Job Share Memo
To: A certain colleague From: Lijuan Wang（Lisa） Date: November 01, 2012 Subject: Job Share Memo
Introduction: Now I am working at “Beijing Sino Lawyers’ Firm”. My duty is to assist lawyer Tao Feng in dealing with the paperworks and clients. To be specific, my job is to act as an information collector, a law documents writer, a cases assistance, a data organizer, and a clients communicator. Our firm consist of several senior partners, normal lawyers, and many assistances. In order to work more conveniently and effectively, every lawyer has a team that includes one to two assistances. Due to the fact that it is a law firm and it is a partnership business, it has developed special cultural tendencies, which have been lasting for many years in the company. So, just like Varner and Beamer(2011) stated, “ ...understanding a culture opens the door to understanding how people see and make sense of their world.”,(p.94) identifying the exclusive culture here is a good way to understand the firm better. Besides, in order to avoid necessary mistakes and conflicts, it is also critical to understand the Chinese cultural tendencies. Firstly, the same as the entire Chinese cultural tendencies, collectivism plays an important role in our firm. It means that our culture emphasizes the needs, goals, and views of the team over the individual and includes shared beliefs rather than individual beliefs. In our firm, credit or blame is placed on the organization as a whole instead of any individual. Another core value of collectivist culture is that of “saving face”, especially, in China. Ting-Toomey and Kurogi (1998) explained face as “the claimed sense of favorable social self-worth and the estimated other-worth in an interpersonal situation (p. 188). And Ting-Toomey and Oetzel (2002) pointed out that face is related to “identity respect, disrespect, dignity, honor, shame, guilt, status, and competence issues”(p. 145). For instance, as a law firm, the most important thing is
Introduction: Now I am working at “Beijing Sino Lawyers’ Firm”. My duty is to assist lawyer Tao Feng in dealing with the paperworks and clients. To be specific, my job is to act as an information collector, a law documents writer, a cases assistance, a data organizer, and a clients communicator. Our firm consist of several senior partners, normal lawyers, and many assistances. In order to work more conveniently and effectively, every lawyer has a team that includes one to two assistances. Due to the fact that it is a law firm and it is a partnership business, it has developed special cultural tendencies, which have been lasting for many years in the company. So, just like Varner and Beamer(2011) stated, “ ...understanding a culture opens the door to understanding how people see and make sense of their world.”,(p.94) identifying the exclusive culture here is a good way to understand the firm better. Besides, in order to avoid necessary mistakes and conflicts, it is also critical to understand the Chinese cultural tendencies. Firstly, the same as the entire Chinese cultural tendencies, collectivism plays an important role in our firm. It means that our culture emphasizes the needs, goals, and views of the team over the individual and includes shared beliefs rather than individual beliefs. In our firm, credit or blame is placed on the organization as a whole instead of any individual. Another core value of collectivist culture is that of “saving face”, especially, in China. Ting-Toomey and Kurogi (1998) explained face as “the claimed sense of favorable social self-worth and the estimated other-worth in an interpersonal situation (p. 188). And Ting-Toomey and Oetzel (2002) pointed out that face is related to “identity respect, disrespect, dignity, honor, shame, guilt, status, and competence issues”(p. 145). For instance, as a law firm, the most important thing is
Cited: Ting-Toomey, Stella, & Kurogi, A. (1998). Facework competence in intercultural conflict: An updatd face-negotiation theory. International Journal of InterculturalRelations, 22, 187-225. Ting-Toomey, Stella, & Oetzel, John G. (2002). Cross-Cultural face concerns and conflict styles: Current status and future directions. In William B. Gudykunst & Bella Mody (Eds.), Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication (2nd ed.). London: Sage Pubications. Varner, Iris, & Beamer, Linda. (2011). Intercultural Communication in the Global Workplace (5th ed.).