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Question 5:

Suppose you are an expatriate, what skills should you have in order to be successful in an international assignment? In your pre-departure training, what types of information should you get? Should your spouse and family members participate in the training? Why? Please explain each of your answer answers fully.

Question 6:

Where would you place yourself on each of the five work-related cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede (e.g., high on individualism)? Why? Explain the Sullivan Principles? How have these principles helped organizations understand the ethical issues they face when conducting business in foreign cultures?

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Solution Summary

By responding to the questions, this solution discusses the cultural impact on various aspects of international business e.g. expatriates, spouse, training, pre-departure training, etc. It also discusses each of the five work-related cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede (e.g., high on individualism) in terms of evaluating personal behavior. It also explains the Sullivan Principles and how these principles have helped organizations understand the ethical issues they face when conducting business in foreign cultures.

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Please see response attached, which is also presented below.

Let's look at the following two questions, which have several questions included in each question, and you are asking for " very short answers."

5. Suppose you are an expatriate, what skills should you have in order to be successful in an international assignment? In your pre-departure training, what types of information should you get? Should your spouse and family members participate in the training? Why? Please explain each of your answer answers fully.

First, you would need the necessary technical expertise to get the job done overseas. However, jobs overseas bring expatriates into contact with more than machines, materials, and money. The human side is often the most frustrating component, so you would also need to learn about the culture of the people who live there (e.g., values, thought patterns, and social skills that were developed in the local culture). This knowledge is offered through the pre-departure training (e.g., cultural mores, dress, language, where your kids will go to school, food and specialties, social problems and issues of concern, to name a few). Spouse (e.g., career, support issues, marriage issues, and from where to get the kids' clothes and how to find the kind of food they like in the neighborhood) and family members (e.g., from where to go to school, to support, friends, dress, etc.) should also be included in the training, as research suggests that this is essential to the success of the expatriation.

For example, Laura Herring of The IMPACT Group outlined the high cost of expatriate failure at a recent London conference. Unofficial estimates of overseas assignment failure rates are 30 - 40%, with frequently-cited reasons being insufficient preparation of the assigned executive and family members, lack of family support, little or no support for the career-oriented spouse, and expatriate career anxieties, such as lack of return guarantees and active mentoring systems. A spouse or partner accompanies an overwhelming majority of expatriate executives, 89%, but the relocation reality is that 81% of accompanying partners who were employed at home cannot find work in the destination country. Increasingly, financial ...

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