LITERATURE REVIEW: THE NEED FOR AND CHARACTER OF PREDEPARTURE ORIENTATION AND TRAINING
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 so called 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. 58 59). 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 which they functioned. The rapid economic growth of Asian countries other than Japan, the looming reemergence of Eastern Europe as an economic growth sector, and economic progress in Brazil and Mexico are, however, changing that perspective of the global business environment (Stewart, 1990, pp. 58 59). This changing environment demands changes in the multinational approach to management to recognize the benefits and the necessity of cultural diversity (Prahaled, 1990, pp. 354 357).
The global marketplace...