„Cultural agility“ – this expression seems to be the perfect buzzword for our increasingly globalized world at work. But how do you actually define such an apparently nebulous thing? What are common myths and misconceptions about cultural agility? And how can you leverage genuine cross-cultural skills in the corporate sphere, especially in managerial positions? These [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays, InterNations Recommends on December 18th, 2012 | No Comments »
Today in the ‘InterNations Recommends’ category, we would like to introduce to you the Expat Archive Centre. The name is pretty self-explanatory … The Expat Archive Centre collects memories and testimonials from expats all over the world, stores them and makes them accessible for offline (and hopefully soon also online) research, thus documenting the global [...]
Filed under: Adventures Abroad, International Workdays, InterNations Recommends, Moving to Another Country on July 12th, 2012 | No Comments »
Our guest blogger Abu Muhammed, and American expat living in Saudi Arabia, introduces himself with some reflections on the presidential elections in the US and how he used them to breech the subject of research to his Arab students. It is election time in the States and Americans now focus their highly distractible intellects on [...]
Filed under: Guest Author, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on March 28th, 2012 | No Comments »
Josef from Germany moved to Kolkata (Calcutta), India to work at a software company and is amazed at how incredibly chaotic things are at his new job! I have to be honest and say that I was not too excited about moving to India for a two year expat assignment. A colleague of mine was [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on November 22nd, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Juan Carlos from Costa Rica got a promotion at his job, which transferred him to Marseilles, France. He was incredibly excited about this prospect and really looked forward to France. What took him a long time to get accustomed to, were the very different working conditions and inter-work relationships! I always thought the French were [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on November 16th, 2011 | No Comments »
Annie from Eindhoven in the Netherlands, moved to Miami, Florida for her new job. She expresses her culture shock regarding the people and the work atmosphere. I remember how I used to not be able to wait to get out of Eindhoven. In school we would always talk about going to America or some other [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on November 11th, 2011 | 3 Comments »
George from Vancouver has just come back from his nine month expat assignment in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and shares his experiences in the working environment. He tells us about the different aspects of doing business in Saudi Arabia and what things he had difficulty with most. When I moved to Riyadh I was well aware [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on October 24th, 2011 | 5 Comments »
I interviewed Carlos, a Brazilian art historian who came to Munich, Germany 5 months ago. He sums up the main differences between Brazilian and German university etiquette. Valentina: Carlos, what do you remember from your fist days at the Ludwig Maximilian University here in Munich? Carlos: Hmm, I did not know anybody at the beginning, [...]
Filed under: Culture Shock, Expat Interviews, Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on August 3rd, 2011 | No Comments »
Karolina started her job in Poznan, Poland, in an American company’s branch. She shares with us her first impressions of working in a Polish-American team. Right after finishing my M.A., I was lucky to come across an ad that an American company was opening a new branch in Poznan and was looking for someone with [...]
Filed under: Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on July 13th, 2011 | 2 Comments »
My friend Jennifer, an insurance saleswoman from Chicago recently gave me a brief insight about some of the experiences she made during a 6 month expat assignment in Valencia Spain. My company just recently sent me on a 6 month overseas assignment to Valencia. I was very excited about this prospect as I’d heard of [...]
Filed under: Intercultural Differences, International Workdays on June 30th, 2011 | No Comments »