Training approaches

Кафедра иностранных языков №1

СБОРНИК МАТЕРИАЛОВ ДЛЯ АКТИВИЗАЦИИ РАБОТЫ С ДЕЛОВЫМИ СИТУАЦИЯМИ

И РАЗВИТИЯ НАВЫКОВ УСТНОЙ РЕЧИ

ПО ДИСЦИПЛИНЕ

«ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБЩЕНИЯ»

Москва

ФГБОУ ВПО «РЭУ им. Г. В. Плеханова»

Составители: В.О. Мидова, Ю.Н. Бузина

Сборник материалов для активизации работы с деловыми ситуациями и развития навыков устной речи по дисциплине «Иностранный язык профессионального общения» сост.: Ю.Н. Бузина, В.О. Мидова – Москва: ФГБОУ ВПО «РЭУ им. Г. В. Плеханова», 2014. – 32 с.

В данной работе представлены деловые кейсы и ситуационные задания для изучения и последующего решения, вопросы для лучшего освоения и обсуждения материала.

Основная цель – развитие аналитических навыков при решении проблем в профессиональной сфере с использованием специальной терминологии в процессе монологической и диалогической речи.

Предназначен для студентов старших курсов вузов экономического профиля.

© ФГБОУ ВПО «РЭУ им. Г. В. Плеханова», 2014

CONTENTS

Part 1 Introduction

Part 2 Cases

Part 3 Different ways (examples) of problem solving with business language elements

Part 4 Brain Teasing Questions

Part 1 Introduction

Harvard Business School Format of Case Analysis:

I. SUMMARY (a summary of what has happened, takes a paragraph of 3-5 sentences, not more.)

II. THE PROBLEM (a 7-8 words sentence, counting all words, a statement, not a question or an ellipse)

III. CAST OF CHARACTERS

A. People (name, job, title, age, facts related to the person)

B. Institutions (name, legal status, role)

IV. CHRONOLOGY (establishing reverse time sequence - just the basic facts, first item being the most recent, most distant event - last)

V. ISSUES (concepts that get in the way of solving the problem, both from inside and outside)

VI. OPTIONS (possible decisions of what to do), more than 1, and for each: a. Advantages (2-3)

B. Disadvantages (not less, balanced to the advantages)

VII. RECOMMENDATION (taking the first option)

A. Stating the course of action;

B. Reasoning and Rationale (reason for choosing the one not one of the others)

VIII. PLAN OF ACTION (as extensive and detailed as possible)

a. Step one: first part, second part;

B. Step two.

Part 2

CASE 1

TRAINING APPROACHES

FUJI Communications International (FCI) is a joint venture between Canadian Telecommunications International (CTI) and Fuji Electronics (FE), a Japanese company. The Canadian partner holds a 51% share of the joint venture. Its headquarters is in Sagamihara, a suburb of Tokyo. It has several manufacturing plants across Japan, one near Osaka, a second one in Sagami­hara, and a third near Sapporo in Hokkaido, the northernmost island.

The joint venture employs approximately 22,000 employees, 600 of whom are employed at its headquarters in Sagamihara. The president of the joint venture is Japanese, as are most vice presidents and directors. The high­est ranking Canadian is the senior vice president, who is in charge of finance.

The human resource management department (HRMD) at FCI is the largest of all departments, with a staff of sixty-two at headquarters alone, or approximately one full-time staff for every 350 employees. If one adds to this the HRM staff at all three plants, it amounts to 115 or one full-time staff member for every 190 employees. This compares with approximately one full-time HRM staff for every 250 to 300 employees with large Western employers.

The executive of FCI will not make any important decisions without input from its vice president of human resource management. As a result, the HR department is always up to date on the long-range objectives of top man­agement and can plan accordingly.

The top management of the joint venture feels that hiring decisions are one of the most crucial decisions management has to make. If the wrong person is chosen, the company will feel the effects for years to come, espe­cially because FCI follows the Japanese tradition of lifetime employment for its permanent work force.

FCI also follows the traditional Japanese way of hiring employees, by going directly to colleges and universities to hire candidates without any business experience. Japanese employers prefer inexperienced new employees because of the danger of "contamination," meaning being indoctrinated by a different business philosophy.

The joint venture is in constant contact with instructors and profes­sors at high schools, colleges, and universities. These contacts are maintained through small research grants or other "amenities," mainly to get referrals of good students from the instructors.

Each year FCI hires between 100 and 200 white-collar employees, most of them as management trainees. For this purpose, the joint venture solicits about 1000 applications from its contacts at high schools, colleges, and universities. All applicants will be run through a procedure that weeds out about half of them: a careful analysis of school records; a battery of tests that ask mainly factual material, such as historical, political, geographical, or international information; and an essay-type test that reflects both common sense and business sense.

The remaining applicants are invited to the company's headquarters in Sagamihara where they will undergo multi-tier personal interviews with junior and senior executives. This process eliminates another 50%.

The surviving 200 or 250 are screened again. Does anybody in the family work for a competitor? Did the candidate belong to a radical student organization? Has the candidate ever had any encounter with the law? Has anybody in the family been convicted of a crime? Out go the applicants who answer yes to any one of these questions. That leaves about the required number of employees the company planned to hire.

The new employees will undergo a rigorous orientation and indoctri­nation program that lasts approximately three months. The first day is spent mainly in the auditorium, listening to speeches by top executives who discuss the history of the company (in this case the parent company), extol the virtues and accomplishments of the company’s past leaders, and explain the current status of the company in the Japanese and world market. The rest of the week they will be shown around the plant, meet with their supervisors, and be in­troduced to their work teams.

The main purpose of the indoctrination program is to instil pride in the new employee and make him identify with the company (Japanese em­ployees proudly wear the company button in their lapels and introduce them­selves as "Tanaka from Fuji Computer"), and to create commitment and loy­alty in him. It is now easier to understand why an employee who has under­gone an indoctrination program in another company will have difficulties adjusting to a different company philosophy and spirit.

This process shows to what extraordinary length FCI goes to insure that the right hiring decision is made. And FCI is not an exception among Japanese companies. Once an employee is hired, there is no backing out of the implicit contract. Even if it turns out that a hiring decision was wrong, the employee will not be let go. He may progress a little more slowly and will not rise as high as his peers, but he will have job security. And the com­mitment is mutual.

After the orientation and indoctrination program, the actual training begins. Employees are hired with little regard to their study topics because it is not expected that they will have any job-related experiences and training (the exception being an engineer). The first two years on the job are usually spent rotating through the organization, under constant training, until the trainee has had experiences in many different departments.

A "godfather," usually a senior employee, will track the progress of the trainee. He will be in touch with the various supervisors under whose direction the trainee will learn the ropes, will monitor his progress, and will be available to the trainee for help if problems arise.

Annual evaluations will look at two main characteristics of the trainee: business ability and work attitudes. The former contains such items as ability to administer staff, ability to work harmoniously within a team, decisiveness, prejudices, perception, judgement, concentration, planning, negotiating ability, and business knowledge. Work attitudes are measured by such criteria as following proper reporting procedures, keeping apart personal and professional matters, accepting responsibility, maintaining required office hours, and obeying company regulations.

After two years of constant training under close supervision and monitoring, the godfather, managers, and the trainee jointly will decide for which position he is best suited. As mentioned, this may not be related to what the employee has studied. To the Japanese, it is much more important how motivated the employee is and how he fits into the organization rather than what his skills are.

This orientation and training program ensures that the employee has a thorough knowledge of all aspects of the organization and is a true generalist. When needed, the employee can take on any job in the organi­zation. He will take into account the needs of other departments when he makes decisions in his own realm. Here we see the systems approach applied in a way it rarely happens in a Western company.

There is another interesting aspect of the Japanese attitude towards training. Japanese companies are not afraid of investing heavily in training be­cause they are assured that the employee will be with them for the rest of his life.

For example, FCI sends some of its most promising trainees to a special management training program lasting three months, offered by a management training centre set up by Keidanren (the Japanese equivalent to the Canadian Manufacturers Association, but much more powerful and influ­ential). The cost for the program is $ 12,000 for each participant. Not many North American companies would be willing to risk such an amount as an investment into the training of one employee.

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