| Abstract [eng] |
Business globalization trends raise the new priorities for management theory and practice. Furthermore, being the member of European Union provides new opportunities for Lithuanian companies to reach foreign markets. This situation increases the need of expatriates doing international assignments and working in foreign cultural settings. The goal of this work is – to create an international assignment model based on cross-cultural management theories and practices, which could help expatriates to adopt better to foreign organization cultures. The objectives are: 1) to make the analysis of culture, management and cross cultural management theories; 2) to analyze cross cultural models; 3) to examine the international assignment models; 4) to analyze expatriate training models; 5) suggest new cross cultural model, which minimizes cross cultural gap of expatriates. The object of the research is expatriates working in International organizations who are going to make, making or made International assignments. For research the author used such methods: 1) the analysis of scientific literature; 2) the empirical research; 3) data analysis. The first part of the work, discloses major theoretical issues of cross cultural management and organizational culture. In the second part it is made the review of expatriates International assignment models. In the third part it is given the analysis of available services of consultancy companies working in cross-cultural training business and research (which was carried in 2008, April 15 – May 9) results of expatriates from Lithuanian organizations who were sent to do international assignments and define which problems they had. And finally there is suggested international assignment model, which could minimize the cross-cultural gap for expatriates in foreign culture. Major conclusions and suggestion of the MBA paper are: 1) main reasons why organizations are sending their workers on international assignments are: to fill the positions; management development; organization development; 2) cross cultural teaching methods are: cultural simulator; contrast method; simulations of sitations; cultural assimilator; 3) according to carried research, workers, who had cross cultural training had less problems during the international assignment; 4) author is proposing a model which consists of nine parts: research, planning, selection, primary orientation, training, expatriation, finishing of international assignment, repatriation and assignment evaluation. It should help to minimize the cultural gap of expatriates. Work consists of 68 pages, where are 11 tables and 28 drawings. |
