Professional Portfolio - Assignment Example

Professional Portfolio Professional Portfolio Summary of Changes Several changes were made to the assignments. In Global Workplace Philosophy assignment, the definition of global workplace has been changed because it defined intercultural communication. The correct definition of global workplace considers global workplace as an agency that makes use of employees from across geographical locations while maintaining a uniform code of conduct of how employees are expected to behave ethically and professionally, while utilizing massive communication and technology infrastructure with emphasis on diversity and cost controls (Varner & Beamer, 2011; Nelson & Quick, 2012). Developing an effective global workplace is a challenging tasks but necessary for multinational companies because it ensures employees in their companies create a culture of shared values that maintain cohesive and ethical cultures across countries that are difficult to create in a domestic environment. In light of this new definition of global workplace, to me global workplace is considered a workplace with intercultural teams that come together from across different countries to accomplish a business objective for a company using technology and communication, while observing certain ethical and professional behavior for the purpose of minimizing cost. In the same assignment, another change or rather an addition that has been made is the experience of intercultural communication, specifically using Coca-Cola in India as an example. Let us look at the change of intercultural communication. Intercultural communication relates to how people should work in a global workplace because it looks at how individuals from different background of culture attempt to communicate verbally and non-verbally, manage, approach deadlines, work together, meet, build relationships, negotiate and much more (Varner & Beamer, 2011). Individuals and companies that look into doing business within the global workplace usually are unsuccessful in addressing such areas before venturing into business abroad. This has the effect of leading to poor performance and lost business deals. More understanding of differences intercultural in protocol, communication and etiquette in addition to informed planning surely leads to a huge probability of attaining business goals and objectives. Code of conduct is one aspect of intercultural communication that relates to how people work in a global workplace. In a global workplace, a uniform code of conduct is used to address how workers of a company are supposed to behave professionally. For instance, employees in a global company are expected to work in teams in different departments, such as operations or marketing and collaborate across geographic areas or locations while observing cultural rules like respecting one’s culture. The explanation of intercultural communication can be explained by an example of India’s Coca-Cola. An example of culture respect is where an international company like Coca-Cola in India acknowledges that there are vegetarians and non-vegetarians in India (Sinha, 2004). Therefore, when serving food, local vegetarian employees will be provided vegetarian food despite many international workers being non-vegetarians. This will ensure good understanding across the domestic and international cultures. When looking at etiquette in a country like India, employees tend to wear Sari for work, while in international companies employees tend to wear suits. These two different customs in a global workplace are assimilated into the “etiquette or custom” code where employees from both international and domestic backgrounds are allowed to wear what they deem fit as per formal acceptable clothing for workplace. This has the effect of ensuring employees working in a global workplace are not detached to their normal work environment and, thus, helps them contribute largely to the achievement of business goals and objectives, which are mainly to minimize costs and maximize profits. Other changes that have been made in the paper are on Seattle International Film Festival Public Relations Internship and referencing style. A change on referencing style was made from “works cited” to “references” at the references section at the bottom of the paper. Changes on Seattle International Film Festival Public Relations Internship and how it brings different cultures together is explained in itinerary of my dream job. Itinerary of My Dream Job My dream job is public relations. Public relations is considered the art of managing the information flow between an organization or an individual and the general public (Butterick, 2011). Public relations personnel is usually responsible for maintaining and crafting the image of a business through intercultural communication like handling media requests and information queries from the general public though communicating to them verbally or non-verbally. In order to achieve this career, I have four goals that I want to attain. The first goal is to develop excellent interpersonal skills that will assist me in communicating and interacting with people both in a group and individually. Interpersonal skills are essential requirements for there to be an understanding relationship between people and organizations with communication being chief skills among many other skills. It is important to realize that this goal pertains to intercultural communication in the global workplace because it involves managing people, approaching deadlines, working together with people and other public relations personnel, building relationships and negotiating on how to go about achieving tasks with other people. The second goal is to learn ways of paying attention to details. This is significant because it ensures problems are identified and solved. It ensures that work problems are solved before information is communicated to the public. In public relations, it is important for bad communication to be rectified before reaching its intended recipient. Thus, paying attention to detail is a good interpersonal communication skill at the global workplace because it ensures problems are identified and solved. The third goal is to learn vocabulary necessary for communication technology. Enhancements in technology have changed the way people communicate with one another. Currently, a public relations staff can communicate with a colleague through communication technology on real-time basis. Therefore, learning intercultural communication vocabulary can ensure, through communication technology, different cultures are understood. The fourth goal is to maintain a vision that focuses on the future. This works only through working together with people to find out what is going on in the community. Through intercultural communication skills of communicating with people, a public relations personnel can foresee the future and help prevent conflicts during interactions. All of these goals above will assist me to achieve a career in public relations. An ideal internship that will assist me in achieving a career in public relations will be “Seattle International Film Festival Public Relations Internship” (SIFF, 2015). This internship requires the intern to perform certain tasks like assisting the interactive marketing manager in implementing overall strategy of SIFF’s and executing national and local media outreach in order to generate and promote wide media coverage that is favorable for SIFF Education, SIFF Cinema and the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF, 2015). In order to do this internship, certain resources are required that include a letter of interest and a resume. My resume is available although it may need to be updated before applying for this internship. I will prepare my letter of interest tomorrow to accompany my resume in my application for this internship. This internship will help me develop my interpersonal skills to accomplish my goals in order to achieve my career in public relations. It will provide me with the opportunity to interact with people through working together to negotiate on film festival deals and approach film deadlines on time. It is through this working together with other people that I will be able to build relationships that will ensure I get to develop excellent interpersonal skills that will assist me in communicating and interacting with people. Seattle International Film Festival Public Relations Internship utilizes communication technology that is used to communicate with other film festival companies in different countries by exchanging film ideas in the course of interactions. In the process of using communications technology, I will be able to pay attention to details on how to use communications technology equipment to communicate with my fellow colleagues. In addition, I will become proactive and able to identify problems in communicating information while working with other people and solving them before reaching their intended recipient. This internship is greatly influenced by intercultural communication because it relies mainly on interpersonal skills like interacting with people at workplace, paying attention to details, maintaining a focused vision of the future, and learning vocabulary necessary for communication technology. For example, in the Seattle International Film Festival, there will be a huge number of cultural differences with many people from different cultures working together. This will allow me to learn and understand how to interact with different cultures in the course of my internship stay. I have learnt several things in class concerning intercultural communication in the global workplace that apply to my public relations dream job. First, I have learnt that intercultural communication is associated with how people work in a global workplace because it looks at how individuals from different background of culture attempt to communicate verbally and non-verbally with one another while working together and building relationships. I have also realized that individuals and companies that look into doing business within the global workplace usually are not successful in addressing communication problems that usually concern public relations before venturing into business in other countries. This as seen in the discussion has the effect of leading to poor performance and lost business deals. Therefore, more understanding of differences in intercultural protocol, communication and etiquette at the workplace in addition to informed planning will ensure a business achieves its business goals and objectives. However, as shown in the discussion, in a place like India with people being vegetarians, it becomes difficult for other people from other communities that are non-vegetarians to coexist together. Therefore, it is important for a company to come up with ways to address cultural differences like having a code of conduct that addresses cultural disparities. One way has been shown in the discussion is for a company to come up with two meals that take care of vegetarian and non-vegetarian. To come up with these two meals sounds simple, but much of the work is done by public relations personnel to make people understand that they can coexist with other cultures without issues. References Butterick, K. (2011). Introducing public relations. London: SAGE. Nelson, D., & Quick, J. (2012). Organizational behavior: Science, the real world, and you. Boston: Cengage Learning. SIFF (2015). Internships. Retrieved 1 May 2015, from http://www.siff.net/about-siff/work-at- siff/internships Sinha, J. (2004). Multinationals in India. New Delhi: Sage Pub. Varner, I., & Beamer, L. (2011). Intercultural communication in the global workplace. New York City: McGraw-Hill. Read More