Search results

Cross‐cultural training and development has often been regarded as principally skills‐based and a “quick fix” for those organizations whose aim is to compete in the global marketplace. It is questionable whether this approach has been successful in helping companies use cultural diversity for competitive advantage. Proposes an alternative approach which takes into account the need to develop a “global mindset” along with new strategies, structures and processes as well as the lifecycle stage of the organization. These conditions can be satisfied by including three elements in any training and development intervention: developing a global mindset; working through a model of cross‐cultural reconciliation; and emphasizing the development of “relational” skills among all members of the organization.

Discusses the organizational culture appropriate to new forms of “employability” as being characterized by its success in challenging and empowering its staff, motivating them, and even satisfying their needs for belongingness in today’s downsizing environment. These characteristics strongly reflect Roger Harrison’s descriptions of person and task cultures in organizations. Reflecting elements of both and, at the same time, increasingly incorporating “Generation X‐ers”, an organization which develops an employability culture is more likely a fifth alternative to Harrison’s classification scheme. Discusses the changing nature of work and why an employability culture is inevitable. However, such a culture presents dilemmas to the organization. One of the most predominant dilemmas is how the organization reconciles individual needs for career ownership with its own, which is to align its members’ efforts towards organizational goals. A solution is put forward by way of suggesting that employers and employees engage in adult‐adult interactions around a framework of negotiation.

BOURNEMOUTH lies in one of the most beautiful parts of South‐west England; and all the world knows how this region has been immortalised by Thomas Hardy, who by his romances and poems has introduced to the public of England and America the ancient land of Wessex.