»conflict«

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Foeman had been talking about power structures and the difficulty to adress them. Somehow we like to think that we are all equal and do everything to neglect the fact that we are bound to structures, especially power structures originating from many sources, such as gender, age, skin color, body types, wealth, job position, etc.pp. Foeman suggests to discuss power less prominent and less analytic but to enable trainees to "discover how to best operate within or redefine the parameters of any interpersonal situation" (p.241). It is basically about becoming aware of which charateristics are attributed to you, in which way they take influence and how to use it.
(Ha! Just have to think about Kill Bill where Lucy Liu chops off this guy's head because he adresses her japanese-american-chinese background to be a problem and to dis-legitimate her from being boss. Oh, what a bad example talking about conflict resolution :-)

Quote of the day:
"[...] many participants have no idea that there are options for conflict resolution. Many define conflict resolution as only one particular and very narrow behavior (often confrontation or avoidance)" (p.242).

I mean this is not particular true to expatriates-to-be but in intercultural encounters conflicts are less easy to hide and they have worse consequences.

My interview partner's company does not especially prepare their expatriates for their mission. Since they preferably hire people coming from a multi-ethnic background or having lived in another culture, they accept them to cope well in any cross-cultural setting. Prior to their employee's departure they conduct a so-called exit-interview. In this they simulate the employee's financial situation before and after his expatriate-mission, they talk about social insurance, the company car, .... and hard facts like that. My interview partner was actually disappointed that I did not show any interest in these facts, while they make up 90% of the future expatriate's concerns. Only by the time that they are on their second or third mission, they will start asking about the soft facts concerning the foreign culture and foreign attitudes.
In the host country a start up team which is assigned by the division manager is renting housing and helps organizing the required documents. If no facilities are available and the projects are planned to take longer, the company puts up its own camp.
The expatriates themselves are expected to learn the apparent cultural gestures of their host country and as said before they are expected to cultivate networks. The company understands itself as guest in the foreign country and it wants to keep that status/reputation. ("Wir sind Gäste in dem Land. Wir wollen auch in fünf Jahren noch willkommen geheißen werden.")

Additionally, it has to be mentioned that working for a big constructing company expatriates are not going to a "Polish" construction site - big construction sites are international by matter of investors and experts joining in. On 80% of their sites English is spoken as common language.
It also has to be remembered that expatriates are not coming to an unknown setting - they have worked on that project already for at least four years and know the relevant people on the other side, plus the colleagues they met in common workshops or trainings before. In addition construction sites offer a huge pool of diverse people thus it should be possible for everyone to find somebody he gets along with well. And, too, my interview partner says that it is still business and not about finding buddies.

They have hardly any problems with the acceptance of expatriates in the host country: On the one hand the expatriates are committed to excellence in their job, they want to show their best talents and thus are dedicated to absolute professionalism. ("Ich hab hier eine Aufgabe und ich zeige euch, dass ich das auch kann.") On the other hand their higher payments are usually accepted by host country nationals if they prove to be experts. ("Nach dem Motto 'ah-ha, der kann was', dann wird das auch akzeptiert.")

Nevertheless, expatriates especially in Eastern Europe hardly ever have problems with socializing. This is due to what my interview partner called "double binding". While it is simply their mentality to be more cordial than Germans, they are also aware that these are high-ranked people who are sent to them and they meet them as welcomed guests. Apparently, the biggest problem for expatriates is how to return this affection. Most of them can easily go along but then experience frustration and disappointment as part of a reversed culture-shock coming back to Germany. Others though perceive the call for socializing as an obligation and have a hard time to escape from it without appearing solitary.

In all cases it is up to the expatriate's personality if he succeeds in diminishing power structures or not. My interview partner argues that they never had any problems. "We are not putting anyone in a role, he couldn't play."
Every now and then they might have to send somebody who does not necessarily suit the expatriate profile but is an expert in a certain technique. In these cases it might happen that expatriate and host country nationals do not find a way to work together at all. But since the company cannot abandon the expert, they send a second expatriate to pour oil on troubled water by involving people in personal conversations, outlining the problem and showing empathy for the difficult situation. ("Ein Mensch kann nicht alle Fähigkeiten haben - in bestimmten Fällen muss man Abstriche machen. Da schickt man dann notfalls einen Gutelaune-Clown hinterher.")

I finally go to the part of the book where they talk about my concerns: "Intercultural Training for Expatriates - Reconsidering Power and Politics" by H.-C. Chang and G.R.Holt. Giving a neutral and very objective summary: I didn't like it. Well, I liked some of their ideas but I think they could have shortened the whole text by, let's say: a lot. And I didn't like that they declared to analyse intercultural training programs and then they stayed very abstract and theoretical. My feelings against this text only got smoothend by the following two texts which were written in correspondance to that article (because the authors shared some of my feelings and I always feel much better when I get proven to have been right ;-) So I put a major filter on the following summaries and just put what is left after the 4 experts having talked it over in written form.

Chang and Holt stated some nice things which sound quite self-evident now but serve as some nice keywords:
The authors suggest that training programs should consider to investigate further into the system of power involved in intercultural encounters. They claim that an equal exchange between the expat and the host culture is absolutely fictious since both parties are assigned differences in status at various levels:
· role differentiation (e.g., manager vs subordinate)
· status of companies ("headquarters" vs. "branch office")
· different economic and political power of respective home countries ("the developed country" vs. "the underdeveloped country")
· and how the countries are bound together by their past sociohistorical backgrounds
(compare p.219)
Social position, gender, ethnic group membership, language choice and so on just add up on this power system.

Their second concern is on trainings to see culture as something static which can be embraced in distinctive culture values as if culture could be nailed down and published as a list of "do's and don'ts". "Culture does not exist in abstract terms, but is realized through the engament of the interactant" (p.230). The authors call for a training focused on teaching structures and - quoting Fontaine (1986, p. 376): process skills which enable the trainee "to be his or her own trainer" who would acquire culture specific knowledge and skills while actually immersed in the host culture (p.218).

The follow-up text by W.Leeds-Hurwitz features (well, besides her critique on Chang and Holt) the idea of social rules: "Specific behavior cannot be predetermined, but principles governing that behavior can be and are established in a larger context than the immediate interaction. This is precisely what social rules are about." (p.233).

And my head is just too empty to give an example.

The other point I really liked in her text (yes, for me this is all about liking something or not liking it - very scientific approach, I know) was that as an expatriate you are really out of any hierarchy because you simply don't match, because no rules apply to you, you are just not part of the system. But there is no need to cry about that because ... well, she doesn't exactly say why being out of it is so great but hey, I like optimistic attitudes.

Foeman as well comments on Chang and Holt and explores further into the concept of power and intercultural training.
First of all companies are foremost interested in "moving their employees as expeditiously as possible into specific roles that benefit the company" (p.238). Expeditiously does not include a long-term training covering all possible aspects of intercultural encounters.
Secondly, people don't like to see themselves bound to power structures. Naturally, nobody likes to be blamed as oppressor and "People defined as less powerful may resent their portrayal as categorical victims. Particularly, in cases of upcoming nations, recapitulation of their complex histories may be frustrating." (p.239)

to be continued... they kick me out of the libary.