Executive Summary

This report highlights the need for an expatriate for the United States (US) working as a manager in a Chinese hotel to be culturally intelligent for effective management of culturally diverse groups and development of work practices that are culture sensitive. The report shall therefore explore the basic facts about China as well as the cultural values of the people of China, and what such values implies for the management of the hotel by the expatriate. Additionally, this report shall study the cultural values of China from the perspective of the four cultural dimensions of Hofstde and discuss how Chinese cultural values affect or impact on diverse practices including recruitment of employees, the process of decision making among teams, employee motivation and productivity issues. Highlighted further in the report are the four dimensions of cultural intelligence (CQ) and specifically, this part shall emphasize the need for the new expatriate from the US to display some dimensions of cultural intelligence  in his new work environment. The aim of this report therefore shall be to show that cultural intelligence is a valuable competence that an expatriate needs to possess in order to become an effective manager and avoid cultural blunders for successful execution of foreign assignments. Findings indicate that the number of expatriates is steadily rising due to fast paced globalization and this call for the need for global leaders and manager taking foreign assignments to be culturally intelligent for effective cross cultural management.

Introduction

The twenty first century working environment is characterized by, racial, gender and cultural diversity among employees as result of fast paced globalization which has resulted to increased intensity of interactions among individuals of diverse backgrounds at the work place. The high rate of globalization has also resulted to increased number of multinational organizations, work oriented migrations to new countries, and an upsurge in the general number of expatriates taking on foreign assignments. It is a common practice especially among multinational companies to assign their employees management, leadership or technical responsibilities in foreign countries with the intention of transferring knowledge, building relationships with the host country and providing employee with an opportunity to grow career wise in the host country. The global and diverse nature of diverse work environments requires that expatriates show a high degree of competence in cultural intelligence in order that they may effectively cope and execute their duties successfully in the new cultural environments. For expatriate managers therefore, cultural intelligence is a necessity since apart from enhancing managerial capabilities of the expatriate, it is also vital in developing a cordial working practices in a diverse workforce. For most European countries and the US, increased globalization and competition has seen them look for new opportunities across the globe to diversify their market and increase profitability. The rapid economic growth witnessed in China has mad China one of the global economic powerhouses and a gift for most western organizations to open up branches of their multinational companies in China. The expansion of foreign or multinational organization has been witnessed in all sectors of the economy including the hotel and hospitality industry. The effect of such multinational organizations investing in china has been a steady increase in the number of expatriates in china. The new setting has necessitated the need for western expatriates to adjust to the Chinese cultural environment and the challenges for most expatriates has been  substantial considering the fact that they are faced with the pressure of posting excellent performance in a country with remarkable cultural differences compared to theirs. An expatriate manager who is culturally intelligent not only shows knowledge about others’ cultures, but also mindfulness and cultural awareness that is key to successful  managerial practices such as hiring, decision making in teams and employee motivation. This report aims at discussing the Chinese cultural values and their managerial implications for the new manager in china from US. The report further aims at addressing the value of cultural intelligence in managerial practices and the need for such manager to posses and display competences in diverse cultural contexts. To begin with, this report will discuss the basic fact about china and then proceed to important cultural values of the Chinese and the implications of such values on management. After this, the report shall discuss the cultural values in the context of Hofstde cultural dimension of and the dimensions of cultural intelligence that the expatriate manager should display. Lastly, how the four factor model of cultural intelligence will help the new manager avoid committing some cultural blunders in his new work station.

Source of Data and Data analysis Procedures

For successful completion of this report, secondary sources including online and electronic books, academic journals, news paper articles, government documents, business magazines, and peer reviewed journals shall be used to obtain information on the contents of the report. A systemic review of relevant literature regarding cultural intelligence, four dimensions of cultural intelligence and Hofstde cultural dimension shall be shall be performed using the internet, precisely Google search engine, Google scholar and Ebscohost.  For validity and reliability of the sources, non-scholastic websites shall be avoided and only sources recommended for academic purposes such as Google scholar and Ebscohost shall be used. This will increase validity and reliability of the report since most of the journals used will be peer reviewed. A total of about eight sources relevant to the research topic will be carefully examined and conclusions made from these literatures.

Findings and Discussion

Globalization and the rapid growth of the Chinese economy has attracted most stakeholder in the hotel industry to expand their branches to china with the intention of reaping the benefits from the huge Chinese population and a growing economy in order to increase their profitability. With such large number of consumers and the rising number of international travels to china, the hotel industry has attracted most investors in the sector which has in turn resulted to an increase in the number of expatriate manager sent to china to manage these hotels. For a new expatriate manager to understand and successfully execute his new role, an understanding of general fact about china is just as important as the need for cultural intelligence.

Basic Facts of China

The country the new expatriate form US has been sent to take a managerial position is the People’s Republic of china, or simply china. The country’s capital city is Beijing and as per the 2013 census, its population stood at 1.36 billion. In terms of location, the country occupies the Easter Asia and has several borders including Korea bay and East China sea among others. It also borders some countries such as Vietnam, Russia, and North Korea. Economic reforms and the opening up of the country to foreign investors and international travels country has seen the country’s economy grow marginally to about 10% annually making it the fastest growing economy and the second largest economy after the United states. The large population is suitable for providing ready market for both local and foreign investors. The currency of the country is renminbi and the stability of the currency has been important in enabling the country attract substantial amount of reserves.