Reflection on my experience on the International Business Learning Environments

Reflection on my experience on the International Business Learning Environments I module over the semester with particular attention to two critical ‘events’ and their conclusion.

You are required to submit an individual reflective essay in response to the following title:

Reflection on my experience on the International Business Learning Environments I module over the semester with particular attention to two critical ‘events’ and their conclusion.

The essay, which should comprise 2000 words  (plus or minus 10% ), will comprise three main parts: reflection on your behaviour during the two critical ‘events’ and the extent to which your behaviour with regard to the learning sessions, academic materials, assessments and team working experience have given you confidence that you are well-prepared for the Year Abroad. Your behaviour must be analysed with reference to relevant theory.

The essay should focus on a reflection on what you have learned and how it has been used in your preparation for the Year Abroad.

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IMPORTANT: A key resource for this essay is your Learning Logs. You are expected to completed one of these each week and include those that are relevant to the Essay as an Appendix.

Ensure that your submission includes a full Reference list using the Harvard standard format

In International Business Learning Environments module I have experienced many “events” in which I have gained the knowledge or change my point of view towards it but in this reflective essay I will mainly focus on two critical events that took a place during the module and I will explain why these were so important and what I have learnt from these. I will also reflect upon my behaviour during these two critical events and I will relate it to a theory. Kathleen Yancey stated “We learn to understand ourselves through explaining ourselves to others” (1998 p11) ,throughout this essay I will reflect my feelings and behaviour towards critical events and I will try to understand myself whereas, in the same time enhance my ability to criticise myself and make sure that I learn from my mistakes.

International Learning Environment module was there to help students understand the cultural differences and to be able to use the knowledge when you interact with people from the different cultural background. Personally, I have found this module very useful because as a student who will go for the year abroad it was a necessity for me to acquaint this sort of knowledge. As a person who studies International Business I have to be culturally aware. Cultural Dimension is something extremely important in the world of business, in today’s globalised world where companies across the whole globe are building connections and interact with each other for the purpose of expansion and maximising profits. There are more and more companies which are looking for the employers who have the ability to work in the diverse environment simply because diversity within the team unlocks innovation and leads to an increase of a market growth. It is said that diverse teams have an ability to think “outside the box” (Harvard Business Review, 2014).
During second semester I started International Learning Environment and from the start of the module we were divided in to the groups. In my case, I was placed in to a group consisting of four different individuals with four totally different cultural backgrounds. One of the main things that had connection between us was the degree (we all studied the same degree), same module and common perception on year abroad programme. Interestingly, within the module there have been many groups and most of them where divided in to the groups where everyone was going abroad to the same country. My group was slightly different because within the group we had two people including me who were going Russia for the year abroad and two people who were going to Germany for the year abroad. At the beginning, I thought that this could be problematic since we were all from different cultural backgrounds and we were not all going to the same country like people from the other groups. Our group dynamic was quite common and I have realised this at the end of our group work. On the start,I and the group went through process of forming where we got to know each other better and as Tuckam (1965) suggested during this process groups might get together in to smaller subgroups. This is what has happened to our group and it was mainly because as I have stated earlier – within our group, out of four people there were two team members going to the same country and there were two who were going to the another country.
Reflecting from what has happened on the start with our group I think that was the reason why I had problems and misunderstanding issues with one of the group members. I believe that I should have avoided dividing our small group into the subgroups as this did not help us towards completing our task. I believe this has happened because I knew well a person who was going to the same country as I and from that point I have focused on discussing the work with that person mainly and in the same time not really focusing on other members who were planning to go to the other country.
Belbin (1993) stated that “A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members. Members of a team seek out certain roles and they perform most effectively in the ones that are most natural to them.” I as a group member should have been seeking out group roles of every single member and it was my mistake that I did not do that and that I was not interacting equally with every single member of the team. Due to these mistakes, at the beginning of work with the group I had problems connecting and dividing the tasks between group members and that is for the reason that I did not know who represents what role in the group.
The first critical event that has occurred during International Learning Environment module was the event in which I have failed to explain the task to the team member. During the module were supposed to implement server software called wiki with the content regarding to our two countries. During second meeting I have decided to set feasible deadlines with agreement of team members for some of the work to be done. In the beginning, as I have mentioned earlier no one was quite sure who would take what role within our group so I have decided that I will delegate the tasks to the team members so that we can start off. Being a coordinator within our group seemed straight forward, I have equally shared the tasks between members and we have all agreed on who’s implementing which bit of a work. When sharing the tasks I have explained what everyone should do and I answered few questions regarding on what had to be done, at the time I felt like one of the group members is not quite sure what he/she were doing but I thought that this person willlook up on the guidelines and will be fine. On the next meeting where we have agreed to show the work that we have done over a week,this particular team member have done something totally different from what we have agreed to do. At the time when I have realised, I was really confused. I have read everything and at the end of reading I did not know what to say to that person because the work looked well-structured and it consisted of really good points but unfortunately it was off the topic and we could not use any parts of this work in our wiki. I felt disappointed that I haven’t clearly explained the task to him. According to Adler and Gundersson (2008) “Operating in international environments demands the ability to cope in diverse and complex situations, and in particular with people who have different values, beliefs, and backgrounds”this quote shows the theory of how international environment is complicated and I can relate that to my recent experience.
Another theory which I could have looked at and apply to the situation that has occurred in the group is Hall’s(1976) High- and low- context culture where it is suggested that different cultures have different culture’s tendency in terms of conveying the message across to each other or other way of explaining things and finishing tasks. When I look closely and actually think about in what context culture I am and he is then it comes out that I’m High context and he is low context and according to Hall’s (1976) theory people who are in the low content and are interacting with high context group means that they might be more likely to actually work things out by themselves rather than asking questions.
In conclusion, first critical event taught me that I should have been more culturally aware and most immortally I should have interact with him as well as with other members of the group. In the future I will definitely be more open towards any sort of interactions with other members so that I can get an idea of who they are;what their cultural background is and also once I get to know them I can relate to the group role theory while recognising who represents which role. Moreover, if I focus on all those aspects I will be able to enhance my cross-cultural and communication which are the key skills to work effectively in any international environment.
Second critical event that I want to talk about has occurred in March. During that time I have been working with my group on the mentioned before wiki. Moreover, in the meantime in the Eastern Europe evolved a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, where in my opinion Russian Federation illegally crossed the border with Ukraine and sent out the troops to the Crimean Peninsula under the pretext of protecting Russian people living in this area. Situation between Ukraine and Russia was getting worst every day and at some point Russia tookcontrol over Crimea and calledfor illegal referendum. Few days later illegally annexes this part of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin accuses Western Countries and USA that they have been helping Ukrainian protestors and that the reason why he had to intervene was because he was certain that Russian minorityfaces anti-Russian actions (Even though more than 50% of Crimean population is Russian).Political allies USA and European Union have placed number of sanctions and at the moment situation between West and East seems quite complex especially that there are pro-Russian protestors in Easter parts of Ukraine trying to join Russian Federation.
I was extremely disappointed when this political situation has occurred, since I’m a person who supports the whole idea of European Union and a person who has business plans regarding to the Eastern Europe and trading between East and West in European Sector –my feelings towardsRussia where negative and I felt anger. On the start of the protests in Kiev I was quite happy about the fact that there are people in Western part of Ukraine who truly want to join European Union but once things started developing in a wrong way I realised that this can end up dramatically and in fact it did for Ukraine. Another important aspect of this whole situation is the fact that they are so similar in terms of cultures (Lada, 2014). To my mind, countries that have similar way of thinking and almost the same culture would be less like to go to war with each other but as Lada (2014) states “Countries with shared identities often go to war with each other. This is most likely when two countries are culturally similar but differ in their political institutions.” During this critical event I changed my approach to the Russia and the way they are dealing with things. As a person who lived in post – soviet country I was always aware of how propaganda works and as I was following both Eastern and Western news during the conflict I have truly realised, experienced and felt how powerful government and media can be.
In conclusion to the second critical event, I think that I have been too optimistic and not quite aware of can happen when there is a minority of people fighting for change and not asking the majority in other words – the rest. I also believe that my negative feelings towards Russian government and Russian president should not be used against any of Russian people that I know or I will get to know as they point of view will be totally different since they have grown up in a different political system. Moreover, this critical event improved my general knowledge of Russia as I have been reading more than normally about its economic, politics and history – all the information acquired will be definitely useful during a year abroad.

In conclusion to this essay, I think that International Learning Environment gave me an incentive to understand cross-cultural communication and start applying theory to the practice while working in a team and especially when the team consists of members who have different cultural backgrounds. During second semester Ukrainian – Russian conflict allowed me to understand the significance of how a domestic problem can turn in to an international affair. I have also learnt a lot about both countries from not only Political or Historical view but also from the side of Economy and Business.

References

•    Adler, N.J. & Gundersson, L., (2008) International Dimensions of Organizational Behaviour (6th Edition), Cincinnati, South-Western Publishing, cited in Gannon, J, 2008, p. 80.

•    Belbin, M., (1981). Management Teams, Why They Succeed or Fail. London: Heinemann.

•    Belbin, R., (1993). Team roles at work. 1st ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

•    Hall, E., (1976). Beyond culture. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press.

•    Harvard Business Review, (2014). How Diversity Can Drive Innovation. [online] Available at: http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation/ar/1 [Accessed 27 Apr. 2014].

•    Lada, A., (2014). Russia vs. Ukraine: A clash of brothers, not cultures. [online] Washington Post. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/03/04/russia-vs-ukraine-a-clash-of-brothers-not-cultures/ [Accessed 26 Apr. 2014].

•    Tuckman, B.W., (1965). Development sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin,63, pp. 384-99.

•    Yance, K.C., (1998). Reflection in the writing classroom. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

Appendixes
LEARNING LOG SHEET 1

Name
Date
26/02/2014
The Critical Event
Group 3 Meeting
What I learnt
I have learnt that I always need to be culturally aware and especially when I am in the group where everyone is from the different cultural background.
1.a) Description
The team member agreed to the work that I and other members of group what him/her to do and team member agreed to that. However, it came out that the team member did something totally different.    Skills, knowledge/understanding
Communication
Participation
Cultural Background
Conveying the message
Misunderstanding
Different way of approach

Theory/model/analytical framework. Reference

Conflict Management

Conflict resolution

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

Small power distance

Intercultural competence

b) Who was involved?
Me and the team member

c) Feeling at the time?

I felt disappointed. I was confused and felt that I could have prevented this from happening. I was angry on myself and on the team member that we did not fully understood each other.

d) Significant influences

Similar past experience was when I was working in the group and we were supposed to prepare information for the group presentation. One of the members did someone else’s work and there was a massive confusion in the group on who is doing what.
2. What should I have done? (How I know this – affects? theory?)

At the time I think I should have explained the task given more thoroughly and perhaps after explanation I should have ask that team member to explain to me what is the task given it her/his own words so that I could be sure that team member understood what I expect him/her to do and so that we think along the same lines in terms of how to complete the task. Perhaps I should have been more interactive with this person, perhaps I should have been more open for the conversations not regarding to the work and maybe that would allow me to understand this persons way of thinking and then I would find special way to explain the task,

3. Reflection

LEARNING LOG SHEET 2

Name
Date
02/03/2014
The Critical Event
Group 3 – Conflict between Russia and Ukraine
What I learnt
I have learnt that I always need to be culturally aware and especially when I am in the group where everyone is from the different cultural background.
1.a) Description
Conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine faces domestic problems as protestors are in favour of joining European Union and there are people who would rather stay politicaly on the Russian side. Pro-Russian protestors take over Crimean Peninsula and Russia appropriates this region of Ukraine      Skills, knowledge/understanding
International Relations
International Business
Conflict
Sanctions
Trade
European Union
NATO
Democracy
Propaganda
Theory/model/analytical framework. Reference

International Relations

Conflict

Culture

International Business

b) Who was involved?
Ukraine and Russia

c) Feeling at the time?

I felt angry I was not happy and I was very worried in terms of my year abroad and if I would be able to go or not. I felt helpless and determined to help Ukraine join European Union.

d) Significant influences

I never had similar experience. It is one of the first conflicts in the Europe that I have experience.
2. What should I have done? (How I know this – affects? theory?)

At the time I think I should have stayed calmed and not really panic about the situation which has occurred in Ukraine. Due to my negative feelings towards what was happening I was not too keen on learning Russian at the time.

3. Reflection

About yourself
I think what I should have focused on was learning and stop thinking negatively about what was happening in the Ukraine. Although, this event had a direct impact on myself and my year abroad I think I should not be worried as much.    IMPORTANT: What will you do better in future similar occasions?
Once there will be a situation where my future plans could have fail to happen I will remain calm and I will not be worried as much as I was earlier.

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