WILLIAM G. SCHULZ,C&EN WASHINGTON

With the ongoing trend toward globalization, increasing numbers of chemical industry professionals find themselves not just working in foreign countries, but working with employee groups in two, three, or even more countries. Time constraints and the demands of the business market have placed a premium on people who can achieve success in more than one cultural setting.

MULTICULTURAL Bayer's Chih-duen Tse (center) with German colleagues (left to right) Bernhard Muehlner, Bernd Kolter, Dietmar Thamm, Silke Roye, and Jüergen Regel at the company's Morristown, N.J., location PHOTO BY P. SUDOL

Gone are the days when research or product managers, for example, might settle into a new job in London or Paris and stay there. They might still do that, but they would also be responsible for managing employees and projects in such diverse locations as Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, and the Netherlands.

As Giorgio Squinzi, chairman of Italian specialty chemicals company Mapei, notes, "A strong position or a leadership position in the domestic market is not enough." That is certainly true for the U.S.--about 96% of the world's population lives elsewhere. Globalization, then, is synonymous with the need for growth.

"This situation creates an excellent opportunity for young chemists interested in travel, encountering new people and cultures, and having jobs that offer adventure," says George J. O'Neill, former director of Eastman Chemical's Asia-Pacific research office in Osaka, Japan. He is currently a career consultant for the American Chemical Society's Department of Career Services.

"Prepare yourself for international work," O'Neill says. He points out that the top 50 global chemical companies publicly emphasize their need for employees with an international perspective. But small and medium-sized companies also need a global perspective, he says. "You can contribute to the company's success."

On the website for Rohm and Haas, for example, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rajiv L. Gupta states: "Ours is a company which has committed itself to a global path and which intends to increase its sales greatly in the world market, and so we have made ourselves a player in the 'world.' This 'world' we play in is a world of multiples. It is multifaceted, multihued, multitextured, multilingual, and multicultural."

Bayer Corp.'s U.S. website urges serious consideration of the company's international business needs: "We're a global company. Our customers are global companies. Our employees need to be globally sophisticated as well."

O'Neill counsels that chemists who have or who are willing to develop a global mind-set can look forward to greater opportunities for promotion and greater financial rewards. For chemical companies to succeed in the global marketplace, he says, they must have top managers who are experienced in global operations. And most firms, he adds, offer significant financial incentives to work in another country.

WORLD-CLASS The European Photo Reactor in Valencia, Spain, is the largest photochemical smog reactor in the world. Constructed of DuPont's Teflon, the reaction chamber of the facility is used to simulate chemical processes in the atmosphere. PHOTO BY TIM WALLINGTON

COMPANY MANAGERS, O'Neill says, are on the lookout for people with the necessary strengths and interests who can work abroad. "If you're junior management, you should be calling attention to yourself. Develop as much of an international component [to your career] as you can."

Obviously, those strengths and interests should include a good to high level of comfort in working with people who are of different races, religions, and customs. Enjoying travel--including, perhaps, very long-distance travel--is a must, and O'Neill adds that chemists interested in foreign assignments must also like, or at least be able to tolerate, the often stressful experience of moving.

Two-career couples confront significant challenges when one or both are interested in moving or pursuing careers that demand frequent travel. O'Neill and others say spouses must also be prepared for careers that span cultures and time zones.

There is a range of opinion about foreign-language skills: Some chemists who manage work groups abroad say that fluency in another language plus English is a good idea. Others say familiarity with another language is sufficient, and they note that, in many parts of the world, English has become the preferred language for both science and commerce.

Other business experts recommend the ability to memorize and use key phrases in the language of a host country. Those few words can be useful in making polite--perhaps impressive--introductions or simply for ordering lunch.

"The first three to six months are usually very hard," says J. Stewart Witzeman, a technology director at Eastman Chemical, Kingsport, Tenn. From 1993 to 1996, Witzeman worked as a coordinator for external R&D for the company in the Netherlands. Witzeman says company managers should pay close attention to spouses and families when relocating an employee. He says they can be the biggest source of complications in managing such a transition.

"It was a fabulous experience, personally and professionally," he says. "It really opened my eyes to the world--to different business dynamics. As a research guy, you're often not challenged to work out of a suitcase."

Witzeman adds, "I became much better at multitasking. I had to learn to make good use of my time."

"It's good for any person to have had cross-cultural experiences," says Chih-duen Tse, a product supply manager at Bayer Corp., Morristown, N.J. She has worked with overseas teams in Mexico, Spain, Germany, and France as well as with production teams in countries of the former Eastern bloc.

TSE GREW UP in Taiwan and attended graduate school in the U.S. Over the years, she says, she has acquired an ease in working with people of differing cultural backgrounds. In fact, Tse says, she often finds it easier to work with her international colleagues. "People look at me and they see someone with a multicultural background," she says.

Although Tse looks "foreign" in the places she works, she says the real key to eliciting a positive attitude from colleagues and subordinates is to "treat people with respect. Give them the benefit of the doubt."

Tse and others note that working hours, holidays, and vacation time practices differ dramatically in different parts of the world. "Everyone has to make some adjustments in their 'mental calendars,' " another global manager says about working with people in different cultural settings.Working in Eastern European countries "has been a very new experience for me," Tse says.

"What motivates people there is different than in other parts of the world. Asking someone to do the best job he or she can," she says, is not always understood in the same way it might be in the U.S. or elsewhere.

The company itself needs to be sensitive to cultural context, Tse says. In some Eastern European communities, for example, adding a shift at a production facility might entail obtaining a permit from the local authorities. "It can be a community issue, not just a company issue," she says.

Workers in Eastern Europe, Tse says, also still struggle with some of the concepts and realities of a market economy. Sometimes, she says, people there have difficulty managing changes that must follow from changing market conditions. And "once there is a change--say in production--the expectation is that it will be there forever."

Everyone who provided comments for this story cautioned that holiday and time-off customs have little to do with how hard people work or their level of motivation. Tse says managers must be sensitive to this aspect of managing employees in different parts of the world and be aware that holiday and vacation times often have very strong links to a given culture.

Sometimes, Tse says, cultural sensitivity means knowing that people in a certain country just don't like voice mail, and it is therefore not used. "You have to keep in mind those kinds of facts," she adds.

Although it would seem to apply to many on-the-job situations, Tse recommends that the way around cultural differences is to include people in working teams and to share with them information about the business and business processes. "If you share information and share the success, then employees can also share the problems with you," Tse says.

Cultural sensitivity/awareness is the key to success in international work, agrees Tim Wallington, a staff scientist at Ford Motor Co., in Detroit. Wallington, who was born in the U.K., lived for a year in Germany when he was an Alexander
Von Humboldt Fellow in the laboratory of Karl-Heinz Becker at the Bergische Universität GH, Wuppertal.

WALLINGTON HAS also performed research in Valencia, Spain. Although a seemingly endless supply of sunny days there seem to stand out in his mind, he also praises a unique research facility--the European Photo Reactor (Euphore). He has used the facility, which is funded by the European Union, to determine the smog-forming potential of various fuels and fuel mixtures.

DAHLGREN PHOTO BY SAM DUFFEY

Altogether, Wallington says, he spends about eight weeks of the year traveling around the world on company business. "It provides valuable insight into how foreign consumers think and how different products are perceived in different markets. Such insight is vital for a global corporation."

Wallington says he has learned to pay attention to subtle cultural differences. In Germany, for example, "there is a much clearer distinction between accepted behavior at work and at play than in the U.S." He says that there are distinct "cultural roles" for work and play.

When he lived in Germany in 1998, Wallington says, "I went full force and took the whole family. A very major part of the experience was the family's interaction" with German culture.

Indeed, Wallington and others say that having spouses and family along on an overseas work assignment adds to the experience--and, sometimes, the stress. Many chemists who have worked overseas say the difficulties fell disproportionately on spouses who did not, at least at the outset, have the daily escape of work.

"It probably was toughest on my wife," says R. Marc Dahlgren, a chemist who works at Procter & Gamble's Rusham Park Technical Centre, which is located in Egham, England, just outside London. "England is an easy transition from America," he says. "But it's not America."

Dahlgren, who worked for 18 years at P&G headquarters in Cincinnati, says the company provided a lot of support for his family's transition. He says he visited Egham before making a definite commitment to the transition, and company officials showed him appropriate rental property available there as well as schools that his children might attend. "They fleshed out the nuts and bolts of what the move would look like," he adds.

STILL, DAHLGREN SAYS, his family left a very established situation and ventured into a new one filled with unknowns. Fortunately, he says, they found a lot of support with the local U.S. expatriate community. "The area we are living in is the heart of that."

On the job, Dahlgren says, "P&G has a strong internal culture, and you see that the world over. The company's purpose, values, and so on give you a starting point for dealing with just about any business situation."

Nevertheless, he says, cultural differences do come into play. "The way people interact, how open they are. You have to make an effort to learn that and appreciate that. It means there is a diverse set of options for solving problems."

Roman Davis, who works in chemical development at GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park, N.C., says he tried to socialize with employees in work groups he has managed in the U.K. He enjoys getting to know the people he works with, but even doing that has required some cultural sensitivity, he says--a skill he has honed from several experiences working and living in different countries.

For example, Davis says, people in the U.K. don't usually entertain at home, and they do not often include spouses or other family members in work-related outings. "In England or Scotland, socializing is always done at a restaurant or a pub without family or spouses. I find it awkward that I don't get to meet the family."

Nonetheless, getting to know his colleagues there has paid off. Davis says he is now more attuned to the formalities of British culture: At one plant where he has worked, for instance, scientists are required to be in their lab coats at all times. Meetings, he says, are always somewhat formal occasions--not the quick get-togethers or informal hallway conferences characteristic of U.S. businesspeople. And, he comments, "they take their tea breaks very seriously."

He says he has been personally enriched by his experiences. "The pace of life, the position of the importance of work is different in England and Scotland," he says.

Professionally, Davis says, he has also taken away some good lessons. "I had to adopt an attitude of go slow, do lots of planning." He says scientists in Europe tend to do fewer but more well-thought-out experiments when working on scientific or technical problems. "It is just as efficient as the U.S. approach" of doing lots of experiments.

Sumit Tripathi, a marketing manager for EM Industries in Hawthorne, N.Y., cautions against too much reliance on cultural stereotypes--something of a natural tendency, he says, when someone doesn't really know another culture.

Within his own company, Tripathi says, at times there has existed a notion that somehow Germans are the best workers. It is a subtle stereotyping, he adds, that might be expressed in otherwise bland comments about how quickly and effectively a job is done in one locale as opposed to another.

Tripathi does see signs of improvement with younger managers. "People are not holding on to stereotyping anymore," he says. There are noticeable cultural differences among people, but there is not stereotyping based on those differences, he says.

TABLE: Company Profiles
Synopsis of the Western European chemical industry (PDF file)

TRIPATHI ATTRIBUTES much of that change in younger people to experiences that younger people have had traveling to different parts of the world or growing up in different parts of the world. People are more aware of the different living and cultural situations that exist elsewhere, he says.

He says EM Industries, a subsidiary of Merck KgaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is very open and direct in dealing with biases--in any country or cultural setting. And it makes good business sense to be open-minded, says Tripathi, who was born in India, studied as an undergraduate in Nigeria, once worked in Ethiopia, and has been working in the U.S. for more than 10 years.

Because of global business pursuits, company officials have learned that misunderstandings, biases, stereotyping, and the like are bound to occur. But when such issues are dealt with and talked about openly, Tripathi says, they remain at the level of misunderstanding between people who otherwise like each other or who are at least able to get along.

In the chemical industry, Eastman's O'Neill and others say that tremendous financial rewards are often waiting for those who reach for experiences and understanding outside their own cultural setting. But like everyone who commented for this article, he emphasized his feeling of personal growth, especially the opportunity as a manager to build patience and tolerance, and simply to learn something from another person.

There is a huge payoff, Bayer's Tse says, and the qualities demanded of global managers are excellent, too, for dealing with friends, family, and children. "You begin to realize that it is differences that make this world strong," she says.

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