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1. Summarize your thoughts on the problems at hand, alternative solutions and

your strategy on how to proceed at the forthcoming meeting.

The Tex-Mark company has a few short comings in terms of the policies we implement.

First of all we find that the expatriates we send to these countries of interest have little cultural

sensitization of the countries they are being sent to. The training is not extensive enough because

under these policies, an 18-month assignment turned into a 3-year assignment as seen in the case

of Fred Banks, (Dowling, Festing, & Engle, 2013) on his assignment to India. Through this

assignment, another short coming is also revealed, being the lack of willingness by expats to

train and handover responsibility to their local counterparts as that would undermine their

positions. Also, the fact that these expats lack the tolerance to deal with the local regulatory

authorities as there have been major delays on permits that should take shorter periods to be

processed.

This then means that the company has a whole in our policy, which is the lack of training

for the home country national engineers’, in order for them to take over from the expats we are

sending thus creating an overuse of funds over time where there is no need to with proper

trainings. The fact that there is unwillingness to train local engineers by our expatriates, points to

a lack of connection between them and this might also be in part due to language barriers as the

expats we send do not speak the local language thus exposing the flaw to our current policy on

language training where the feedback has not been positive with expats leaving for their

assignments without completing the training. (Dowling, Festing, & Engle, 2013)

Another issue that has been in my mind after the last remarks by Fred Banks, (Dowling,

Festing, & Engle, 2013), where he stated that we can never get to have our best engineers to go
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on expatriate assignments with the current treatment of our expatriates. Particularly in our

repatriation program which is next to non-existent as it does not help the repatriate in any form

with his acclamation back to his country after experiencing a different culture.

2. How will your proposal solve the problems you have defined?

To these problems, I have some suggestions. We should make the pre-departure activities

a mandatory undertaking with a reviewed outlook of activities undertaken. Country briefings

should be more extensive in that they should sensitize the candidate in the intercultural

communication business practices of the country in question. This is so that we can tackle the

issue of the disconnection between the expats and their local counterparts. Ensure that the

candidate is aware of how to go about dealing with local regulatory authorities as to reduce the

delays in permits.

The language trainings program should be cut, and instead allocate a budget for provision

of local translators for our expatriates who will also serve the purpose of educating them on local

cultures. There should not exist a difference in treatment due to difficulty of assignments, instead

review issues faced by our expatriates on a case by case basis, as each country is unique, through

the HR department. Repatriation program should include, home leave policies, therapy, extend

the mentorship program into the repatriation process, use their knowledge as expats themselves

to mentor new expatriate candidate and most importantly offer help to their children and spouses

in the process of re-acclamation.

3. How can you defend your solution from budgetary concerns? In what way is

your approach both a solution to the problems of expatriates at Tex-Mark and a

good economic investment?

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These changes will reduce the budget cost in the long run, as they will reduce the

durations of assignments through the change in policies.

1) Does Eric’s personal background assist in his assessment of the problems he

faces?

Eric’s personal background has a huge impact on his assessments as a well-travelled

multi-lingual individual with experience dealing with different cultures.

2) Would you have approached this situation differently? If so, what benefits

would your different approach provide for Tex-Mark?

I would also have approached these issues with the same view as that of Eric’s as his

views are both a boon for business relationships as well as personal relationships with people of

all walks of life.

References
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Dowling, P. J., Festing, M., & Engle, A. D. (2013). International human resource management
(6th ed., pp. 284-286). Cengage Learning.