The Role of Cultural Context in the Workplace

Abstract

The following report deals with the internship undertaken by Michelangelo Maschio, student enrolled through the Scribe 21 Double Degree in International Business programme. The work experience has been maturated at McGregor Tan Pty Ltd, one of the most experienced full-service market research agencies in Australia. During the placement, the student worked closely with the Quantitative and Qualitative teams, contributing to the insights-creation process for the researches commissioned to McGregor Tan. This reflective report is divided into four sections: overview of the internship, overview of the host organization, reaction to the internship and conclusions. The overview of the internship starts delineating the reasons why the student undertook the internship, describing its duties and responsibilities and spelling out the necessary skills, knowledge and attributes that the student needed to have at the start of the internship. The second part of the report, Overview of the host organization, begins describing the company with background information to give an outline of the organization involved. Successively, the company culture is analysed to portrait the environment in which the student has been working for four weeks. Concepts borrowed from Hofstede (1980,1985), Lewis (1999) and Trompenaars (1999,2003) have turned out to be extremely helpful in delineating the traits of the organization’s corporate culture. Eventually, a detailed description of the tasks performed by the student outlines the activities carried out during the internship and the software packages employed (Microsoft Office pack, Q analytics and Revelation). The third part deals with the reaction to internship, starting with a global evaluation followed by the description of the areas in which the student developed skills and knowledge, for example IT-related and communication skills. Successively is described the relationship with other co-workers and the supervisor, with a focus on the cultural aspect of the experience. Here other cross-culturalPROF 3500 - Internship Reflective Report 3 management concepts are borrowed from Lewis (1999), in order to explain the observations and feelings towards the people surrounding the student in the daily routines. Particular attention to the relationship with the supervisor is paid, since he was having a more similar cultural milieu than the other people of the company. Finally, the conclusions are split into two parts. The first one relates to the linkages between the internship and the university classroom teaching found in two courses: Business Research Methods (Commerce 7039) and Cross-Cultural Management (INTBUS 7500). The second part consists in a final reflection considering the overall context of master’s degree, how the student progressed and concluded the studies with what should be the start of his working career.