Business Problem
A Real-Life Career Situation Is More Meaningful And Useful Than A Hypothetical One.
Name
Course
Tutor’s Name
19th, April 2013
Internal Memorandum
Date: 19th, April 2013
To: All Company Graduate Trainees
From: The Human Resources Manager
Subject: A real-life Career Situation is more Meaningful and Useful than a Hypothetical one
First, I would like to appreciate the effort you are all putting in your work. So far, I can only see how committed you all are to your work. Therefore, I urge you to continue with the same attitude. Each one of us must fulfill their responsibilities and play their role in the company in a diligent manner, as this will help us achieve the objectives and goals of our company. Nonetheless, the main reason for this memo is to rejuvenate your minds. This comes as an advice, as well as a reminder that, a real-life career situation is more meaningful and useful than a hypothetical one. For any of us to succeed in our professions, it is important that we all consider the real life situations, and be ready to face them under different circumstances in our careers.
Today, I therefore, want to motivate all us and remind us of the usefulness of using real life career situations, as opposed to hypothetical ones. As trainees, you are not fully exposed to major career situations, given your little experience in the professional life. Nonetheless, it is crucial for you all to think about using the real life career situations and draw on them to make important assumptions about various functions in the company, as well as developing your skills, and other capabilities, which the real life career situations will help to build.
As young professionals, you are yet to encounter major real life career situations, as you are still new in the professional world. However, it is imperative that you be prepared for more important future responsibilities in your career. In future, you will be forced to address different real-life career situations, including problems and challenges affecting the company. Therefore, it is better to learn from the various career situations in the company today. Instead of focusing on hypothetical career situations for practice, it is more beneficial to focus on some of the major situations the company faces today, and try to address or come up with possible solutions to these. This will benefit each one of you as an individual, as you will be able to develop critical thinking skills, analytical skills, and problem solving skills, among others.
I wish to take you through one major example of the way through which you might use a real life career situation in the course of your working in this company, to develop important skills. In this company, there has been a major challenge since the company was established in this country. Being a multinational company in a foreign country, the aspect of globalization remains the company’s major challenge. Therefore, if any of you needs to gain an insight into some of the problems facing multinationals in foreign countries, you may contextualize this company, and learn from it, instead of hypothesizing an imaginary multinational and trying to relate to it. As a graduate trainee in this company, each of you is offered an opportunity to learn and be knowledgeable and be better professionals in the future. You have the chance of a first-hand experience on various aspects in the company. Therefore, these are real situations, which you must learn from.
By virtue of being part of this company, you all have a privilege of experiencing how globalization can affect a multinational company. Different elements in this company today prove the effect of globalization. First, our employees are from diverse cultural backgrounds. Therefore, these have different values, attitudes, morals, among other cultural perceptions. Therefore, it sometimes was hard to integrate these employees into the organizational culture. The company therefore, experienced vast hitches in its internal communication. How do you think the company finally addressed this issue of diversity? The company emphasized on cross-cultural communication, whereby each employee had to respect and understand each other, regardless of his or her cultural orientation. In addition, the company emphasized the adoption and adherence to the corporate culture. This way, employees would base their actions on the corporate culture, which is uniform for all of them. These are therefore, some of the strategies, which the company used to overcome communication challenges as a result of globalization.
Globalization is therefore, one of the major real life challenges in career, which a company and employees experience. Different scholars have shown great interest in this topic, and helped in researching on the different ways companies and employees might approach the issue successfully, without causing detrimental effects whatsoever. Adekola & Sergi (2007) note that multinationals might experience problems penetrating into a new market, due to cultural disparities. This case relates to this company too, as the total sales revenue dropped significantly during the first months of the company in this country.
However, Stringer & Cassidy (2009) argued that communication problems in companies due to differences in cultures could be addressed when companies understood the new cultures and aligned their goals and objectives, as well as other business functions to the cultures. This is what our company did, and it turned out quite successful. If all of you are keen enough, you might have realized that the company has internalized its senior management ranks. According to Stringer & Cassidy (2009), internalizing the senior ranks in a multinational is one of the strategies of ensuring that a multinational puts into perspective the culture of the country it is established in. Internalizing senior ranks of a multinational means that the senior most employees are chosen from the local community (Rugman & Collinson, 2008). These contribute to policy making in the company, thus will ensure the policies that the company adopts are aligned with the culture and attitudes of the local community (Stringer & Cassidy, 2009).
Therefore, as the human resources manager during those times, I was able to learn a great deal of issues about human resources management in a multinational company. This was my first experience managing a company in a foreign country. In future, therefore, I will use this real life career situation to solve such problems that I will encounter in future. This gave me the necessary skills and expertise to address issues regarding globalization and communication in a multinational. In case I would have never experienced this important career situation, I would be lacking experience in addressing issues that arise in a company as a result of globalization.
I finally, wish to recommend that you too remain observant today. Take note of what is going on in the company, with the employees, and with customers. We still witness communication challenges in this company, take note of them. These will be some of the small experiences in this company, which will account for or be part of your real life career situations. Therefore, identify various challenges at your workplace, and try to come up with possible solutions. This way, you will be practicing how to take on more challenging responsibilities in the near future. Unlike hypothetical career situations, real life career situations give you experience and impart various skills and expertise in a person, which are instrumental in handling more complex career situations. I hope this contributes to your professional development. Regards.
References
Adekola, A. & Sergi, B. (2007). Global Business Management: A Cross-cultural Perspective.
London: Ashgate Publishing.
Rugman, A.M. & Collinson, S. (2008). International Business. 5th Edition.
Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Stringer, D. M., & Cassidy, P. A. (2009). 52 activities for improving cross-cultural
communication. Boston: Intercultural Press.
Use the order calculator below and get started! Contact our live support team for any assistance or inquiry.
[order_calculator]