Pass Cambridge BEC higher

1. 高级经贸英语 Pass Cambridge BEC higher English Department, Huzhou Teachers College

2. Cultural Diversity

3. Objectives • To enable students to talk about Cultural Diversity. • To practise reading and listening for specific information.

4. Task and Plan • Left work of last time • Case study: decision-making

5. 一、Left work: • Choose the best sentence to fill each gap. • 1-6: F, A, C, G. B. D • Discuss with your group members: what factors affect decision making in these area in China? • Recruiting new employees • Promoting staff • Fixing salary levels • Making staff redundant • In China, recruitment is based mainly on college graduates. • Sometime based on nepotism or networking.

6. Recruit family or friends even if they aren’t the right people for the job. • Often promote on the basis of seniority rather than merit. • Based mainly on appraisal from management team meetings and subjective judgment. • Salary levels are fixed out of egalitarian consideration with small salary gap between staff. • Pay according to hierarchical levels • Seldom lay off staff unless someone seriously violates regulations. • The more senior an employee is , the less likely he is made redundant. • Being a mediocre employee with average performance is not a major factor to consider when making staff redundancy.

7. Are decisions affecting each of the four areas based on group or market logic in China? • Because China belongs to eastern culture, there decisions affecting each of the four areas are based on group logic. The decision makers care more about the common benefit of the groups. • The popular regulation and principle in our society is “democratic centralism —— centralism on the basis of democracy and democracy under centralized guidance”, which is the organizational principle of CPC. Certainly the situation is changing nowadays.

8. Reading on page 95 • Read the conclusion on page 95 and decide which country each colour refers to. • Blue: England • Brown: France • Purple: Germany • Yellow: Italy • Red: Spain • Read the information again and answer the following question. What difficulties might people from France and Germany experience when working together? • Based on cultural diversity in decision-making concerning promotion and remuneration, people form France and Germany may experience the following difficulties when working together.

9. Owing to the fact that the French start from group logic, they tend to give more thought to common interest, synergy and group effects in decision-making. • This may lead to absence of competitiveness and average performance. • On the other hand, the Germany use market logic in deciding promotion and fixing salary levels. • Here decisions are based on the economic realities arising from the marketplace. • They believe that promotion and remuneration should be based on individual performance and contribution to the company. • But this may result in lack of fairness, synergy and team spirit.

18. Task: • Work in small groups. Choose six ideas from the Chief Executive’s list which you think would be worth implementing. Note down the reasons for your choices. • Then think three other ideas, which are not on the list, for improving staff motivation and morale士气. • Meet as one group and discuss your ideas, giving reasons for your choices. • As one group, try to agree on the six best ideas (from the Chief Executive’s and your own list) which should be put into effect.

19. Homework • Complete the exercises of Unit 6 （self-study a&b). • Thank U 4 your attendance!