This book is among the first to theoretically and empirically examine what and how Western expatriate managers learn and develop from their international assignments in China. The book draws on literature associated with expatriate studies, experiential learning theory, and knowledge acquisition to develop an expatriate learning process model. Following on from this, the study then examines expatriate learning outcomes from four perspectives: learning style transition, adaptive flexibility, global mind-sets and managerial tacit knowledge. It enhances understanding of the cultural differences between Western countries and China as well as the kinds of learning strategies successful expatriates adopt in order to quickly adapt to intercultural business contexts. This book will appeal to international business practitioners and research fellows who are interested in international human resource management.
This book sets new trajectories for language-sensitive business and management research and pedagogy. The existence of language plurality characterises these. Empirical studies have been established as important and relevant for contemporary research. It has shifted language-sensitive research from the periphery to the centre of international management research. However, this field is rapidly changing, and new thematic approaches have begun to emerge. By addressing this, the book offers genuine and more nuanced insights into existing themes and comes with applications of emergent conceptual developments in different settings. The second part of the book covers methodologies and gives examples and cutting-edge insights into the role of translation in the execution of empirical research and theorising arising from it. Finally, the book draws together innovative ways of how to address the challenges of a multilingual teaching classroom and how to innovate in order to incorporate such diversity through pedagogic practice. This book provides a source that unites insights from multilingual empirical research, methodological considerations and pedagogic practice in order to advance knowledge and debate. It will be a ‘handy source’ of information that offers direct access to the latest guidance on language-sensitive management challenges. It will, therefore, appeal to an internationally-minded and mobile audience, including scholars, students and decision-makers.
This book systematically investigates intercultural experiences of Polish managers and specialists delegated by their multinational company (MNC) on an international assignment to China. The book employs narrative inquiry to explore language, intercultural communication, collaboration, learning, and expatriate adjustment in the MNC. This approach offers new insights into intercultural experiences, communication, and cultural challenges faced by an under-researched group of professionals exposed to intensive collaborations with the local managers and employees. The findings also illustrate how the expatriates learned to better navigate the multicultural and multilingual business context and what factors facilitated and inhibited their learning and adjustment. Encouraging the qualitative, context-sensitive examination of expatriate-local personnel interactions, the book will be an invaluable source for scholars and practitioners interested in, among others, novel approaches to investigating language and intercultural communication in international business, cross-cultural management, qualitative cross-cultural research, as well as for lecturers and students interested in Central Europe and China.
This book addresses the most crucial challenges facing managers of MNCs as they operate across different institutional frameworks and complex cultural contexts. What is the optimal balance between local responsiveness and global integration? How can a common culture be developed in the face of profound cultural differences? How can knowledge be transferred across the MNC? What employment policies are legitimate in a world of differing standards?
Selected papers from the International Conference on New Computational Social Science, focusing on the following five aspects: Big data acquisition and analysis, Integration of qualitative research and quantitative research, Sociological Internet experiment research, Application of ABM simulation method in Sociology Research, Research and development of new social computing tools. With the rapid development of information technology, especially sweeping progress in the Internet of things, cloud computing, social networks, social media and big data, social computing, as a data-intensive science, is an emerging field that leverages the capacity to collect and analyze data with an unprecedented breadth, depth and scale. It represents a new computing paradigm and an interdisciplinary field of research and application. A broad comprehension of major topics involved in social computing is important for both scholars and practitioners. This proceedings presents and discusses key concepts and analyzes the state-of-the-art of the field. The conference not only gave insights on social computing, but also affords conduit for future research in the field. Social computing has two distinct trends: One is on the social science issues, such as computational social science, computational sociology, social network analysis, etc; The other is on the use of computational techniques. Finally some new challenges ahead are summarized, including interdisciplinary cooperation and training, big data sharing for scientific data mashups, and privacy protect.
The labor market is evolving very rapidly in recent years, in Europe and worldwide. The fast and deep changes brought a brand-new context of challenges and occupational risks to the attention of stakeholders. The current global financial crisis has increased the economic pressures on companies and they in turn have intensified the effects on employees, particularly in terms of new competition contexts and a lot of stress and mental health issues. Concurrently, social, political, and environmental problems generate under-employment, over-qualification, over-education, low wages for skilled workers, and unmet demand for education. Consequently, both high skilled and low skilled immigrant workers are increasing. In addition, workplaces are continually changing in step with the introduction of new technologies, materials, and work processes, together with the changes in the labor market, the new forms of employment, and the new work organizations. These changes lead to new opportunities for employees and employers – but also to new risks or re-actualization of old organizational risks. According to the EU-OSHA, the key points that describe the evolution that is currently ongoing in the world of work are globalization, the technical innovation, and the aging population. On one hand, some older potential risks are reappearing in organizations: intensive fear and worries, organizational anxiety, boredom, physical violence, alienation, segregation, loneliness, and isolation. On the other hand, re-emerging perceived organizational features seem vital for organizations and more important today than ever. Central constructs in the study of organizational behavior and organizational health such as perceived organizational support, commitment in organizational context, socialization processes, change capacity of organizations, perceived organizational justice, ergonomics, and motivation, nowadays seem increasingly important and renewed.
The scholarship of management teaching and learning has established itself as a field in its own right and this benchmark handbook is the first to provide an account of the discipline. Original chapters from leading international academics identify the key issues and map out where the discipline is going. Each chapter provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the given topic area, highlights current debates and reviews the emerging research agenda. Chapters embrace the study of organizations as a whole, the concepts of individual and collective learning, the delivery of formal management education and the facilitation of management development. Through consideration of these themes the Handbook analyzes, promotes and critiques the contribution of management learning, education and development to management understanding. It will be an invaluable point of reference for all students and researchers interested in broadening their understanding of this exciting and dynamic new field.
This book examines the rise of Chinese companies in international markets during the last two decades of rapid expansion of the Chinese economy. The fruit of a collaboration between two leading business schools, HEC Paris and the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University, it provides a comprehensive overview of the strategies of Chinese multinationals in terms of international marketing and branding, M&As and international joint ventures, management of technology, organization and human resource management, etc.The strategies of several well-known companies are described in detail, including Baosteel, Bird, Haier, Hisense, Huawei Technologies, Lenovo, Nuchtech, Petrochina, TCL, Tsingtao Brewery, Wahaha, Wanxiang, etc.
