¿Cómo ser preparado para la experiencia llamó China? Pamela Lau hizo una investigación científica interesante sobre el entrenamiento de la pre-salida para los expats que planeaban ir a China.Aunque hay un poco de literatura que pregunta el efecto del entrenamiento de la pre-salida (Kealy y Protheroe, 1996; Selmer y otros, 1998), está claro que según se expatria, el entrenamiento de la pre-salida es relevante. Con los datos obtenidos, las pruebas estadísticas fueron conducidas para crear una comprensión más profunda de las necesidades de se expatrian que son enviadas a China por sus compañías. entrenamiento cruz-cultural de la Pre-salida
Sorprendía absolutamente encontrar que solamente poco menos que la mitad de los respondedores recibió el entrenamiento de la pre-salida, aunque eran todo el funcionamiento para MNEs. Esto va contra la mayoría estudia hecho en la eficacia del entrenamiento cruz-cultural de la pre-salida (Forster, 2000; Romero, 2002; Waxin y Panaccio, 2005), aun cuando han mencionado que muchas compañías todavía no proporcionan el entrenamiento de la pre-salida. Hay varias razones que vienen importar al intentar destapar las razones de esta disposición baja del entrenamiento clasifican. La primera razón podría ser que el expatriado ha estado ya a China antes, y está ya al corriente de la cultura china o por lo menos ha formado ya algunas expectativas. Sin embargo, de los respondedores que no recibieron el entrenamiento de la pre-salida, sólo la mitad (9 encargados) había estado a China antes.

Otra razón posible es que el expatriado ha sido en anterior otras asignaciones extranjeras. La compañía entonces habría podido decidir que no es necesario que tengan entrenamiento de la pre-salida. Waxin and Panaccio (2005) mention that international experience is a moderator on the effect of cross-cultural training. This fact also is mentioned by some expatriates who noted that the extent to which some companies provide training or expatriates want or need pre-departure training depends on the previous foreign experiences of the expatriate manager. However, from the results it can also be seen that even though the expatriate is familiar or somewhat familiar with the Chinese culture, they still think pre-departure training is useful. As one respondent stated: “Even I would have benefited from a language refresher course and my degree is in Chinese”. Also, it should not be forgotten to mention that it might as well be that the company does not provide standardised pre-departure training, but provides the support after arrival in the host country. This is the case for Shell, which would explain why none of the respondents from Shell received pre-departure training. It should be noted however, that some of these respondents did indicate that they would have liked to receive pre-departure training.

The training elements that were found most important by the expatriates based on their own personal experience in China were 1. Culture, 2. Guanxi and 3. Language. This importance was not completely reflected in the actual training they received, where Language had been neglected. Companies should not ignore language training (Weiss and Bloom, 1990; Hutchings, 2005). According to Brislin (1993), using the host country’s language has a positive influence on expatriate adjustment and facilitates cooperation of the employees. From the results we can see that some companies do not provide any kind of language training at all, although it is considered an important element of pre-departure training by the expatriates who have been on assignment in China. KIT does provide information on language background in their trainings, but actually learning the language has to be done in a separate optional module. It is up to the HR-department to take this result very seriously and include it in the pre-departure preparation.

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Pamela Lau