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Cross-Cultural Awareness As international business expands, employees at any level in a major company or corporation in the the world may find themselves assigned to a foreign subsidiary or branch and for either a short or long-term sojourn. And this has been going on for years. Tourism is yearly on the increase thanks to ease and low cost of travel and sometimes generous vacation time. However, visiting a foreign country for pleasure is vastly different to actually living there and holding a full-time job, even for a single person let alone a married person with a family. Today's expatriates are younger, possess specific skills, and if married, have children of school age. This is quite different to earlier days when overseas appointments went to older key administrators and executives and led in many cases to what was called "executive wife syndrome". A typical case would be a happy manager going about his company's business, albeit in a foreign country, surrounded by helpful support staff whereas the wife, suddenly thrown into a foreign environment, perhaps with older children, probably lacking foreign language skills, would face a monumental task in adapting to a vastly different culture, environment, and new rules. Not a happy family or marriage situation. This still holds true. However, many American companies are investing in providing future expatriates with solid cross-cultural awareness pertaining to the foreign country to which they will be sent. This can be in-house, or a service provided by a business which specializes in this area. Business schools too are including courses that address these problems especially in the critical area of foreign language skills and sensitivity to cultures different from one's own. For a current update, see The Economist (December 16th - 22nd 2000): International Assignments: "Nasty, brutish and short"; also "Have wife, will travel," (pp. 70-73) http://www.economist.com for web edition and archive. Consult also: Global Business Languages: Culture and Cross-cultural Awareness in the Professions. 1997.Purdue Research Foundation: ISBN 0931682630. A collection of 15 excellent articles covering some seven countries. For a look at a typical service in this field of global relocation, try Windham International's website: http://www.windhamint.com
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