CULTURAL CHALLENGES

Challenges and Complexities Faced By The Expatriates when Managing Across Cultures

Challenges And Complexities Faced By The Expatriate Manager When Managing Across Cultures

Introduction

The global economy of today has become such diverse and universal that boundaries between nations are almost non existent. The old structures of businesses are not seen today as the majority of them have offices located in multiple locations across the globe. Mangers in today's environment have to go beyond the needs for domestic consumers and cater the larger economy of the global market. This increasing pressure of globalisation has magnified the need for managers to equip their skill set that can cope with diverse cultures and complexities presented to them by the new markets. Therefore, it is imperative for managers to have a multicultural competence; so that they are able to meet the challenges and complexities presented to them when managing across cultures.

The film that has been used a case study to this essay is “Outsourced”, directed by John Jeffcoat and produced by Tom Gorai. The movie gives an excellent view of the way the main charter of the film, Todd Anderson played by Josh Hamilton, has to manage and train his employees, who are from a different region and culture. The application of the academic theories are very much evident in the course of the film and discussion on that in the essay will help explain the challenges and complexities faced by expatriate managers when managing across cultures.

Discussion

Businesses today in the economy are shifting their operations aboard, to new markets and places where they incur lower cost and economic benefits. This process of outsourcing business units to different regions is very common in today's economy; majority of outsourcing is being towards Asian countries, particularly India, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and various other countries. This new shift in conducting business means that expatriate managers have to look after these business operations overseas and also manage and train the workforce comprising of different cultures and backgrounds. The movie “Outsourced” depicts this new development as a Seattle based western novelty sales firm decides to outsource its call centre to Bombay, India. The manager of the call centre, named Todd Anderson, has to travel to India in order to train and manage the employees who will be working at the call centre. At first, Todd is reluctant to go to India, but when his boss informs him that he would lose his stock options if he quits, Todd decides to go and train the new Indian staff (IMDb, 2006, p. n.d).

When managing employees from a different culture and background, the manager of the call centre is faced with numerous challenges and obstacles along the way. As in the academic literature, when managing people from different cultures and backgrounds, language and its interpretation is often the major barrier. The dialects and pronunciations of people from around the world vary. Managers have to take this into account when managing workforce across the ...