The Importance of Previous Experience

Before being able to understand the multinational organizational culture through observing the artifacts, which we will analyze in the following chapter, it is necessary to examine what is needed beforehand when entering the organization. Therefore in this chapter, we will elabo-rate on the prerequisites, which are needed to be fulfilled before becoming a part of this given organizational culture.

One of the prerequisites we have encountered, when analyzing the interviews, is the im-portance of having had an experience with working and/or studying abroad and thus, having had an experience of working together with people coming from different cultural back-grounds.

We have found this explicitly in all of our informants’ statements regarding basic require-ments in terms of working within this multinational workplace. In order to provide an over-view of the most important statements regarding this we will here use the most important quotes within this specific field of investigation. First of all tells us that:

“Most of our staff have actually lived abroad or studied abroad because you need a European profile to be able to fit in and to […] cope with the […]

analytical demands but also […] most of the people I interact with will have […] an experience in working together with other nations […]” (Carl, 03:56).

When taking Schein’s term “cultural intelligence” into account, and more specifically the first capacity (cf. chapter 4.2.8) we can say that the organization has made some pre-requirements towards its employees in order to make sure that people who are hired at the or-ganization already have some sort of knowledge and experiences in collaborating with people who might have different basic assumptions. As mentioned in aforesaid chapter – (cf. chapter 4.2.8) – this can be viewed as a means to enable newcomers to understand – and adapt to their new group cultures. Thus this previous experience is important to the newcomers in order for them to be able to correctly adapt to the meeting with the new practices (cf. chapter 4.1.1) in-side this respective organization. Thereby it is also important to the organization in order to avoid as much friction and misunderstandings as possible in the three-day introduction train-ing (Aleksandr, 02:58), which will be elaborated more thoroughly in the followtrain-ing chapter.

Carl goes on to express that:

“[…] we do need people who […] can understand any issue from different perspectives. How it would be seen maybe from southern Europe or north-western Europe or in a country that is a recent EU-member state […] that means again it's a great advantage if you have actually worked in a differ-ent country or worked on European projects […]” (Carl, 05:19).

Through this quote it is therefore evident that the newcomers’ having some sort of cul-tural intelligence is not just something that is desired by the leaders of the organization but also a desire from the employees themselves. This can be seen by the way Carl ex-presses that it would not just be an advantage to the newcomer coming into the organi-zation that he or she has some established cultural intelligence, but also an advantage to the other established employees in the workplace since it would make their work more efficient and more frictionless. It is especially noteworthy how he uses the term “need”

because this shows us that he finds it of great importance that his coworkers have some cultural intelligence in order to make the workplace work. This is especially important regarding the actual newcomer to this respective organization, Aleksandr, as he has been hired on the basis of this exact need from the organization. He states that “it's al-so […] my job description. I'm […] in position of national expert al-so I bring the

has been hired primarily because of his previous experiences with – and knowledge of what a such organization as this produces. Furthermore he has been hired because of his experiences from working and studying abroad, which in turn has given him the opportunity to become accustomed to the individualist norm which prevail in the Dan-ish society – as argued in Denmark’s Normative Placement (cf. chapter 4.1.4) – be-cause he has been working in respectively Canada and England, which are societies that Hofstede has found to be predominantly individualist (Hofstede, 1980: 222). He states that “I've worked […] abroad before that so in England in Canada” (Aleksandr, 07:07) which in turn means that his ability to adapt to the individualist practices which prevail inside this multinational workplace has been increased by his experiences with fusing horizons with other people and societies of different norms than his own.

This not only means that, to Aleksandr, it is needed to have previous experience of having the required knowledge within the actual tasks this respective organization car-ries out, but it is also a likewise important to the organizations image as well in order to solve problems abroad and to, as Carl states, understand issues from a different per-spective than for example his own.

A further important prerequisite we have encountered is the importance of a common language. This will be elaborated even further in the coming chapter, but here the focus will of course be on language experience. Carl states that:

“you need to be able to speak English very well so if you're not a native Eng-lish speaker then normally that means studying very diligently at home or bet-ter moving abroad to study or work in an English speaking country” (Carl, 04:57).

As mentioned, the first thing to realize when meeting a new culture is the language that is used to articulate and express the given culture (Schein, 2010: 33 & cf. chapter 4.2.6). If the newcomer cannot comply with this notion, it is obvious through this quote

the newcomer’s ability to communicate in reference to the semantic space (cf. chapter 4.2.6).

Thereby, in reference to Aleksandr’s position and in general within this multinational workplace, the English language becomes the single most important thing for employ-ees to communicate with each other as well as for the organization as a whole to com-municate with other organizations. Thus this can be seen as the first step of becoming accustomed to the common ground in order to fit in with the level of academia that prevails within this organization – as will be elaborated in the following chapters – as well as the notion of multinationalism which prevail within this respective organiza-tion.