Heading for the Big Apple

Our present day world is a global village with interdependencies and interrelationships between all the world's business organizations and they shares different cultures globally. Julius Goodman , a great career success thought that he was about to head for the big apple when transferred from cape town to Bigco's head office in new York as vice president of marketing for the new product division. Julius was chosen for this because he did have all the attributes required to work well abroad. However, he ignored the valuable training that was offered by the company assuming that New York wouldn't be much different from Cape Town and did not realize the fact that "cross-cultural and diversity training" is the heart of a multi-cultural workforce and is the key to the success of a diverse workforce. Assuming that because of his success in Cape Town he took for granted the training program and orientation which is very important and it led him and his family to a sense of dislocation for the first two weeks and sorting out took them more time which delayed Julius's performance.

Other than the factors stated in the case that BigCo used in selecting Julius to move the great step up, transition abroad must be based upon the persons previous successful experience to promote a person to executive designation , BigCo's must have chosen a person who has experience of different timings and successful working away from home. Julius was not a global manager though it is mentioned in the case that he is but being a global manager he should have the knowledge of worldwide cultures and would have never ignored training for the American culture. Being a manager he should also appreciate diverse beliefs, values, behaviors and practices should be able to map strategies in a global context. Most importantly be open to learning whereas he ignored it. Global mindset of cultural adaptability, patience flexibility and tolerance is indispensable. Understanding one's own culture is important because then only you can deal with cross cultural problems. One should not be ethnocentric or having an attitude of parochialism. Julius was focusing on personal goals rather than focusing on organizational goals. He was moving to America because of the promotion to the designation of executive manager. One should have strong desires to work overseas and good language skills. Most importantly one should have the skills of stress management which takes an active approach to dealing with stress that is influencing behavior.