»training«

After thousand of sketches and numerous files (which were mostly white and thus were deleted).... here the state of the art.

First the image I had gotten stuck with the whole d*** day.



I didn't like the colors and it's just too crappily handmade and whatever. Didn't like it at all.
Now I tried to fix it a bit. It's far from being finished, the colors are by no means fixed (even though I see myself to go for neutral), I'm not patient enough to draw filigran lines in the moment, the typo (what's my problem with type?), don't need to have a line-block-bla-background andandand.... If you don't see much of a difference between the sketches... don't tell me. It was a huge step :-) It's a sketch to finish the day, drink a beer with Rosa and get back to it tomorrow and fill it with life.


(click to enlarge)

Alone for economical reasons work is taken very serious in Poland. The gap between the rich and the impecunious is bigger than in Germany without a broad middle class. There are only the very rich, then a rather small middle class and then nothing for a long time. And there is no legal coverage by law like we know it from Germany. ("Die, die keine Arbeit haben, die, die nichts haben, die sind wirklich arm - unterhalb des Existensminimums." Vieth, 25.14 min.) For most families it is taken as a matter of course that both parents work.
For their workplace people are willing to shuffle 80 km every day from home to work and back again. ("Fahrgemeinschaften - 4 Mann in ein Auto und dann 80 km." Vieth, 2nd 04.06 min.) This reflects also how difficult it was for Panopa to find enough workers and it explains the necessity to train them into decent forklift drivers: coming from the countryside most of them will have only driven a tractor before. ("Das war eins der Probleme natürlich auch, dass Sie Leute kriegen; deshalb auch die Staplerschulung. Wenn die vom Land gekommen sind, 40 km weg, die haben - auf Deutsch gesagt: am Tag vorher haben die noch Traktor gefahren. So, und dann Staplerausbildung, sind da teilweise hervorragende Leute dabei. Kann man nicht anders sagen. Und die sind Ihnen auch ewig dankbar, dass sie nen Job haben. Sobald sie da in ländliche Gegenden reinkommen, dann ist auch in Polen noch: Licht aus." Vieth, 2nd 04.20 min.)

Continuing training is seen at the least as absolute necessity. Many understand it as means to learn something for oneself in order to be able to get ahead. And getting ahead offers the possibility to afford a nice appartment or little house. ("Sie werden kaum Familien sehen, wo die Frau zu Hause bleibt. Da pflegt wirklich die Mutter das Kind und die beiden arbeiten - weil sie's müssen, vom Finanziellen her. Sonst könnten sie sich kein Haus leisten, keine vernünftige Wohnung leisten, und so weiter. Da hat Arbeit einen anderen Stellenwert." Vieth, 24.31 min. "Arbeit hat wirklich unter anderem den Stellenwert irgendwo Karriere zu machen. Die sehen die Notwendigkeit, dass sie lernen müssen, um später irgendwann mal gesichert dazustehen." Vieth, 24.13 min.)

At the same time work also has a different social significance. When faced with problems concerning retirement payment for example, Polish employees would definitely turn to their company instead of turning to the official institutions. Mr. Vieth accounts this partly to the complicate bureaucratic system in Poland. ("Das Unternehmen in Polen hat eigentlich einen anderen Stellenwert für den polnischen Mitarbeiter als ein Unternehmen hier. Wenn die ein Problem mit der Rente haben, lösen sie das über die Firma. Hier würde man selbst die LVA oder wen auch immer anschreiben; machen die nicht. Dazu muss man aber auch wissen, dass das System das die da haben wesentlich komplizierter ist." Vieth, 26.15 min.)

Beyond Sophisticated Stereotyping - Cultural Sensemaking in Context
by Joyce S. Osland and Allan Bird

[p.58]
Osland and Bird criticize that cross-cultural training as well as research in this field only move between bipolar cultural dimensions - describing one culture as more individualistic than another, or less easy with uncertainty, ... Thus they pretty much explain why I did not bother too much about the dimensions as introduced by Hofstede. This is not to neglect the importance of this method to compare and describe cultures - the dimensions are fundamental when learning about cultures. Nevertheless it has its shortcomings.

[p.59]
Osland and Bird argue that describing a culture based on dimensions allows a better cultural understanding but at the same time creates stereotypes of entire cultures. They call it sophisticated stereotyping. This is to be differentiated from low-level stereotypes which are "often based on lack of personal contact and an irrational dislike of people who are different from oneself". Sophisticated stereotyping is based on theoretical concepts and therefore lacks the negative attributions normally associated with stereotypes. This often results in not recognizing them in their limiting character. Based on Adler (1997) they introduce the idea of "helpful stereotypes". As such they should be

• consciously hold
• rather descriptive than evaluative
• accurate in their description of a behavioral norm
• modifiable according to further observation and experience.

[p.60]
Osland and Bird see cultural learning analogous to putting a puzzle together. While the picture on the box works like a guide it does not really say anything about the single pieces. Only by putting more pieces together the overall picture becomes clearer. "Similarly, as one acquires more and varied experiences in the new culture, one can develop an appreciation for how certain attitudes and behaviors fit the puzzle and create an internal logic of the new culture." Sophisticated stereotypes in a way prevents to see the huge variety of shapes and suggests that putting them together is rather easy while actually it can never be achieved to create a wholly picture this way.

[p.61]
While general characterizations can only reflect attitudes and sort them in comparison to other cultures, they completely neglect context. Osland and Bird later [p.65] give an example of Americans who are generally defined to show a high tolerance of uncertainty but when it comes to business contracts for example they cannot bare any uncertainty at all only believing in the written and signed word.
The authors call these incidents contradicting the overall picture paradoxes. They warn that ignoring the context limits cultural understanding and "prevents rather than opens up opportunities for learning and exploration". This goes in line with Hofstede who was aware of the fact that his system of cultural dimension was only an abstraction and had warned to not overly use it.

[p.62]
As an alternative or addition Osland and Bird introduce several sources of paradoxes of which I only summarize a few.

1. First of all it is a matter of statistics. Of 100 people filling in a questionnaire 63 might anticipate new things easily which would give the overall impression of a society with a rather low uncertainty avoidance. Nevertheless there are still 37 people who would rather reject new things. Scales can only show tendencies.
2. This makes obvious, too, that within cultures there are a lot of unresolved cultural issues which from the inside as well as from the outside are perceived as paradoxes.
3. Paradoxes also appear in the context of role differences. While the people of a culture could, for example, believe in egalitarianism in general, CEOs could be allowed autocratic behavior. This would also be an example of a high power distance in an overall low power distance culture.
4. Other paradoxes come about because it is difficult to differentiate real from epoused values. People simply do not live up to their own ideals. While in many cultures equality is much anticipated, everybody works hard to gain power and influence for him/herself.
5. [p.63] Just as with values according to rules, context might judge certain values over others. Lies, for example, are normally unacceptable a lot of incidents allow so-called white lies.

Osland and Bird come up with a model of sense-making trying to allow a diagnosis of perceived paradoxes.
They ask to first index the context based on observation. The second step is to make attributions. Thirdly, possible schemas are to be conducted. These schemas reveal cultural values and history. This process reveals that the behavior perceived as paradoxon is merely a re-arranging of values.

[p.64]

This is the schema as introduced and underneath how I tried to employ the model. (you understand why I don't like abstractions - I can never make them fit)

Osland and Bird gave an example of a charity organization calling for money in the States. While the Americans are considered a rather individualstic society in regards of cultural dimension, they spend quite a lot of money and time on charity. A paradoxon? Yes! Indeed! At several levels! First of all it does not match the perception based on the dimensional model. Then .... and that's the point where I get confused.
The other part that bugs me about the model is the fact that they start confusing history and value. The actually put "individualism" as a cultural history but I don't quite agree with that, so there goes another question mark...

[p.65]
So, while I have quite some problems with the abstraction of a model I still like what came out of it: It reflects pretty well the idea of culture as defined by Geerts (1973). "[He] maintains that 'culture is best seen not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns - customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters - [...] but as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call 'programs') - for the governing of behavior.'"

As Osland and Bird acknowledge the importance of factual and conceptual knowledge in facing different cultures, they also call for attributional knowledge.
[p.66]
Factual knowledge would describe knowledge such as that Japanese often work in small group. Conceptual knowledge would back this up with the information that Japanese live in an communal society. But this would not explain non-communal activities or when or when not communal activities will take place. This latter, attributional knowledge can be gained by personal experience, by learning vicariously (= nachempfinden) from other people's experience as condensed in cultural assimilators or by cultural mentoring carried through by people of the host culture or long-term expatriates, who would both function as live cultural assimilators.

Osland and Bird claim that "learning another culture occurs in a dialectic fashion -thesis, antithesis, and synthesis." While the thesis is made on base of sophisticated stereotypes, critical incidents revealing paradoxes provoke an antithesis while synthesis is achieved by understanding which values are regarded more important in which context.

[p.67]
Consequently, they see cross-cultural training moving along the following steps:

1. Recognizing the complexity of one's own culture.
   This includes tracing the internal cultural logic back to its socioeconomic, political and historical roots. It also calls for analyzing in-culture paradoxes/variations in behavior based on regional, organizational or individual differences. Looking on different values (as for example friendliness) it would be necessary to ask questions such as: "Are all people friendly? Are they always friendly? In which incidents are they not friendly anymore? How come?"
2. Studying cultural dimensions as a basic tool.
   This means to learn about typical incidents and behaviors and trace them back to cultural values. Characterization along bipolar dimensions allows to compare two cultures; thus to distinct between cultures and to gain conceptual knowledge.
3. Acquiring skills in cultural observation and behavioral flexibility.
   This asks to look on incidents perceived as paradoxes. Questioning sophisticated stereotypes practices observational and interpretive skills. This can be achieved by role-playing or by working with videos.
4. Studying or experiencing one culture in-depth.
   This means to gain attributional knowledge form cultural mentors. Additionally, extensive research is to be made. Further knowledge is gained by actual cultural immersion.
5. Learning context-appropriate behavior. (actually fits to point 4)
   This calls to actively ask the how's and why's. "How do managers encourage their staff?", "Why does that work for them?"

Osland and Bird conclude calling expatriates to not give up their stereotypes but to hold them consciously in order to modify and change them when necessary. They suggest to find a cultural mentor and to learn cultural schemas. In combination with examining paradoxes this will lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying values and thus promote cultural understanding.

published in: D.C.Thomas: Readings and Cases in International Management; Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003.

Nowadays, German is still spoken in the higher management level at Volkswagen as well as at Panopa. In the second level both companies mostly employ Polish people who also speak German.

In general Panopa is sending fewer expatriates to Poland every year. In the beginning jobs in the strategic division were filled project-specific with German expatriates. Nowadays the job is done by two fixed employees and help is only sent in emergencies. Instead Panopa makes sure to grant their employees qualification trainings to build up competencies on site.
This redundantizes the business with expatriates which is comparably expensive and takes a lot of energy from the company as well as from the employees concerned: motivating employees to leave Germany and to stay abroad for weeks and months at a time for single projects, permanent shuttling, ... Dr. Hucht resumes that it is simply easier and less expensive to establish methods of qualification at the respective location. ("Wenn ich in Deutschland jemanden motiviere da rüber zu gehen, dann redet der erstmal über mehr Geld." Dr.Hucht, 13.45 min.)

Not relying on expatriates the station in Poznań became a regular company with warehousemen, executives in the warehouse, people for administration, controlling, human resource management, planning, computing, accounting, purchasing, technical administration, ... Thus it is an independently functioning company - set up as a Polish company with its own board of executives.

When establishing the station, Panopa was looking for a closer contact to the technical university and logistic institute. Installing all the cross-divisional supply chain functions it would have been a unique chance to bind junior staff members to the company. Being in the early stage of development it would have been quite easy to integrate students writing their examination paper who in return could have profited from the experiences of the experts responsible to build up the company. Unfortunately, Panopa did not succeed. The only student who was interested was a guy who had Polish roots but had grown up and studied in Germany.

A lose exchange with the German headquarter is established when Polish employees attend programs on how to meet the quality standard of calculating propositions. Therefore they visit the German headquarters and are introduced how propositions are made, which devices are used, how the program works, ... Based on the same idea the Polish man in charge for controlling spends several weeks at a time in Germany to watch and learn when new software was purchased.
Besides the technical aspects this sort of exchange is to get acquainted to the practices of doing things, to the way decisions are made... ("So das nach Möglichkeit die Standards und Entscheidungswege so wie wir sie hier haben nach dorthin übertragen werden." Dr. Hucht, 16.02 min.) This ensures a smooth working flow: a decision on investment in or for Poznań is a decision that has to be backed up by the German parent company as well. This means that the decision making process is initiated and prepared in Poznań, that the plan then is accredited by the board of executives and is afterwards - like all other projects of Panopa - passed to the German board of executives. Therefore it is helpful to work by the same structures and the same forms and preprints.
In the field of qualification management all employees are trained in Germany. Workshops are certified on a pan-European level and employees in all divisions and countries of Panopa can take part in a training run in Duisburg by the German headquarter. The participants then are observed by the responsible German employees of Panopa in an auditing at their respective work setting. Participating successfully employees can acquire a pan-European certificate guaranteeing quality management.

Besides this advanced training, Panopa conducts driving classes for forklift drivers. This is simply due to the fact that the company did not find enough employees in this field. Panopa also faced problems with fake documents ("Sie können in Polen nicht unbedingt glauben, dass wenn Ihnen einer einen Schein vorlegt, dass das nicht der vom Bruder ist." Vieth, 18.07 min.) Consequently every applicant gets to take driving classes to make sure he can actually drive a forklift. This training is completely financed by Panopa even though they are confronted with a high fluctuation rate: potential employees take the benefits of the extra qualification and apply at other companies. Nevertheless, Panopa sees this to be the only way to get qualified forklift drivers. ("Anders hat man keine Chance - sie kriegen keine Staplerfahrer." Vieth, 18.32 min.)

In general the workforce is characterized by a high fluctuation rate. Panopa tries to meet that by appropriate payments and by fair working conditions, thus keeping their staff happy. However, the extreme high fluctuation rate does not come about by employees switching to other companies in the area of Poznań but by the general shift of workforce towards other European countries, especially Ireland and England. Last year 8000 young people from the area of Poznań alone moved to work abroad. Having graduated from university and knowing English well enough they plan on two, three, four years abroad to earn the big bucks and to then return to Poland when the market has grown even more. By then they know perfect English, German already anyway and have a solid education. ("Die sprechen dann Deutsch, sprechen Englisch und haben eine entsprechende Ausbildung." Vieth, 19.29 min.)

Education in general plays an important role. Mr. Vieth says that he experienced the Polish staff to be extremely eager for knowledge. Being offered a training at the weekend Germany employees would ask for extra payment and a substituting day off, while Polish employees would only ask for the training's fee to be paid. ("Die polnischen Mitarbeiter, so wie ich sie da kennengelernt habe, sind unheimlich wissbegierig. Ich bring's mal knapp auf einen Nenner: wenn Sie in Deutschland ein Mitarbeiter fragen, ob er Samstag, Sonntag Zeit hat, dann ist meistens die erste Frage: 'Wie wird das vergütet?', 'Wann krieg ich dafür frei?' [...] In Polen ist die einzige Frage: 'Wer bezahlt den Lehrgang?' [...] Der Mitarbeiter will nichts haben." Vieth, 19.45 min. "Da ist der Wille zu lernen deutlich stärker ausgeprägt als bei uns." Vieth, 20.30 min. "Das ganze Ausbildungsgeschäft läuft Samstag/Sonntag, nicht unter der Woche." Vieth, 20.38 min.)
Meeting this eagerness to learn with additional training offers, Panopa manages to bind employees to the company and profits from the advantages of home-grown staff.

Nevertheless, Panopa has problems to find enough employees. Additional to the high emigration rate there is also a tight competition among companies because they are all looking for the same kind of employee. Even though they are partners Volkswagen and Panopa ran into problems building up their subsidiaries at the same time. While Volkswagen was stocking up their staff from 2000 employees to 5000, Panopa was complementing their staff from 130 to 700 employees nowadays. Consequently it was difficult to alone fill the positions but also to find good people for the managerial levels. To keep the people in the management level proves to be just as difficult for the very same reasons: the competition for good employees is high. But competing in raising the salary is difficult. The budgets are quite reduced since everybody tries to produce as cheap as possible. ("Das heißt, da war der Bedarf für Leute da, gleichzeitig der wachsende Trend ins Ausland zu gehen, gepaart mit anderen Unternehmen, die sich in Polen ansiedeln, das heißt der Wettberwerb um gute Leute ist schon sehr groß. Damit natürlich auch die Schwierigkeit, die dann über finanzielle Möglichkeiten - denn was anderes ist es im Endeffekt erstmal nicht - so zu motivieren, dass sie bei der Stange bleiben. Weil gleichzeitig unser Kunde natürlich nach Polen geht, um günstiger zu werden. Das heißt, es ist auch nicht so ohne weiteres möglich über einen festgelegten Preis pro Fahrzeug, den wir da bekommen für unsere Dienstleistung, jetzt zu sagen, ich halt die Führungskräfte indem ich finanzielle Zugeständnisse mache. Weil der Topf aus dem das bezahlt wird, der ist einfach mal fix. Unser Kunde wird da nicht sagen: 'Na gut, dann zahl ich dir auch wieder mehr, weil du jetzt mehr Geld ausgeben musst, um deine Leute entsprechend zu motivieren." Dr. Hucht, 21.36 min).

Talking so much about education, I wondered if many people take vocational retraining like it happened in Germany after the reunification.
Mr. Vieth says that actually a lot of people understand their German studies and their accordant language skills as a basis to work in a German company. Even though they are not qualified for any specific job. ("Viele, die Germanistik dort unten studieren, nutzen ihre Deutschkenntnisse, um in deutschen Unternehmen zu arbeiten. Das hat nichts damit zu tun, dass die vom Fach sind. Sie werden dort unten niemanden finden, einen Polen, der deutsch spricht und nebenbei perfekt im Buchhaltungswesen ist. Den werden Sie überhaupt nicht treffen. Den müssen Sie ausbilden. Die Bereitschaft muss man mitbringen, wenn man sich dort langfristig etablieren will und auch einen vernünftigen Stamm ausbauen will." Vieth, 22.40 min.)
In general there is no system of apprenticeship like we know it in Germany. While we run through a dual structure of training-on-the-job and additional school, people in Poland get into their jobs by additional training. If somebody might apply for a job in accounting that person would attend a three-week program in accounting. The workshops would of course take place during the weekend while the applicant learns the actual work on the job. ("Das läuft wirklich gezielt: So, sie soll jetzt in die Buchhaltung. Jetzt macht sie drei Wochen an den Wochenenden jeweils den Lehrgang, den Lehrgang, den Lehrgang." Vieth, 23.32 min. "Das läuft also nicht wie bei uns im dualen Ausbildungssystem mit Berufsschule und nebenbei arbeiten." Vieth, 23.53 min.)

At the same time Panopa employs quite some students. Financially limited most students have to work to afford their studies. Thus they work as forklift driver during the week and study at the weekend: up to 18 hours. ("Die müssen einerseits das Geld verdienen, damit sie ihre Wohnung, ihre Familie bezahlen können und das Studium läuft am Wochenende, Samstag, Sonntag: Samstag 10 Stunden und Sonntags acht Stunden. Da machen die jedes Wochenende 18 Stunden." Vieth, 2nd: 02.01 min.)
Thus working at Panopa is not seen as a basis for entering a career in the company - it simply pays money. On the other hand studying - as was mentioned before - serves first of all the purpose to obtain a certificate of higher education. Everything else can be arranged afterwards.
Most of the staff will not stay at Panopa once they finished their studies. The company simply cannot take so many employees considering that there are only around 60 positions in administration while the rest of the 650 jobs are merely operational.

[p.429]
The purpose of training is defined based on Bhawuk and Brislin (2000) as "formal efforts for preparing people for living in other cultures". Referring to Black and Mendenhall (1990) it should improve cultural awareness, interpersonal adjustment, and managerial effectiveness. Brislin and Yoshida (1994) further call for training to improve interpersonal relations and job success.

Training from 50 years ago aimed at shocking their participants. The cultural encounter was understood to provoke a culture shock which Oberg (1960) as an anxiety resulting "'from losing all your familiar signs and symbols of social discourse' (p.177)". The idea was to vorwegnehmen this shock and to then offer the possibility to discuss the matter in the safe environment of home grounds. The trainee was to be involved emotionally and actively. Consequently, lectures were substituted by experiental training methods (Harrison & Hopkins, 1967; Kolb, 1976) including area simulations (Trifonovitch, 1977) and a cultural self-awareness model developed by Kraemer (1973, 1974).
In the seventies the idea of a culture-assimilator became popular. These assimilators feature several incidents typical for cross-cultural interactions. An example would be the story of person XY who has lived in the country for 3 months already but does not find any social contact. How come? The trainee is then offered several possible answers of which one or more can be right.

• Everybody is just very busy with work. Work and social life are clearly separated.
• The host nationals already have enough friends and expected XY to have other foreigners as friends.
• XY is regarded as member of a lower social and economic class and thus not suitable as friend.

In this case a discussion could for example follow on pre-existing social networks and on how to possibly integrate into them.
While the given example bases on a general culture-assimilator, normally one of the given alternatives in a culture-specific assimilator would reflect the point of view of the host country, another the one of the expatriate's home country. The aim is to raise awareness and to prepare for better interpersonal realtionships (e.g., Chemers, 1969; Fiedler, Mitchel & Triandis, 1971; Gudykunst & Hammer, 1983; Malpass & Salancik, 1977; Tolbert, 1990).
[p.430]
Other training methods would be the cultural analysis system as introduced by Lee (1966) or the contrast-America method developped by Stewart (1966). These two methods and the general culture-assimilator aim on the trainee to become aware of his/her own values and culture-specific behavior.
Black and Mendenhall (1999) further advised training to consider social learning theory principles as described/defined by Bandura (1977) and behavior modeling training. Furthermore, Bhawuk (1995, 1998) developed culture-assimilators based on theory, thus conceptualizing the training stages as intercultural expertise development.

Examining the effectiveness of cross-cultural training concerning self-development, perception, and relationships with the host country nationals Deshpande and Viswesvaran (1992) found that training had the strongest effect on the expatriate's self-development but not so much on his/her job performance.

Ones and Sinangile conclude their chapter on expatriate training with the following numbers:

• In the beginning of the 1990s only 25% of companies would train the employees prior to sending them abroad (Black & Gregersen, 1991).
• Of the 32 companies questioned (all ranked among the Fortune 500 companies) Anderson Consulting (Cuthill, 1997) found
  94% to send their expatriates-to-be to language courses
  69% to send their expatriates in preparation to a cross-cultural training
• Numbers conducted by Windham International (1999) revealed 63% of 250 organization to send their expatriates to a preparing cross-cultural training.

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