Finnish Alliance for Development Cooperation FINDECO

HBCM HOLISTIC BUSINESS CULTURE MODULE Copyright Ms Venla Varis, Lic. Ed. venla.varis@findeco.fi

Business is international Communication is global Business relations are intercultural Development is happening by changing culture within business

Multicultural challenges in international business today Multinational corporations, increasingly recognize that success in global marketplace depends, to a large degree, on the employees’ ability to deal in the international arena (prof. Tapio Varis, University of Tampere) Ability to relate to ourselves and to other different people is used increasingly as a measurement when deciding between the applicants who will get a job.

Multicultural challenges in international business today Many national corporations also agree that maximum efficiency in the workplace depends on high diversity competence (every person has possibility to use his/her special personal motivation and multidimensional ability) and good ethnic relations among their employees (prof. Pekka Auvinen, Seinäjoki Polytechnic). International Standardization Organization ISO team (2006) is preparing a community based responsibility standard ISO 26 000 which emphasizes labour’s well-being and development. The name of the document will be ”International Standard Proving Guidelines for Social Responsibility”. It will be published in 2008 and will take into consideration issues dealt with in this course.

About the course HBCM course is a product of FINDECO’s experts and their international partners through decades of collaborative work in different international settings. The course is a competence-based course, designed to improve quality and wellbeing in multicultural working environment (multicultural in the sense of diversity in: ethnical, social, religious, life style, worldviews, cultural trends and dynamics) This course is a tool for developing and maintaining understanding of diversity skills needed for successfull communication in working environment. The course is developed within EU Programme Minerva, Lifelong Learning: Education and Training; Information and Communication Technologies

Are you interested in… using your skills, knowledge and experience more effectively in your working life? becoming more aware of your personal leadership and team skills? getting to know the roots of stress and getting it reduced, while increasing your wellbeing in the work place?

In the course we are talking about: quality of working life in multicultural working environment discovering the basis and keeping wellbeing at work taking into account holistic and effective business culture elements of successfull negotiation skills and motivation at work

HBCM is offering you tools to: start to develop your business training process develop your own business culture and get in line with other business cultures find, understand and benefit from your unique personal strenghts and working characteristics improve your business communication and potentials in international setting get more leadership points you can use in your growing business improve and develop Generic Competences in your business (according to EU definition)

Research points and references “Today more and more learning takes place outside the educational system. The attitude (change) process involves a person's adaptation to changes, development of personal competence and tacit knowledge as well as a renewal of internal ways of thinking. The source of energy for the attitude change process is in people's passion for knowledge and the desire for self-development.” (Otala, 2002) A business needs to develop a leadership process which is stress free. If a worker faces a conflict between his values and actions, this can lead to stress. The stress can come out as radical moves, surprising choices or neglections. This means that the person is trying to escape a value conflict. (Kauppinen 2002) “A company needs to create a corporate culture that is based on strong leadership and interaction between people. This way it would be possible to really make good use of the potential human capital in the company. This in turn would bring out the creative and innovative solutions. Corporate culture should be seen as the concentration of human capital rather than as a concept created by the organizational management. Essential elements in creating corporate culture are values, norms, meanings, assumptions, ideas, knowledge and understanding that shared by and partially common to all the members of the organization. (Wilenius, 2004) “Reflectivity can be defined as one's ability to reassess his/her actions and as a result learn how to correspond to the challenges caused by changes in business.” (Saarnio 1993, Raunio 2004) “The ability to reflect in complicated and uncertain situation is a mark of a skilful professional. The professional is aware of the underlying assumptions that motivate his/her actions as well as the actions of his/her surrounding community. Moreover, he is capable of questioning the assumptions. While reflecting he/she focuses more on asking questions than finding answers.” (Karvinen, 1993) Collected from Bachelor’s thesis “How to Guide an Adult Learner Through a Transformative Web-Learning Process” by Irmeli Aro, 2007, Häme Polytechnic, p. 11-29)

BASIC ORIENTATIONS IN DEVELOPMENT OF BUSINESS (Fink & Stoll 1998) development of action (effectiviness) sustainable processes (improvement) continuing learning processes (restructuring/reform) and developing in business culture (reculturing) Action improvement, process development and renewal of organization structure are needed and necessary parts of changing processes in business. If in business culture we do not take into consideration emotions the changing processes do not happen in practice (Hargreaves, 1998).

Qualifications (Ollus & al. 1990) and building competence according to Helakorpi (2004): All members of a corporation need to learn self-management. This means learning to control those choices affected by one's intentions, will, outlook, long term goals and principles. The basis of learning control is to learn to understand how those choices impact oneself and then the whole team's activity and success. Productive qualifications have to be prioritized in the work process. The adaptation qualifications, the motivational qualifications and the socio-cultural qualifications are all normative qualifications.

CERTIFICATION FINDECO is issuing a Certificate of completion of the course (5 ECTS), valid for postgraduate studies at the university level, accredited by the University of Tampere, Finland. Accepting levels: excellent, very good, good, satisfied, poor.

Business is international Communication is global Business relations are intercultural www.findeco.fi Development is happening by changing culture within business The culture is changed by You