The Would-Be Pioneer
From reviewing Green’s fictional case study, (Green, 2011), the author acknowledges some good points for consideration when one has to determine how much a culture and environment will affect institutions and their management. In this review, Green explores the challenges faced by Ms. Linda Myers when she accepted a job as a VP in a Seoul, South Korea with SK Telecom.
Ms. Myers had what seemed to be all of the right credentials on paper that would make her the ideal candidate for a foreign assignment, except one, she was female. Although she realized initially that the agency contacting her for the assignment referred to her as “Mr.”, she pressed on and assumed it was a simple mistake, however, her experience would be reflective of this later as she reflects on her choice to accept the assignment and some of the things that went wrong (Green, 2011).
When analyzing this case in depth and reviewing the entire tenure of Ms. Myers time with SK Telecom in Seoul, there are some important issues that surface which caused this job scenario to go terribly wrong for Ms. Myers. First, based on her experience in traveling overseas and her career experience based in recruiting and training ex pats on how to handle overseas assignments, Ms. Myers incorrectly assumed that she had all the necessary attributes required to take on any country and its cultural challenges. This was not accurate.
One of the first clues that there were going to be issues in South Korea that Ms. Myers should have realized occurred long before her accepting the job in South Korea and she choose to ignore it. That clue being the preliminary assumption by the agency sent to recruit a VP that she was male, not female, as mentioned earlier. The second red flag that should have been raised by Ms. Myers occurred when she contacted the Society of Human Resources and asked them to put her into contact with a female executive who had worked in South Korea to help her prepare for her assignment. The return
Ms. Myers had what seemed to be all of the right credentials on paper that would make her the ideal candidate for a foreign assignment, except one, she was female. Although she realized initially that the agency contacting her for the assignment referred to her as “Mr.”, she pressed on and assumed it was a simple mistake, however, her experience would be reflective of this later as she reflects on her choice to accept the assignment and some of the things that went wrong (Green, 2011).
When analyzing this case in depth and reviewing the entire tenure of Ms. Myers time with SK Telecom in Seoul, there are some important issues that surface which caused this job scenario to go terribly wrong for Ms. Myers. First, based on her experience in traveling overseas and her career experience based in recruiting and training ex pats on how to handle overseas assignments, Ms. Myers incorrectly assumed that she had all the necessary attributes required to take on any country and its cultural challenges. This was not accurate.
One of the first clues that there were going to be issues in South Korea that Ms. Myers should have realized occurred long before her accepting the job in South Korea and she choose to ignore it. That clue being the preliminary assumption by the agency sent to recruit a VP that she was male, not female, as mentioned earlier. The second red flag that should have been raised by Ms. Myers occurred when she contacted the Society of Human Resources and asked them to put her into contact with a female executive who had worked in South Korea to help her prepare for her assignment. The return
References: Green, S. (2011). The would-be pioneer. Harvard Business Review. 89(4), 124-126.