LDT 506 Unit 3 Discussion. Problem with Cross-cultural mixed environment

 Given:

You are the leader of an External Evaluation Team that has been contracted by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation to conduct an external evaluation of a company training program. The company is based in the U.S. in Des Moines, Iowa but has a global presence with offices in London, Shanghai, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The company manufactures the P-5000 Work Loader, which has a working capacity of 4,000 kg. (8,818 lbs.). The loader is used to lift and move heavy objects, and its primary purpose is to load cargo onto ships. The company was the first to market with this type of loader, and even though other companies have copied it, it is still arguably the best loader available. Despite the fact that there is clear evidence that it has improved workplace safety by 300%, sales of the loader have been lagging.

Weyland-Yutani's Training and Development department conducted a front-end analysis and discovered that the sales team is struggling with a performance gap. The gap is related to the way the sales staff communicates with potential clients, and the primary problem that was identified is that the sales associates aren't able to consistently close the sale by "asking" for the sale

Links to an external site.. A training program was developed by the company to address the performance gap, and it has had limited success. One of the stated goals of the training program was to increase sales by 10% annually, and while the Des Moines office is doing well, and London is doing better, Shanghai and Riyadh are still not meeting their sales goals.

Step 3:

Based on the scenario you read in Step 2, reply to this thread and respond to the following questions:

    In this type of culturally mixed environment, what obstacles are you likely to encounter when conducting your evaluation?
    What issues do you need to consider when designing your evaluation?
    As the lead evaluator, what privilege and power do you and your team have in this situation, and does it differ between each group?
    What steps can evaluators take to learn about the culture of the evaluator's stakeholders to conduct a more effective evaluation?
 

MY Response:

 

U3: Canvas Discussion – Cross-Cultural Competency in Evaluation
Timothy Copley
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University
506 LDT
Professor Lindsey Donhauser
March 29, 2023

External Evaluation of Weyland-Yutani P-5000 Work Loader Sales deficiency.

This evaluation is being conduction in association with Weyland-Yutani and the sales department in the hope of discovering why there is a performance gap in sales between anticipated and actual sales in some of the company locations.  Weyland-Yutani is a global organization with offices in The United States, England, China and Saudi Arabia.  A sales training program has increased sales in The United States and England, however the Sales in China and Saudi Arabia have not seen any anticipated increases.  This evaluation is to try to determine the cause of the deficiency in sales.

In developing this external evaluation there are several "Key Characteristics that affect interactions among people" that have to be kept in mind which could influence how different people react differently to the same questions / surveys, which include Culture, Social Identity and Privilege.  Each has it's own issues and will be addressed in the following Sections.

Because the sales program was developed in the United states and has similar results in England the focus of this evaluation will be toward differences between the different locations.

Obstacles that might be faced:

Obstacles in Culture: which is the learned beliefs that shape a population, and the things to keep in mind for this evaluation regarding Culture.

• Communication.  What does it take for this evaluation to be effective in Chinese or Arabic.  Translations from one language to another, although technically correct in the translation could have a different meaning to the reader.
• Norms: We should assume that the same word however translated could mean different things to different Cultures.  Every cultures concept of a particular word could be different.  They could even be different to different groups inside the same culture.

Obstacles in Social Identity, meaning the sense of who they are.  How could social identity become obstacles to our evaluation.

• Unspoken expectations.  Does our team feel like one of them?  Or is our evaluation team outsiders?
• Diversity in Evaluation team.  Do we have enough diversity, even in a particular culture, to effectively conduct this evaluation?

Obstacles in Power or Privilege creates a whole host of issues.  What are the advantage one of these groups might have over the other, and how does our evaluation team have privilege or power over the group being evaluated?

• How does "The Evaluators" privilege impact our ability to perform this evaluation.  How does access to resources or education impact the Staffs perception of this evaluation?
• will our results impact the group taking the evaluation?  Will there be a stigma on the group responding to the evaluation?  This could be positive or negative.

Issues to Consider
Issues to consider with Culture:

• Communication.  Not all communication is verbal.  Our Evaluation team should have members trained with the P-5000 as well as fluent in the native language 
• Norms:  Our evaluation team should be a part of the culture for reference.  Just speaking the language doesn't mean they understand all the interpretation of a particular word.

Issues to consider with Social Identity:

• Do the people being evaluated appear to be outsiders?  Or do we appear to be one of them?
• Do the evaluators even if they come from the culture appear to be in the same cast and the people being evaluated.  Is the evaluator unclean?  Or are they one of them?

Issues to Consider with Privilege or Power:

• Did the person working on the evaluation, even if they are from the culture being evaluated, have access to education or resources not normally available to the people being evaluated?
• Do the results of our evaluation impact how the person taking the evaluation is seen or regarded in the organization?

What is the Impact of my teams privilege on the Evaluation:

• The evaluation team needs to understand how our culture differs and what privileges and power we might have that the evaluated might not have had access.  Including both resources and education.
• Do our policies or procedures, that might seem normal to us being evaluators, affect the staff's evaluation?  Will these be perceived differently in China versus Saudi Arabia?
• Do our procedures allow us to collect a complete samples and at the best time for us to get relevant results?  Are these different in China or Saudi Arabia 
• Does the fact we are performing this evaluation place a stigma on the group taking the evaluation and how can we mitigate that issue?  Perhaps the evaluation should appear as if it was coming from the different group or from within the culture?

How can we conduct a more effective evaluation
Given the types of issues described above, how can we as the evaluator perform a more effective evaluation?

Regarding Culture:  Some things that we can do or use to mitigate differences of culture include:

• Understand the different cultural groups and it's norms.
• Get our staff and evaluation team introduced into the groups in order get a good sampling for evaluation.
• Understand what do the different terms in our evaluation mean to the different cultural groups being evaluated.  We need to reword questions to make sure they mean the same thing to China or Saudi Arabia that they mean to a citizen of the U.S or Great Britain.
• Pilot-test our instrument to make sure it's giving reliable results.

Regarding Social Identity:  Steps we can follow to mitigate issues in Social identity and social standing to conduct a more effective evaluation.

• Build relationships and trust with the group be evaluated.
• Acquire resources with multicultural validity to perform the evaluation.
• Understand current political and media issues that impact our evaluation.

Regarding Power or Privilege  Steps or questions to understand how we can conduct an evaluation with regards to our Power or Privilege

• Given the political temperature between the United States and China, or the United States and Saudi Arabia.  We need to ask questions in such a way that they don't create issues.
• We  cannot make assumptions about the stakeholders and staff being evaluated.
• We should create an atmosphere in which the instrument or interview is convenient accessible, familiar and comfortable for the staff being evaluated.
• We should make clear statements on how data is collected and intended use so participants feel comfortable providing information.

Based upon this review, I am sure that it would be possible to evaluate the two locations China and Saudi Arabia and bring the sales up in the respective regions.

References

Lee, K. (2007). The importance of culture in evaluation: A practical guide for evaluators.