SPANNING THE GLOBE

By Allen D. Engle, Sr.

Eric Christopher, Associate Director for Global HR Development

at Tex-Mark, was sitting in his car in an

early-morning traffic jam. He had thought that by leaving

his home at 7:00 a.m. he would have been ahead of

the heavy commuter traffic into San Antonios city center.

The explanation for the long queue was announced

by the radio traffic service. A large, portable crane, used

to set up concrete barriers around road works, had

overturned, and inbound and outbound traffic would

be at a dead stop for at least an hour.

Eric had ended up at Tex-Mark, a computer inputoutput

manufacturer and supplier, through an indirect

career route. Brought up in the Hill Country Village district

of San Antonio, Eric had graduated from Churchill

High School and Baylor University in Waco, Texas with

a major in History and a minor in Spanish. His maternal

grandmother lived in Tennessee, but was born and

grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland and Eric had spent

several summers while in high school and at university

backpacking around Europe.

His facility for languages was impressive and he

had an excellent working use of Spanish, French,

Italian and German. He could converse in Cantonese,

as the result of working in a noodle restaurant during

university and had started a tutorial course in Mandarin

last fall.

Upon graduation, Eric backpacked around Europe

and South America until his money ran out. Returning

to Dallas he took a ticketing job with SouthWest Airlines

and was quickly moved to the training unit. After

four successful years at SouthWest, he was contacted

by a headhunter about a position as Global Development

Assistant with Tex-Mark. The promised combination

of global travel, more money and a return to

San Antonio proved irresistible, and Eric had been with

Tex-Mark for five years now. His career progress to

date was outstanding, despite the extra workload selfimposed

by undertaking MBA studies at UT, San

Antonio as a part-time student.

Tex-Mark had started out as a spin off firm from

IME Computers in the late 1970s. Patents combined

with an excellence in engineering, an outstanding institutional

sales staff, cost-sensitive production and pricing,

all combined to make Tex-Mark a major force in

the printer and optical scanner industry. Tex-Mark

inherited a production facility in San Antonio from IME,

but the company also had international production

facilities operating in three countries: Monterrey, Mexico,

Leith, Scotland, and more recently in Jaipur, India.

A major new facility going was planed to start production

in Wuhu, China late next year.

Research and new product development activities

were split between the home offices in San Antonio, a

printer center in Durham, North Carolina and an optical

research center of excellence in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Major sales, distribution and customer service centers

had recently expanded into Asia and are now located

in Rheims in France; in Memphis, Tennessee; in

Sydney, Australia; in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; in Hong

Kong and in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Faced with the long delay, Eric turned the radio

volume down, turned up the air conditioning, and

telephoned his office on his hands-free car phone to

advise them of his situation. Fortunately, his personal

assistant was already at work so Eric was able to

rearrange his schedule. He asked that the 10:30

meeting with Fred Banks, a Plant Engineer recently

repatriated from Jaipur, be pushed back an hour. His

major concern was a teleconference meeting at 2:00

with his Director who was currently visiting the sales

center in Memphis, and the other four members of

executive career development team in San Antonio.

The general topic was a review and evaluation of

training and development strategies for expatriate

professionals and managers resulting from Tex-

Marks growth and the new production shift to Asia.

Eric had indirectly heard that Juanita Roberto, the

Vice President for HR wanted costs cut and her delegates

on the team would be pushing for streamlined

(Eric had mentally translated that as cheaper) training

programs, shorter expatriate assignments and a

faster appointment of HCNs whenever possible.

284 CASE 1 SPANNING THE GLOBE

While Eric had prepared for this crucial meeting,

he needed incorporate some information from his

office files.

The radio announcer broke into Erics thoughts,

commented that overextension or carrying too much

weight probably caused the crane to overturn. I can

identify with that, Eric thought to himself.

Erics meeting with Fred Banks had not gone well.

Fred was one of the last of the IME legacies, an IME

engineer that had stayed on with Tex-Mark after the

spin off in 1978. Fred had been a bright and promising

young engineer back then, and was one of the first

people chosen to go to Scotland in 1983. He was so

successful in bringing that facility on line in an elevenmonth

assignment that he was made lead engineer of

the team that went into Mexico in 1989. The threeyear

Mexican project did not go as smoothly. Certainly

there were many unavoidable economic uncertainties

during that period.

Reviewing the files, Eric felt a large part of the problem

was that Freds team did not relate well to their

Mexican counterparts. Furthermore, the Tex-Mark

team did not treat the local and national government

agencies with enough respect and sensitivity. Eric

noted that permits and authorizations that should have

taken weeks instead took six months or more.

After the Mexican project Fred stayed in San Antonio

with occasional trips to Durham, North Carolina. His

assignment to India in 1999 was by sheer chance, as a

last minute replacement for another engineer whose father

was diagnosed with a serious cancer some two

weeks before the family was to set off on assignment.

Eric had helped design the pre-departure training program

for the original candidate and had even included a

one-week visit for the candidate and his wife.

Today Fred was angry and disappointed that an

18-month assignment in India had turned into a 3-year

assignment, and that a research position in Durham

promised to him by a previous V.P. (two V.P.s ago)

was filled by a younger Durham resident employee.

Eric bluntly countered that the 18-month assignment

had become a 3-year assignment largely due to Freds

unwillingness to train and hand over responsibilities to

local engineers and his inability to work constructively

with district and federal regulators in India.

The conversation took a hostile turn and although

Eric did not lose his temper, he was troubled by Freds

final comment: If this is how you treat the people willing

to go abroad, youll never get your best engineers

to leave San Antonio.

Preparing for the 2:00 meeting, Eric reviewed the

unofficial, yet standard expatriate training program he

had been instrumental in developing over the last three

years (See Exhibit A). Though Eric recommended that

all pre-departure activities should be undertaken, it

was not compulsory.

With the Chinese operation adding to the number of

expatriate destinations, Eric realized Tex-Mark should

have a more formal policy regarding international

assignments. Feedback regarding the interviews and

conversations with Tex-Mark employees with country

experiences was mixed. Some had developed into longer

term mentoring arrangements but other expatriates

had found it not useful. Still, it was a low cost way of

providing information. Language courses were problematical.

On too many occasions, there was not the

time employees left the country midway through their

language courses. He recalled the idea of more extensive

assignments requiring more complete and rigorous

preparation from an MBA course he took last year.

Obviously, China is a more challenging and difficult

assignment than France, but can we differentiate treatment

on the grounds of cultural difficulty?

More importantly, Eric asked himself, how can I

suggest we make our training more rigorous given

Juanita Robertos focus on cost? Even if I win on this

point, what will I answer when asked what methods or

activities make up more rigorous training? Finally,

what is the role of language training? Eric knew not

everyone took to languages the way he did and that

Mandarin is not Spanish.

Finally, is now the time to raise the issue of repatriation?

The meeting with Fred had been disturbing.

Eric knew that the current debriefing and counselling

sessions had a reputation for being more tell and sell

than a meaningful exchange of ideas and insights.

Top management had recently signalled this as a

growing problem. Eric had planned to gather data on

repatriate turnover. Perhaps this should be given a

higher priority. After all, how could Tex-Mark decide

to plan for international assignments, involving more

TCN movements, and the transfer of HCNs into its

U.S. operations for training and development, without

considering repatriation?

CASE 1 SPANNING THE GLOBE 285

In the role of Eric:

1 Summarize your thoughts on the problems at

hand, alternative solutions and your strategy on

how to proceed at the forthcoming meeting.

2 How will your proposal solve the problems you

have defined?

3 How can you defend your solution from budgetary

concerns? In what way is your approach both a

solution to the problems of expatriates at Tex-Mark

and a good economic investment?

Step back out of role and answer

the following:

1 Does Erics personal background assist in his

assessment of the problems he faces?

2 Would you have approached this situation

differently? If so, what benefits would your differe