Starting a multinational company in a foreign country requires full attention, good skills and a well experienced manager who understands the nature of the task, the goals of the organization and can help develop a clear vision of exactly how operations will help achieve them. Proton Holdings Berhad is a Malaysian automobile manufacturer with its headquarter in Selangor. it operates an additional manufacturing plant in Perak. The company was established in 1983 as the sole national car company until the advent of Perodua in 1993. (corporate.proton.com). In this case, Proton is considering expanding its manufacturing operation by purchasing a factory in China.
Therefore, as China becomes an attraction for foreign direct investment …show more content…
International experience can provide opportunities for both personal and professional development and a way to advance in ones career. Due to Expatriates are very expensive, this could make them no longer useful. Many companies have also experienced relatively high failure rates, with failure often being attributed to the family's inability to adapt. This inability to adjust to a new environment is expensive: the average cost per failure to the parent company has been estimated at between $65,000 and $300,000 (Mendenhall and Oddou, 1985; Zeira and Banai, 1985). As hinted by Hofstede (1993), the globalization of business brings the issue of regional and national differences to concern. Also, that there is something in all countries called management, but its ‘meaning’ varies to a larger or smaller extent from one nation to another.
According to R.B Peterson (2003), there are a number of factors that facilitates the integration of Expatriate staff with local staff. These includes; knowledge sharing. Cultural adaptability, encouraging local innovation, overseas experience, respect, speaking the local language, relationship-building, developing local value-added from venture. On the other hand. The factors that hinders their integration are by not using team concept, dominating from head office, limited time in assignment. Spouse and family problems in adjusting, not learning local language and head …show more content…
Language barrier
The language barrier is the most obvious negative factor encountered by expatriates. Unfortunately, language training, which should be a part of the preparations for expatriate assignments, is very often neglected by companies. Realizing the importance of interacting with local people, for example, my uncle and two other colleagues were sent by their company to serve as the operation manger for the Telecommunication company. My uncle started learning Mandarin on his own initiative, but the others quickly gave up as they considered it a tough language to learn. Chinese employees can be sensitive to the language skills of the foreign expatriates (in this case the Malaysian Expatriate). However an expatriate’s willingness to speak Chinese can be reflected well his or her commitment to working in China. As noted by Brislin (1993), an expatriate’s willingness to use the host country’s language has a greater influence on successful adjustment than does the actual level of fluency in the language.
3.4. Compensation