Intercultural Management - Final PaperFull name: Mai Nam ChuongID: 2012-BIS-M-02Class: VGU BIS 2012

I. Summary:

Case: First week as a Chief

Last October, after 8 years worked for a Software Company, I had decided to challenge myself in a new career path by entering a Real Estate Service company, founded by one of my Uncles, as a Managing director. During the last 3 years in the Software Company, I was promoted and acted as a Project Manager. My daily activities were almost IT stuffs. There were, of course, some human resources and finance matters as well. The works went smoothly that time. However, when starting new role in the Real Estate Company, it was a difficult starting especially in the first week.

Just two weeks before I joined the company, there was a big team transition in the company. The former office coordinator (there was not a managing director title before I came) and some key members quitted the company due to some policies. Later I found out that they quitted and joined one of our competitors as they got a much higher salaries and sales commissions. Thus, the company went in a difficult situation. Even I had a little experience in sales services, I encouraged myself to took this chance as well as help my Uncle in this circumstance.

I started working on Monday. In this day, the company had a company meeting as usual. I was impressed with the employees. The biggest team size I’ve ever worked with was only fifteen people. But sitting in front of me at that moment were seventy young well-dressed salespersons, both men and women. The Chairman, also my Uncle, introduced me to the company. He introduced me as a Software engineer and noted that since then I would manage the company along with him. After his quick introduction, I was invited to have a speech. All employees started standing and clapping loudly. I was a bit nervous but was still able to finish my speech.

After the meeting, I started working with the accountant in the morning to handover all important papers, contracts and documents of the company. In the afternoon, there was another meeting with the only one human resource officer. She introduced me the current human resources situations and some obstacles especially the movement of employees to competitors and conflicts between members in the sales department. That evening, there were a lot of ideas came in my mind and I went to sleep at around 3AM.

Next morning, I drove to the office early even though there was just a short sleep at night. I spent the whole day to meet almost the employees except the ones

who were absent or had been taking leaves. Asking their names, their families and if there were any concerns about the company’s policies. I was so surprise that none of them complained about the salary and benefits.

On Wednesday morning, I had the first meeting with all team leaders of the sales departments. They were all the key members of the company who brought the most revenue for the company. I expected to meet all of them to understand further the situations that the Human resource officer told me on Monday. During the meeting, I told them to share me the ways of how they usually did while cooperating with other members. There were some positive responses from new team leaders. However, some of them just looked around the people on the room, kept silent or even answered the phone calls. More than a half of the employees that didn’t have responses had been working in the company since it first established 5 years ago. I collected all the concerns and discussed with the Chairman later that afternoon and evening as he was usually on business outside the company.

Thursday morning, I came to see the people who didn’t have ideas in the day before meeting, in person. I shared them my ideas to solve the conflicts in their department and asked for their feedbacks. This time I got a few more responses however the rest still didn’t have any ideas. Two of them even told me that the Chairman already took actions but the conflicts were still persisted so I wouldn’t be able to resolve them. Disappointed feeling happened to me but I still thanked and told them that I would do the best to support them. I went back home that evening with more questions about the company situations.

Friday embarrassed me with two unexpected events. In the morning I was asked to attend a new employee interview as the sales manager came to the office late. The girl applied in the position of saleswoman. Unlucky me, I wasn’t informed about this interview and the most critical concern was that I’ve never done a salesperson interview before. All I had done were IT positions. It wouldn’t be best for me if I attended the interview alone so I decided to ask one salesperson to go with me in the interview. Unfortunately, he politely rejected as he needed to go out right away. Finally, I did attend the interview only with myself. I felt so lonely while taking this interview. I took a quick look in her applicant form, resume and started asking her about soft-skills and her expectation when applying to this position. We discussed some more questions and ended 20 minutes after that. I didn’t forget to thank her coming and noticed her that the result would be reviewed carefully and soon informed her. It was even worse in the afternoon. When I was sitting in my room, an employee knocked the door and came in with his resignation letter. I looked at the calendar on the wall and whispered to myself “Jesus! It is Friday the Thirteen today.”

I went home early this Friday with a headache and thought would it still be better for me to continue being a Chief.

II. Case analysis:a. First Situation: Attended the new employee interview on Friday alone.

Assumption:- The company usually interviewed with only one interviewer so when

he or she was absent, there was no one else could interview the candidate.

- The managing director role will need to interview the candidate.- The sales manager forgot the interview schedule.

Issues and recommendations:- Structural frame: The human resource officer didn’t have a backup

solution. In my opinion, the company should have training courses for some more people so that they can have the ability to interview candidates and do the backup in case the main interviewer is absent.

- Human resource frame: The interviewer forgot interview schedule. In this case, it’s better if the human resource officer remind the interviewer the day before the interview happens and arranges other people to support in case the main interviewer cannot attend.

- Symbolic frame: Using this perspective, we see that the human resource officer thought the sales manager would attend the interview and just only him. However, when the sales manager didn’t attend, she thought the new managing director would have the right person to do the interview. In this case, the company should have to improve the interview process. In this process, it should be noted clearly that who might be able to attend the interview.

- Political frame: with the power of a director, I asked one employee to attend the interview with me. However, he might thought that he wasn’t suitable for the interview and might felt unconfident when working with new director.

b. Second situation: Met with key members and met the people who didn’t give comments in person on Thursday morning.Assumption:

- The people thought I met them in order to complain them.- New director just worked with them in a few days and they still

knew and followed the most power person in the company, the Chairman.

Issues and recommendations:- Political frame: this group of people might think that the new

director had just worked in the company and at that moment only the Chairman can have privileges to question them. In this case, before ending the meeting the day before, the director could remind all the people that they could possibly be reached at another time to share the solutions to resolve the conflicts.

- Human resource frame: The people thought the director was still new member and he was still in probation period. So, they didn’t respect the new director. It is clearly seen that the new director wasn’t given the power. Situation could be better if the Chairman met the team and inform them that new managing director would met them, collect feedbacks and cooperate with them to find out a good solutions for the conflicts.

- Structural frame: The managing director was a new title and no one in the company knew what privileges this role could have. In this case, the company should need to define a clear role for each title in the company. Thus, all of the employee will be aware of the power of the new director.

- Symbolic frame: some of the team leaders worked for the company for a long time and they brought a large amount of revenue to the company so they only admired the most power person, the Chairman also the founder of the company, who led them from the beginning.