CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS
4.3 Cross-Case Analysis
time. However, there is no guarantee that Chinese employees can fully understand the foreign culture, and a certain degree of cultural misunderstanding still exists.
Intercultural trainings of Xiaomi Corporation, OPPO Electronics Corporation, and ZTE Corporation have all covered these three aspects, but their emphasis is various from companies. Several intercultural training contents that all these three Chinese electronic companies attach great importance are described in detail as following, as well as their specific practices.
(1) General Description of China
The training content of it is including basic national conditions, language features, cultural differences, customs and manners, traffic information, and so on. And interviewees have all mentioned that it is a compulsory course for those foreign employees in their companies. Moreover, Russian Manger B in OPPO referred
“On the first day we entered the company, each of us had been given a booklet about China's information written in many languages such as English, Russian, Indian, Thai, and so on. This helped us quickly know more about China.”
(2) Company Overview
This training content mainly includes the company's corporate culture, organizational structure, staffing, working environment, and human resource system, so that foreign employees are familiar with the working environment and colleagues, laying a good foundation for their efficient work.
It is proved that implementing corporate culture consistently is conducive to optimize the employee commitment, and thus to maintain team efficiency and organization productivity (Ramdhani et al., 2017). As mentioned above, whatever Xiaomi, OPPO, or ZTE, they all attach great importance to their corporate culture construction, and which is first reflected in the induction training for new employees.
Russian Manager A in Xiaomi referred that
“The induction meeting for new employees is almost the grandest one ever held by Xiaomi in my memory. Leaders would introduce some detailed information about our company, the employee welfare and promotion systems, and many important issues
that we concerned about. Anyway, after I attended, I was greatly encouraged and decided to contribute myself to Xiaomi.”
Moreover, Russian Manager C in ZTE mentioned their buddy program once again that
“In addition to the necessary induction meeting, the buddy program, is another main means taken for our new foreign employees to work adaptability. Take me as an example, during the first year I worked in ZTE, my buddy helped me a lot in daily work.
For example, he helped me be more aware of my working function and culture differences, so as to avoid many cultural conflicts within team cooperation.”
(3) Language Training
Language ability is crucial for job performance and cross-cultural adaptation. No matter how different the culture of the working country is from the culture of your own country, learning the local language is as important as better adapting work and enhancing cultural awareness (Lou & Noels, 2019). That is to say, if Russian employees have the ability to speak Chinese fluently, it is beneficial for their work efficiency and negotiation ability.
However, since working in Chinese electronic companies is already busy, all the language training programs adopted by these three companies are not mandatory.
Xiaomi has bought various kinds of language online courses, which are available free for its employees. And there is no time limit for these language courses, so that it is more friendly for employee's learning. OPPO cooperates with some language teaching institutions to provide learning opportunities for its foreign employees. That is to say, if its foreign employees are willing to learn Chinese, OPPO will pay for their language courses to support his foreign language learning in language teaching institutions.
Likewise, ZTE has its own language training program, that is hiring long-term professional language teachers for its foreign employees. It is more convenient to ask for help, whenever they meet language problems within the daily work in the company.
But the Russian Manager C in ZTE considered it is a useless measure.
“Although the original intention of the company is to help us foreign employees to solve some language problems we encounter in our daily work, in fact, these language teachers, or translators, do not play a due role. Because they do not understand a lot of technical operations and some professional terms. As for teaching us Chinese, our daily work is enough hard, so that there is simply no time to attend those language teaching courses.”
(4) Intercultural Communication and Conflict-Handling
Intercultural communication refers to the behavioral process between people or groups with different cultural backgrounds through expressing ideas, conveying information, exchanging emotions, and forming interactions (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2018). And the difference between culture and language expressions is the most important factor that causes communication barriers in intercultural communication.
Xiaomi has recognized that both barriers and conflicts in intercultural communication are important variables influencing employee behavior and performance, so that it holds regular reporting seminars, which enlightens their foreign employees to communicate more with colleagues and share their cultural confusions.
(5) Intercultural Interpersonal Skill
In addition to the language skill, intercultural interpersonal skill also includes the ability to acknowledge differences in communication and interaction styles, be flexible in dealing with communication misunderstandings, feel comfortable when communicating with foreign nationals, and so on (Matveev, 2002).
This item is also listed in the questionnaire survey, what's more, the average scores of it is higher than the other three parts of intercultural competence, which also proves that Chinese electronic companies pay attention to the intercultural interpersonal skill of their Russian employees. Russian Manager B described an approach adopted by OPPO on intercultural interpersonal training
“Our company encourages departments to organize parties at some important festivals, and some important festivals in Russia are included, such as Women's Day
and Victory Day. On the one hand, it can ease our miss for homeland, on the other hand, I consider that to some extent, the company hopes to enhance our intercultural interpersonal ability through this way. When people at a relaxed atmosphere, it is easier for them to communicate with others and improve their relationships.”
(6) Cultural Sensitivity
Cultural sensitivity training is a way to cultivate self-awareness and improve the ability to get along with others from a psychological perspective. Kurt Lewin, a great American psychologist, believed that cultural sensitivity training is an effective way to enhance intercultural awareness, and in 1964 he created a method that can be used to improve interpersonal relationships and eliminate cultural barriers.
According to Kurt Lewin’s sensitivity training method, 10-15 employees should be concentrated far away from the company to take a training for 1-2 weeks. During this training process, professional psychologists will train them, and what they need to do is to communicate frankly with each other. In this way, they will discover some totally new cultural differences, break these cultural barriers, and thus enhance cooperation between different cultural groups.
In fact, it is almost an unrealistic approach for Chinese electronic companies to implement. However, these Chinese electronic companies try to improve a suitable approach for their own companies. As Russian Manager A in Xiaomi said that
“When I just came to work in Xiaomi, there were not so many employees in the company at that time. I very luckily participated in a one-week outdoor training program organized by Xiaomi, which was similar to a kind of military training. During that week, I lived and did many interesting activities with many colleagues, which enhanced the ability to flexible express my emotions and attitudes. What a pity is that with the rapid increase in the number of employees, this kind of training activity that can promote relationships within colleagues is no more possible to hold again.”
Due to the limitations of the existing cultural sensitivity training approach, neither OPPO nor ZTE has yet taken a more effective method of cultural sensitivity cultivation for their Russian employees.
4.3.2 Modes of Intercultural Training
How to design intercultural training modes to enhance the intercultural competence of Russian employees is one of the important issues for Chinese electronic companies. According to the interviews with three key Russian informants, the intercultural trainings organized by Chinese electronic companies can be grouped into the following three modes.
Lecture-based Intercultural Training
The purpose of the lecture-based intercultural training is often to increase the intercultural knowledge of foreign employees. And it is also the most common training mode that Chinese electronic companies adopted for their foreign employees.
Seminar and area learning are two major forms of the lecture-based intercultural trainings, emphasizing the imparting of cultural knowledge (Gao & Wu, 2007). This training mode is with simple materials, strong pertinence, and low cost. Among these three Chinese electronic companies, OPPO plays better to the advantages of this intercultural training mode. Russian Manager B in OPPO stated that
“In addition to the language courses we can take voluntary, our company is also keen to hold various lectures on China culture, social customs, city information, and so on. In spite of this kind of training mode is traditional, there is still a lot of intercultural knowledge that can be learned. Moreover, it is a more effective way for those who want to enhance intercultural knowledge level in a short time.”
Analysis-based Intercultural Training
The analysis-based intercultural training refers to a training mode in which training experts and foreign employees analyze image materials or written materials together to analyze cultural conflict events caused by cultural differences, so as to improve foreign employees' ability to recognize cultural differences and adapt intercultural behaviors (Gao & Wu, 2007). It often includes case study, cultural comparison training, cultural sensitivity training, and so on.
This kind of intercultural training mode pays more attention to the analysis of cultural conflict events. It can be used to guide foreign employees to develop the right awareness, enhance their cultural sensitivity and cultural empathy, and thus gradually improve their intercultural competence. Russian Manager A in Xiaomi mentioned that
“Xiaomi is a company that attaches great importance to the cross-cultural adaptation of its foreign employees. The regular reporting seminar is actually an effective way for us to recognize the cultural differences and analyze together to enhance our cultural sensitivity. We can share our cultural confusion in seminars, and training experts will help us to analyze these issues.”
ZTE also conducts the analysis-based intercultural trainings for its Russian employees. Russian Manager C in ZTE stated that
“I deeply remember a training session I have attended in our company. During the first half of the training, experts just let us watch China movies. And then we analyzed together on some behaviors or scenarios that we could not understand in that movie. To be honest, it is interesting, and it is also easier for us to understand the cultural differences and intercultural behavior.”
Practice-based Intercultural Training
The practice-based intercultural training refers to the method of cultivating the foreign employee's intercultural cognitive skills and behavior through the interaction between the training experts and the foreign employee, or the foreign employee's personal experience (Gao & Wu, 2007). This mode of intercultural training includes participative training, role play, interactive learning, behavior modification, and so on.
The practice-based intercultural training is centered on the foreign employees, and it focuses on solving specific problems, which can achieve obvious results in the early stages of training. In addition, targeted behavior modification is instructive for foreign employees' cross-cultural adaptation. Whatever Xiaomi, OPPO or ZTE have adopted this kind of training mode for their Russian employees. Above all, the buddy program adopted by ZTE can be an important reference for other Chinese electronic companies.
“The buddy program our company taken is a kind of one-to-one targeted intercultural training. Through this targeted interactive learning, our foreign employees can directly get intercultural guidance from their buddies. Moreover, some different cultural behaviors of foreign employees can also be modified in time to avoid cultural conflicts.”
4.3.3 Common Practices of Intercultural Trainings
Analyzing these three companies, we can conclude some common practices of intercultural trainings both on contents and modes for Russian employees working Chinese electronic companies.
As we mentioned before, the six main contents of intercultural training that Chinese electronic companies attach great importance to are respectively “General Description of China”, “Company Overview”, “Language Training”, “Intercultural Communication and Conflict-Handling”, “Intercultural Interpersonal Skill”, and
“Cultural Sensitivity”.
In addition, all the lecture-based, analysis-based, and practice-based intercultural training modes are generally applied by Chinese electronic companies. Among these three modes, the most common one taken by Chinese electronic companies is the lectured-based intercultural training, which is a traditional intercultural training mode with the advantage of simple material, low cost, and strong pertinence.
Therefore, the common practices of intercultural training employed by Chinese electronic companies for their Russian employees have been concluded as above from both content and mode aspects.