Briefing paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Briefing paper - Essay Example First and foremost, Subway must develop understanding and acceptance about cultural differences. This will be accomplished through an exchange and training programs to all of its subsidiaries to facilitate the easy exchange of information. With the concept of open-mindedness, expatriation will be successful. Finally, Subway must somehow consider other motivating factors and a change of management structure in order to remain competitive. 2. Terms of Reference Motivating people is one of the challenging tasks a manager must handle. Usually, work motivation among employees is influenced by cultural issues particularly in international companies. â€Å"Managing across cultures requires motivating employees from various cultures, but finding a framework for motivating and managing behavior across cultures has proven to be difficult† (Silverthorne, 2005, p.98). Based on the research conducted by Kreitner (2009, p.102), employees are looking for a process that is geographically cohe rent. However, because of diversity in individual needs and workplace expectations, motivating practices from one organization will not be anymore successful towards other jurisdiction. Management-Expert (ME) is a global firm that gives consulting services and training programs to all kinds of management issues. ... Just recently, Subway management decided to expatriate workers for them to experience the culturally diverse global workforce. However, the company encountered some disadvantages and one of those is the adaptability to the culture of foreign environments. Because of these cross-cultural differences, employees are having low morale and at the same time turnover becomes high. Per evaluation of the management team, employee motivation is severely damaged. This briefing paper will serve to explain the nature of Subway’s problem, the overview and analysis of the situation, and some suggested remedies/ recommendations to the problem. 3. Overview of the Situation Expatriating employees is one of Subway’s management strategies to make their employees globally skillful. The organization’s objective is to increase the cultural intelligence of their employees in terms of adapting to different cultures. This is also some kind of private motivation among their front line peop le and managers for them to have a broader global perspective among their international subsidiaries. However, the decision brings some drawbacks and it caused a severe damage to the attitudes and behaviors of employees toward their jobs. In other words, employees are not anymore motivated plainly because of the differences in work values, practices, and culture of foreign environments. According to Finsterbusch (2003, p.6), even though most of the countries nowadays are driven by technological and economic development, there is still no room for uniformed global culture. Values will only shift based on the trend but the origin of the culture in which it is employed will not be constant and so dealing with expatriates need to be