International Human Resource Management

From Cross-cultural Management to Managing a Diverse Workforce

Helen De Cieri, Kate Hutchings, Kate Hutchings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351926805
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Since the late 1970s scholars and practitioners of international management have paid increasing attention to the impact of globalisation on the management of human resources across national boundaries. This collection of important articles and essays provides a comprehensive review and critique of developments and future directions in International Human Resource Management. Focusing on three major developments or approaches - Cross-Cultural Management, Comparative HRM and Strategic HRM, the volume explores challenges and opportunities facing researchers, international managers and employees.

Part I
Cross-cultural Management

Expatriate Management

[1]
An Extension of the U-Curve Hypothesis¹

John T. Gullahorn and Jeanne E. Gullahorn

Introduction

An American student in a French provincial university tearfully presented this rather disorganized report of her adjustment difficulties:

… it did hurt to feel so alone where not a soul seemed to care if you lived or died. That came as a shock to a young new college graduate …. The students in the university in my town were not friendly, but I know they were in other universities. Perhaps we at our university were exceptions, but all six of us were not entirely happy until we realized no one was going to care very much about us. As a result we stuck together and spoke English. …

Another American student who had recently returned to the United States described her readjustment problems as follows:

I just can’t seem to get adjusted back here. I just can’t seem to settle down to work. I don’t know what it is, but once you’ve lived abroad I guess you can’t really come back … at least not if you’re an artist…. Of course, I suppose eventually I’ll be able to work this all out. … I’d like to keep on doing some creative work here, but it’s very hard for artists to get by in America. I guess it’s obvious that I won’t be able to stay in Missouri; there is just no place out here for artists. I’ll have to move to New York, and that’s so expensive, and there are big dis-advantages to living there, but really that’s the only art center in the United States.

These cases illustrate some of the problems of alienation, anomie, and rejection frequently encountered in cross-cultural adjustment Such reactions occur not only when a sojourner attempts to adjust to an alien social system; they also recur with varying intensities when the sojourners return to their home environments. In looking at the total exchange experience, therefore, we may speak of a W-curve rather than a U-shaped curve to characterize the temporal patterning in individual reactions to foreign settings and subsequently to their home cultures. Let us first look at adjustment in an alien social system.

Adjustment in an Alien Social System

During the last decade many researchers have recorded the adjustment process of foreign students in their host cultures (Lysgaard, 1953; DuBois, 1956; Gullahorn and Gullahorn, 1956; Smith, 1956; Coelho, 1958; Sewell and Davidsen, 1961). Initially the sojourners report feelings of elation and optimism associated with positive expectations regarding interaction with their hosts. As they actually become involved in role relationships and encounter frustrations in trying to achieve certain goals when the proper means are unclear or unacceptable, they become confused and depressed and express negative attitudes regarding the host culture. If they are able to resolve the difficulties encountered during this crucial phase of the acculturation process they then achieve a modus vivendi enabling them to work effectively and to interact positively with their hosts.

Essentially, the acculturation process may be interpreted as a cycle of adult socialization occuring under conditions where previous socialization offers varying degrees of facilitation and interference in the new learning context. As a consequence of previous socialization sojourners learn value orientations which provide a framework for evaluating behavior in role interactions. The result is that when two members of a particular social system are interacting each can anticipate the other’s responses with sufficient accuracy so that his behavior is likely to elicit the results he desires (cf. Parsons’ discussion of double contingency, 1951). This complementarity of role expectations generally becomes disturbed when an individual moves from one social system to another where differing value orientations and normative expectations are characteristic.

Actually, much the same patterning in the adjustment process seems to occur whenever one relocates geographically even within the United States if one encounters emotionally salient differences in social subsystems—for example, in moving from small town to metropolitan area, from Deep South to the North. Unless the new or old patterns of behavior or belief are of deep emotional significance, the depth or duration of the depression in the U-curve may be trivial, but it probably exists. For the recently retired individual moving to another sector of the country, the relocation process—physical and psychological—probably engenders the same intensity of response often found in cross-cultural contact situations. As with socialization, so with learning and creative endeavor in general: When one is seriously engaged in creative efforts or is deeply involved in a learning experience of emotional significance, the U-curve appears. That is, there is initial excitement or elation over new ideas or skills; feelings of depression and perhaps decrement in output as one encounters difficulties and complexities; and finally, a sense of satisfaction and perhaps even of personal growth if one emerges from the plateau and restructures the problem so he can work effectively.

The cross-cultural sojourner in the new environment generally behaves almost automatically in a manner compatible with his primary reference groups in his home culture. Thus at times he finds a lack of consensus between his own and his hosts’ expectations regarding appropriate role behavior. For example, one woman professor of economics reported the following dilemma in adjusting to her host university:

There is no established position for women professors in the … university where I taught. As a result my colleagues there did not know whether to treat me as a woman or as a professor. If I assumed all the privileges of a professor it was likely to be considered presumptuous behavior for a woman. But if I assumed the role of the woman I felt sure it would result in their refusal to accept my competence in my own profession.

Another American lecturer encountered an unexepected difference in role behavior in his host institution and found he had to change his usual practice of arriving early for class meetings:

I started out early one day and my assistant, … grabbed me by the arm and said, “You mustn’t go early.” I didn’t undestand this and told him that I often did because I liked to write things on the blackboard and liked to chat with students. He said, “But don’t you see what happens?” I told him, no I couldn’t see that anything was happening. He said, “Well, if you come early, not a student may come into the classroom after you have entered.” It occurred to me that this was true. After I came in, not a single student did. They considered themselves late if they arrived after the professor, and so they would not enter, because to arrive late would be a mark of disrespect. Consequently, there the professor never went to class until fifteen minutes after the hour.

Aside from variations in classroom behavior in different university social systems there is considerable variance in the degree of social distance characteristic of faculty-student relations in different cultures. In commenting on his overseas experience, for example, one American professor noted,

Another thing I did that proved extremely disturbing to the faculty was to invite the students to my home…. All in all, I think the faculty … considered that the Americans have still remained rebels, and that the revolution is aimed at the educational institutions….

Conversely, foreign students at American institutions are at first confused and disturbed by what they perceive to be the lack of deference their American peers exhibit toward their professors.

Closely related to the issue of differing patterns of faculty-student relations is the general area of cultural divergences in definitions regarding the rights and obligations involved in friendship relationships (cf. Lewin, 1948). There is considerable variance across cultures in the length of acquaintance preceding the establishment of first-name relationships as well as in the introduction of a stranger into one’s home; furthermore, there are differences in the degree of intimacy of friendship implied by such behavior. Thus in a foreign setting Americans behaving in terms of their norms of informality and friendliness may find their hosts considering them forward and boorish. The Americans, on the other hand, may perceive their hosts as cold and distant. In the United States, foreign sojourners often initially feel overwhelmed by the apparent openness and “friendliness” of their hosts; however, when they find that an invitation to an American s home does not necessarily indicate strong affective sentiments they tend to characterize American friendship relationships as “superficial.”

One area of cross-cultural contacts where lack of complementarity in expectations may pose delicate personal problems involves dating relationships. According to our student informants, in France it seems to be an accepted norm that relationships between men and women should be either completely platonic or completely sexual. The American dating practice of kissing and petting—but stopping at some relatively undefined point—is considered dishonest and immoral. Thus, a certain lack of international consensus might result if an American girl indicates her willingness to have her French date kiss her goodnight.

Some of the situations encountered by foreign scholars in adjusting to their host cultures are amusing—at least they appear so in retrospect. However, one should not underestimate the significance of this period in the acculturation process in terms of the individual’s goals—and of those of agencies sponsoring international educational exchange. We have already mentioned some of the cultural differences creating varying degrees of confusion or frustration for grantees. Let us mention a few more having even more direct bearing on the task-fulfillment aspect of a grantee’s sojourn. The first encounter with the indexing system—if it is a system—of the Bibliotheque Nationale may be traumatic to the goal-oriented humanities student who expects to complete his dissertation research during his award year. And, after this shock, encountering what such a student might perceive—probably correctly—as the indifference of French professors toward American scholarly efforts is not likely to have a tranquilizing effect.

A vexation for researchers in the natural sciences who are accustomed to the plethora of readily available equipment in American laboratories involves the discovery of the paucity of such facilities abroad. Furthermore, discovering that their lab assistants are not exactly imbued with the Protestant ethic and cannot appreciate the necessity to “hurry” in building what the grantee considers standard equipment—all this puts a considerable strain on the goal-oriented researcher.

Or, we might take the situation of the idealistic teacher who ventures to a Far Eastern country expecting to make a contribution to the educational system only to find that he is expected to lecture from a set syllabus and that any deviation therefrom might jeopardize his students’ chances of passing national examinations. Certainly a sojourner needs fortitude as well as ingenuity in discovering new means of achieving his objectives or formulating alternative goals which are realistic in terms of the situation confronting him.

Aside from cultural differences in role expectations a more covert source of potential misunderstanding among those involved in cross-cultural contact situations arises from the subtle expectations developed in the very process of learning a particular language. In the Japanese language, for example, the honorifics, syntax,...