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. Your instructor will put you into groups of 3-6 students
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role play the meeting with the supervisor. Consider some or all of these questions as you
work on the plan:
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
described above. Only this time, assume that the supervisor is a Turkish national who is
based at a plant outside Istanbul. On your visit to the plant, you have the chance to meet
with this supervisor. As you prepare your action plan, consider these questions:
1. What might need to be done differently given that the supervisor is Turkish with
Istanbul as the context?
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DEVELOPING YOUR INTERNATIONAL CAREER – Assembling an Expatriate
Compensation Package
Purpose and Instructions
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
managers on expatriate assignments. Your instructor will indicate which pair of locations
you will be assigned to research. Below are the pairs of foreign cities under consideration
for each manager:
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
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In addition to the text and other reference sources, you may find many of the web sites
below useful for completing your report:
The U.S. Department of State Foreign Allowances and Per Diem Pages
These links provide lists or drop-downs for living, housing, and education allowances,
among other things, by city/country.
International Tax and Accounting Site Directory
This is an international tax site directory, with country-specific information.
OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Site
This site presents purchasing power parity data permitting comparisons of the cost of a
basket of consumer goods and services across countries. Other information is available as
well, including on tax treaties and income taxes.
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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
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
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
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vacation days taken is 10 and at SK Telecom, workers take between 5 and 15 of their 22
possible days off.
Assignment Questions
1. Obtain additional data on hours worked in at least 10 countries, including South
Korea and the U.S. Try to choose your countries so that the cultural distance
2. Add in additional data on GDP, average worker pay, holiday and vacation leave
averages, and a few other relevant economic and productivity markers for your
chosen countries.
3. The feature provided some interesting detail about the reasons why hours