International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 8 Activities Page 1
CHAPTER 8
EVALUATING AND COMPENSATING
INTERNATIONAL EMPLOYEES
CHAPTER ACTIVITIES
DEVELOPING YOUR INTERNATIONAL CAREER – Giving Negative Performance
Feedback across Cultures
Purpose and Instructions
The goal of this exercise is to explore the important task of providing performance
feedback to employees and to develop the skills needed to do this effectively across
cultures.
Assume that your multinational company has instituted a 360-degree feedback
performance evaluation, a system that involves getting feedback from many people in the
work setting (boss, subordinate, customers, etc.). One of your jobs as a manufacturing
Part A: Evaluation of an American Supervisor
Assume that the manufacturing supervisor described above is an American based at a
company facility outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Your instructor will put you into groups of
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1. How should the manager approach the meeting with the supervisor? What
problems might come up? How can the manager ensure that any messages will
be heard?
Part B: Cross-Cultural Evaluation of a Turkish Supervisor
In this section of the exercise, you are being asked to again prepare a plan to communicate
performance feedback to the manufacturing supervisor with the same 360 report
1. What might need to be done differently given that the supervisor is Turkish and
Istanbul is the context?
International Organizational Behavior 2e Chapter 8 Activities Page 3
DEVELOPING YOUR INTERNATIONAL CAREER – Assembling an Expatriate
Compensation Package
Purpose and Instructions
The purpose of this exercise is to help improve your understanding of how salary, tax, and
Write a report that summarizes your research on the compensation of expatriates assigned
to different countries. Your instructor may ask you to complete this assignment in small
groups. Regardless, consider this setting: a U.S. multinational has plans to send four
Manager 1: Cape Town, South Africa, or Frankfurt, Germany
Assume you work in HR for this company and that your boss would like your advice about
how to structure a compensation package for one of its managers. Unless your instructor
As noted within the chapter, living expenses are complex and vary dramatically from
country to country. Your report will have to account for transportation, clothing, housing,
All in all, how should the compensation packages differ across the two countries you are
assigned to, if at all? In what areas might differences exist and why? What would your
recommendations be for handling them and why? Again, be sure to describe why there are
differences across countries (or why not) in the specific aspects of the package.
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In addition to the text and other reference sources, you may find many of the websites
below useful for completing your report:
The U.S. Department of State Foreign Allowances and Per Diem
International Tax and Accounting Site Directory
This is an international directory, with country-specific information.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
of a basket of consumer goods and services across countries. Other information is available
as well, including on tax treaties and income tax.
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MAKING THE CASE FOR INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING – Taking a Holiday from
Vacations: Working Overtime to Change a National Habit
The government of South Korea is cracking down on vacation time taken by workers. You
may be thinking that this is an issue of mass fraud or of improperly reporting reimbursable
time off. If so, you are wrong—the problem is that people are not taking enough vacation, if
at all. Years of government pleading, combined with the cultural propensity of its people to
sacrifice themselves and to work hard for the future, has had a strong impact. In fact,
However, merely working more does not necessarily translate into greater productivity.
For example, South Korea’s productivity ranks below all but a few of the former Soviet bloc
countries among all the OCED members. The government is trying to change this situation,
and thinks the solution may be taking time off to recharge before returning to work with
In addition to previous government efforts to rally workers under the national
advancement “flag,” there are also some cultural drivers of this workaholic attitude among
employees. In Chapter 2 we studied the hierarchical nature of Korean society, and it seems
to play a role in these numbers we have presented. In this society, superiors are greatly
respected and are regularly followed and listened to. Yet many business and government
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number of vacation days taken is 10, and at SK Telecom workers take 5–15 of their 22
possible days off.
Assignment Questions
(perhaps representing extremes of cultural dimensions of the approaches to
classifying cultures that we discussed in Chapter 2).
2. Add in data on GDP, average worker pay, holiday and vacation leave averages, and a