Travel Reference
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represent the higher, central authority of the company, on
whom all is blamed and to whom little is credited. Or you
may just represent complications to the hierarchy everyone
is already familiar with.
You must deal now with a new game of personal
relationships. You must learn what motivates your new
co-workers. Your afi liations and achievement orientation
may be vastly different from theirs.
Trying to establish a back-slapping, hail-fellow-well-met
camaraderie around the ofi ce is not going to work. Your
job is to uphold your part of the web of ofi ce relationships,
according to the French expectations.
You may i nd your co-workers more concerned about job
security than charge-ahead-capitalism. Time is less linear in
France and its value is not measured by money alone. You
will not automatically earn respect based on your professional
accomplishments. As we have learned already, individuality
and personality count for much among the French.
There is ambivalence towards money itself among the
French. So expect to i nd some ambivalence in the work
place. Your relationship with each member of the team will
be a more important concern than controlling organisational
decisions. (You probably won't have any major decisions to
make anyway.) You gain trust and respect through your ability
to work with the others.
Thus the very traits that had been your strengths back
home may become weaknesses in France. Harris and Moran
describe the rigid structure of French organisations. Authority
is more centralised, most individuals in the company have
less authority and so decisions are usually reached more
slowly. They must come down from the top. To defend their
position in the system, workers will build walls of protection,
rather than take aggressive action.
Several projects may be going on at once, with the same
staff, and only the central authority will be capable of
communicating what is really going on. You will need to
carefully analyse the patterns. Listening and observing will
be your essential skills.
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