Executive Summary on WIYCR

This report was commissioned to examine the cause and significance of the current problems occurred at West Indies Yacht Club Resort on the British Virgin Island (BVI) between the expatriates and local employees. By applying the Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory, the summary provides evidence to reflect the seriousness of the issues. Herein, senior officials were stuck with several problems, high expatriate turnover, tension between expatriate managers, increasing number of guest complaints and low employee motivation. The report would only focus on the former two which are properly the root causes of the whole management crisis.
From the perspective of native workers, seeing the expatriates come and go is not uncommon. Some of them are managers, they come to work only for the peak seasons like December through July and then travel back home with never returning, six of them had been hired and quit in just two years. The high expatriate turnover rate was a vicious circle with the mistrust between locals and the foreigners. The vital gear in this cycle was the mismatch of management style, this can be explained by the cultural difference of power distance (BVI:78; US:40). Most expatriates came from US and they managed the locals with the same ways that they would have treated Americans. Hofstede's review of the power distant is clearly shown during a conversation with some local employees and one of them says, "Things went more smoothly when Bill was around. He gave us clear directions regarding what we had to do for the day and we did it." Obviously it caused more frustration to all staff, they were not communicating well and resulting in lower retention of foreign workers. With frequent replacement of senior officials, the company tactics won’t be consistent that performance would be severely affected.
With the labour laws in BVI, the resort was not permitted to lay off staff without providing qualifying evidences, it was also under pressure to promote