Abstract
Jimmy is older, he is more senior and he is my boss. And this means that even when we have an argument, we observe the proprieties. […] I speak with him in a polite manner, and I make sure to express myself so that he has a ‘back door’ – if in the end it turns out that what I said was right, I can say: ‘Well, that really was what you meant from the beginning, wasn’t it?’ […] Some of the biggest cultural mistakes I’ve made in China concern situations in which I was right and the solutions I suggested were eventually used, and it was witnessed by others. […] Once I sent out a mail that made it clear that I recommended solution A, and people knew that Jimmy had recommended B. Jimmy called me, very upset: ‘Listen, either I have to cut you down to size or take a major face loss myself – what on earth were you thinking? […] Why did you send a copy of that mail to everyone in the office?’ […] This situation was one of my first eye-openers.
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© 2012 Martine Cardel Gertsen and Anne-Marie Søderberg
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Gertsen, M.C., Søderberg, AM. (2012). Expatriation. In: Gertsen, M.C., Søderberg, AM., Zølner, M. (eds) Global Collaboration: Intercultural Experiences and Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137026064_5
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