Assessment 2 (of 2):
IN-Class Test: CASE STUDY
Marie is the new Learning Director at a large, multi-national pharmaceutical firm, based at its headquarters in the UK. The firm operates widely in Europe, the USA, South America and across southern Asia and China. One of her responsibilities is to manage a team of five Learning Managers who are responsible for the design and delivery of cross-cultural training programmes for the extensive numbers of staff who are expatriated from their home country to work abroad.
Marie’s predecessor believed strongly in the benefits of diversity amongst teams. For this reason, when he set up the cross-cultural training team, he deliberately made sure that it represented the diversity of staff and countries which the firm operates in. The team currently consists of Caroline from the USA, Ding from China, Eric from Sweden, Ilisha from India and Ricky from Brazil. The team have responsibilities for their own individual training programmes but they also work together to plan and design major training programmes. Caroline and Ricky are based in the firm’s New York office, while Ding, Eric and Ilisha are based in London with Marie. They meet face to face every three months, alternating between London and New York, and hold weekly conference calls as well as regular contact by email.
All five Learning Managers are International Business graduates with an HRM specialism, and they have all worked within the firm for between two and twelve years. However, after six months in her new role Marie has some concerns about their performance, and particularly their ability to work together as a team. Although the training programmes they design and deliver are adequate, Marie feels that they could be a lot more innovative and creative, and that they are too classroom based, without using opportunities for embedded learning methods.
Marie is particularly concerned that Caroline seems to keep her distance from the