Hoe te om voor de ervaring genoemd China worden voorbereidingen getroffen? Pamela Lau deed een interessant wetenschappelijk onderzoek over pre-vertrek opleiding voor expats van plan zijnd om naar China te gaan.Hoewel er wat literatuur vragend het effect van pre-vertrek opleiding is (Kealy en Protheroe, 1996; Selmer et al, 1998), het is duidelijk dat volgens emigranten, pre-vertrek is de opleiding relevant. Met de verkregen gegevens, werden de statistische tests uitgevoerd om tot een dieper inzicht in de behoeften van emigranten te leiden die worden verzonden naar China door hun bedrijven. De interculturele opleiding van het pre-vertrek
Het was vrij verrassend om te vinden dat slechts de weinig minder dan helft ondervraagden pre-vertrek opleiding ontving, hoewel zij allen voor MNEs werkten. Dit gaat tegen de meeste studies die op de doeltreffendheid van pre-vertrek interculturele opleiding worden gedaan (Forster, 2000; Romero, 2002; Waxin en Panaccio, 2005), alhoewel zij hebben vermeld dat vele bedrijven nog pre-vertrek geen opleiding verstrekken. Er zijn verscheidene redenen die komen te letten op wanneer het proberen om de redenen voor dit lage tarief van de opleidingsvoorziening aan het licht te brengen. De eerste reden zou kunnen zijn dat de emigrant reeds aan China vóór is geweest, en reeds vertrouwd met de Chinese cultuur geweest of minstens sommige verwachtingen reeds gevormd. Nochtans, van de ondervraagden die pre-vertrek geen opleiding ontvingen, slechts half (9 managers) aan China voordien was geweest.

Een andere mogelijke reden is dat de emigrant op vorig andere buitenlandse taken is geweest. The company then could have decided that it is not necessary for them to have pre-departure training. 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