Free «The Experience» Essay Sample

Cross cultural experiences are very rampant in the control for the effective management in the current world. Effective employees do not work solely in the comfort of the home cultures, but they also learn to cope with work situations outside their cultures. The experiences in the cross culture issues have taken place in different forms. These range from encounters with individuals from varied cultures, Meeting overseas customers and suppliers, some short vacations to international divisions and long term immersions into a whole new culture. These have become very serious and requirement in the success of a good management team (Goodstein 2000).

The assignment I got to undertake an international Multiyear Foreign assignment. This greatly required enhanced expatriate experience in the very field. From this experience I had to learn a lot of expatriate skills that will facilitate the new host culture. I had to transform my home culture and transfer the knowledge I had into this new culture. I had to learn the management of cross-cultures without legal or local training and education in the cross cultural variance. However I found out that this cross cultural change education does not take place in a very formal system, but it generally takes a much more natural learning perspective where the learner attains it through experience and encounter with the new developments in the set up.         

In a nut shell, These impeccable skills that I learned brought in a very fundamental importance of adapting to the overseas foreign cultures in a very natural way as opposed to the more sophisticated systems of education that are dogged with a lot of theory without proper and viable practical experiences. All in all, these natural experiences must be incorporated into the system of learning in order to make the whole issue a success in the management field.

Integrating Theory with Experience

The research field is full of studies and attributes that are important to the discovery of essential skills required for the success of most experts in the business management arena. This modern competency emerged from the US with success factors on the foreign based service representations as the baseline for these developments. However as much as the comprehensive reviews have been done in this field, a number of limitations still linger with the projects therein. Much of the empirical research remains with very poorly organized skills. They propagate a list of the required skills at the expense of an integrated theoretical framework. This makes the whole issue remain detached from the theory involved. The research on expatriates’ learning is indeed stifled due to the nature of its insularity from the social sciences. It also lacks the interdisciplinary perspective approach in the measurement, design and interpretation of most results.

Current studies conducted on the cross cultural learning are dogged with a number of limitations. It lacks the cross disciplinary approach that integrates the diverse findings, makes sensible multiple methods to the investigation series, or even guides practice in research. Skills have also been the major focus on these studies. This is in conjunction to the necessary skills needed for the training of personnel in the management field. Instead they have failed to provide for the process onto how these skills are attained and nurtured within an organization (Goodstein 2000).

Therefore it is important to integrate the already available knowledge on cross cultural adaptation with the management learning theory. This is achieved in three basic steps. First is to create a comprehensive and all inclusive literature review on the issues therein. Create a sensible list of findings in line to the cross cultural adaptations in the work place. Finally is to create an integrated yet comprehensive typology of competencies needed for the cross cultural learning.

Personal Reflections

On my personal account I think this company should make sure that the management plan they adopted will still be applicable to satisfy the needs of the company in the long run. Most instances, many companies are engulfed with the satisfaction of the short run needs pushing aside the long run ones. For the company to ensure that it retains its profitability quotient and market competitiveness even in the future, investment must be made with this notion lurking somewhere in the subconscious mind. 

The company whose management plan is under study here should ensure that the machines acquired by them are still going to retain their relevance in the future. By so doing, this will ensure that production is guaranteed and the need to replace or upgrade these expensive machines does not occur in the near future.

 The company should also ensure that training and retraining of its employees is on a recurrent basis to update them with the trends and variations in this industry. Retraining of employees is vital as it keeps them on edge by providing unto them the current and updated information and trends in the market that they need to know of .

From the above discussion resulting from the discussion of our case study here, It has been established that management change or plan is one of the many ways in which a particular company or organization utilizes in an effort to maintain its relevance and competitiveness in the market. More often than not, companies are forced by exogenous forces as opposed to intrinsic or endogenous parameters to adopt a certain management plan. If given a choice, most companies would opt to stick to the old, tried and functional dynamics of operation that they are familiar with. A plunge into an unfamiliar territory of organizational or management planning is often not very desirable since the future happenings are not really predictable.

Question Three

The Experience

The ethical standards in a firm mainly on the workers are a very important aspect of the development in the firm and in a wider community. In the world of business, management plays a very critical fact in ensuring that the objectives and goals set by a particular firm are met. Sometimes, in order to meet these goals, the management must undergo a strategic plan or change in alignment with the organization’s goals.

If such a scenario is considered imminent and inadvertently unavoidable, the management has to come up with a clear, concise and well thought. This is because the change that may result from this reorganization of the management may in one way or the other either lead to the effective and efficient realization of the goals of the company or if not well conducted, inhibit the realization of these goals.

It is therefore pretty important that a particular management or organizational change should be closely monitored using the relevant tools and forces to ensure that this change does not bring about a diverse effect or inhibit the company from realization of its goals. 

This need to align change in management to the company’s objectives and goals will be the main topic of concern in this study paper. This paper aims to take an analytical approach by evaluation of a particular management change and analyzing its impacts on the company and the realization of the pre-set goals and objectives of this company. To do so, an investigation will be carried out on a specific management change, taking a change in management that occurred in my company recently as a case study. The first facet will be the Plan Analysis. The change occurring in the management plan and process will be analyzed to establish whether the desired results were achieved (Robbins et al 2008).

Integrating Theory with Experience

This company deals fundamentally with the manufacture of packaging material ranging from nylon bags to PVC. From inception, the company adopted the traditionalist way of management where everything was being done manually. However, recently the management board agreed to pass a motion to upgrade the company’s competitive advantage and edge through the investment in technology. They argued that the machines had the power and capacity to work fulltime and at a rate that was ten times faster than the human labor could deliver.

Apart from the high initial cost of purchase and installation of these machines, the cost of maintenance was expected to be very minimal compared to human resources. The machines were not subjected to factors affecting human personnel such as need for leaves, sicknesses, fatigue and human errors. The quality and quantity of production using these machines was purported and expected to increase at a rate in excess of three hundred percent compared to the human beings output.

Currently, all the systems at the factory are networked and machines do the bulk of the job at the warehouses. Every management plan and change aims at the provision of a particular service or the solution of a particular problem through the application of innovative ways and means aimed at cutting costs and increasing the production rates in companies (Vince 2003).

The process of transition from the traditional methods of operation in our company was conducted in a number of steps. The main aim and objective of this transition was to raise the productivity volumes and lower the productivity costs simultaneously. To achieve this, the steps discussed in the ensuing paragraphs were implemented.

Personal Reflections

After the management has outlined a plan and put it into effect, the next step becomes the follow up to ascertain that for outcomes or the results of the plan are the ones that the management had desired initially. This is done through a review of the change and reflection of the consequences that this change has brought. Sometimes, the outcomes may be undesirable, desirable or even both. In the case study being analyzed here, the outcomes were both desirable as well as undesirable.

The desirable outcomes were the fulfillment of the company’s original goal and objective of lowering the production cost and increasing the productivity ratio. The machines bought and installed into the company had the capacity to produce more products at a shorter period of time compared to the human beings. There were no complications of fatigue or illness and the machines could run for many hours with little maintenance unlike human beings. This led to the attainment of the goal of higher production as well as low costs of production. The increment in production adds to the raise of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, a very desirable attribute.

The undesirable outcome affiliated to this management change was the loss of employment to the various personnel who had been employed to work in the streams that the machines came to occupy. This loss of employment has a negative outlook to the growth of per capita income of the nation. Firms should ensure that they fulfill the desire of alleviation of poverty levels by offering or creating opportunities for the availability of new jobs. Retrenchments are not a welcome scenario in any economic setup (Vince 2003). 

After the implementation of the management plan change and the realization of the outcomes discussed in the preceding paragraphs, a number of recommendations have been identified and presented to the management of our company. These recommendations are outlined in the following discourse.