Training American Expatriate Managers

This research provides a preliminary review of the literature related to predeparture orientation and training for American expatriate managers. The findings of this literature review are presented in discussions of the requirement for effective predeparture orientation and training, and of the character of effective predeparture orientation and training.

The Requirement for Effective Predeparture Orientation and Training

In the 1990s, the trend is increasingly toward the development of global markets. Accordingly, it is incumbent on multinational corporations to acquire the knowledge and develop the expertise that will permit them to develop strategies for functioning in a variety of cultural environments. Successful multinational corporations in the 1990s will not be able to survive in the international marketplace, if they continue to seek market expansion only to those countries where the socalled cultural distance is short.

In the contemporary global marketplace, Japan, North America, and Western Europe, which together account for only 15 percent of the world's population, together account for 50 percent of global economic output (Stewart, 1990, pp. 5859). For this reason, multinational corporations have tended to think that they could get away with the imposition of cultural imperialism in the Third World countries in

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dual affected by culture shock (Berger, 1992, p. 121). A major cause of culture shock is the loyalty felt by an individual to her or his native culture when confronted with alien values and attitudes in an environment wherein the alien values and attitudes are the societal norms. In such a situation, an individual is required to face new societal mores, and both unlearn and relearn the automatic daily cues of social behavior. Individuals affected by culture shock experience a variety of emotions, which include anxiety, depression, and a sense of loss which is close in its manifestation to the process of mourning (Kaplan and Sadock, 1992, p. 1875). The concept of value has several distinct meanings. To many, a value seems to be synonymous with attitude; an attitude being a predisposition to act in a certain way. An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through the process of experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon an individual's response to all objects and situations with which he or she is related. Perhaps more basic than an attitude, or even underlying attitude, a value is a type of belief, centrally located within one's total belief system, about how one ought or ought not to be
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Approximate Word count = 2849
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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