriately and
explicitly apply theories and concepts covered in class to interpret the interviewee’s
response.
The write-up is due at the beginning of class on May 7 in hard copy. The write-up
should be 3-5 pages double-spaced in 11-12 point font, printed single-sided, and
stapled. It should be error-free and written in prose format. Do not provide a
transcript of the interview. You will be evaluated both on content and process (e.g.
writing style, formatting, lack of spelling, and grammatical errors).
To complete this assignment, please do the following:
1. In a short paragraph of 2-4 sentences, briefly give background information on
the person you interviewed (e.g. nationality and hometown, age, prior
international experience, how long the person has been in the U.S.).
2. For the bulk of the assignment, delve into this person’s experiences. Describe
these experiences and interpret them using class concepts and theories. You
should address a minimum of three different expatriate issues. Note that
delving into cultural dimension differences is only one issue and is not the
focus of this assignment.
3. Include a brief discussion of research conducted in both countries. This could
be within your discussion of the findings or as a separate section after
discussing your findings – though points made should relate to what was
illuminated from the interview and what you found based on your secondary
research, citing appropriately. In other words, you should not do a country
report that mentions major country differences that were not brought up or
were unrelated to points made in the interview; instead, the research should
help you to interpret what was discussed in the interview.
4. On separate pages that are not counted as part of your page limit, include a
typed list of the questions you asked, a reference page, and an appendix (if
applicable). Make sure that you are using in-text citations and references in
APA format to avoid plagiarism.
