Navigating the Challenges of Global Expansion

MAgh an indirect career route. Eric had graduated from Churchill High School and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, with a major in History and a minor in Spanish.

His maternal grandmother lived in Tennesse, but was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Eric had spent several summers while in high school and at University backpacking around Europe. His facility for languages was impressive and he had an excellent working use of Spanish, French, Italian, and German. He could converse in Cantonese, as the result of working I a noodle restaurant during university, and had started a tutorial course in Mandarin last fall.

Problem Identification:

Tex-Mark, a company that was started in the late 1970’s, is a manufacturer of printer and optical scanner in the United States and across the globe. Tex Mark has expanded their operations to be split between their HQ office in San Antonio, TX and moved product development, sales and distribution to other parts of the globe.

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It has operations in countries such as Australia, Brazil France, India Israel and Hong Kong. The company takes employees: expatriates, and places them within those countries to run their engineering operations abroad.

Tex Mark has developed a training program for these expatriates before their decent into international territory to ensure that they are comfortable managing human resources and implementing various programs, cross culturally, this program has failed (Allen D Engle Sr, 2004). As a spin off from Dell Computer Company, Tex Mark wasn’t the only one having an issue that day; Eric Christopher was not having the best morning either.

Sitting in traffic contemplating the day’s tasks along with trying to resolve the issue of. In the beginning of the case study, Eric is stuck in traffic and because of this his whole day is thrown off track. Rescheduling meetings and pushing back conference calls was the first feat in Eric’s day.

Along with the present day of stress, to accompany his outstanding career thus far, Eric has taken on the burden of school as well. Trying to further his education that will accompany his global knowledge and extensive language skills.

As outlined by Fred Banks, the engineer sent to Mexico and India has issues with the training program that Tex Mark has in place. The employees were encountering relationships issue within the company and with other employees brought on by the cultural differences within those relationships. The project that was supposed to take 18 months was drawn out into a 3-year term (Allen D Engle Sr, 2004). Pre-departure activities

1. ‘Country briefings’, outsourced to a consulting firm in San Antonio that had experience dealing with the countries in which Tex-Mark operated. Tex-Mark was prepared to pay for four sessions each lasting one hour.
2. ‘Reading Assignments’. Three to four books (depending on region of assignment) on national or regional culture and/or doing business in the focal region. Accompanying spouses/partners had access to a similar library.‘Interviews and conversations’ with Tex-Mark employees with country experiences.
3. ‘Language courses’. Attendance at elective ‘survival level’ language classes. These courses last from eight to twelve weeks, with three course meetings a week. Tex-Mark will pay for spouses/partners as well.

In-country training and development

Upon arrival, Tex-Mark staff in the local operation will assist the accompanying spouse/partner with job search activities. They will assist with finding children acceptable schooling situations. Where possible, Tex-Mark staff will endeavour to provide a social support network.

Repatriation

Upon return all expatriates are required to go through a debriefing and career counselling session with HR staff. This should be held within two months of the person’s re-entry to the home location.

The problem has four sections

• The expectations of expatriates
• Pre-departure and in‐country training
• Repatriation
• The costs and use of expatriates vs. HCNs or TCNs

Alternatives range from “tactical” (expand and formalize the pre-departure training, making language training mandatory) to more “strategic” (revising roles to require mandatory mentoring by the local host and the expatriate, longer term, more complete and planned out career dynamics)