James Randolf in China Essay

I. Overview The case focuses on James Randolf, a first-time expatriate manager from Controls Inc. He is sent abroad to help establish a joint venture (VC) with a Chinese subsidiary of the firm. Controls is a Chicago-based company which specializes in design of production of temperature control and filtration systems. Controls has already established operations in various parts of the world – Europe, Asia and South America. By investing in China, they are exploring the untapped Asian market, a key market with potential customers. Chong Ming Electro-Assembly is the company they are negotiating with in Shanghai. Despite the previous expansions of the US firm, the management has no experience working with Chinese firms before and they made a number of managerial mistakes that I am going to cover in this paper. But what the company did, was to negotiate an agreement with Chongming to jointly run a manufacturing plant on Chongming Dao island, north of Shangai. Controls sent James Randolf to co-manage the facility. J. Randolf was 51 years old at the time and had work in managerial positions in Engineering, Quality and Customer Support for 15 years. But what made him a perfect candidate for the position was that his wife was born in Shanghai. That made him the most culturally empathetic to his co-workers in the new facility. II. Preparation Prior to being sent to China, Randolf underwent an orientation training. There, points about his duties, obligations and assignments were discussed. The matter of payment was also settled, while his new position provided him with benefits such as convenient moving arrangements. Randolf then proceeded to visit the plant in Shanghai where he would be working for the next 3 years of his contract. Having committed to the assignment, he then received a supplemental orientation course which lasted 2 days. In this course he was supposed to become accustomed to the cultural differences of Chinese workers, to exchange information with other co-expatriates. All this supplemented with language learnings. Randolf then went on to work in the new facility for 13 months after which he was recalled to the home office by phone.