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Mesaba Unions OK Contracts

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - Unions at Mesaba Aviation Inc. said Monday they have approved new concessionary contracts with the bankrupt airline, a Northwest Airlines feeder.

About 1,000 pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are covered by the contracts, which took nearly a year to reach and brought the unions to the brink of a strike.

Mesaba said it needed the labor deals to continue handling regional flying for Northwest Airlines Corp., which also is operating under bankruptcy protection. Mesaba earlier got permission from a bankruptcy judge to impose cuts amounting to 17.5 percent of pay and benefits on the unions, but held off as the two …

Chinese cultural Values and Performance at Job Interviews: A Singapore Perspective.

In a country like Singapore, which is rated high in power distance and low in individualism (using Hofstede's dimensions of national cultures), interviews for entry-level positions in multinational corporations (MNCs) may reveal subtle clashes in culture. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed transcripts of job interviews involving nine English-speaking applicants from Chinese backgrounds and two experienced interviewers from Anglo-American MNCs in Singapore. Our assumption was that a person's cultural background and upbringing influence his or her performance at job interviews. The findings reveal that Chinese applicants tend to defer to the interviewer (i.e. superior) and focus on the group or family, besides being averse to self-assertion. Hence, applicants from a Chinese background may be disadvantaged when being interviewed for jobs with MNCs which are heavily influenced by Anglo-American culture.

Keywords: Interviewing, cultural differences in the job search, oral communication

CULTURAL VALUES come into play in the job interview. To assess how they do so, we conducted a study with engineering undergraduates taking a communication skills course at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Students performed in simulated interviews for entry-level jobs with an Anglo-American multinational organization (MNC). Such companies are the top choice of workplace with many graduating students in Singapore. Nine English-speaking applicants from Chinese backgrounds interviewed with one of two experienced interviewers. This article reports the results of our study.

To set the stage: Singapore is an island of 3.7 million people, with the Chinese forming 77.2 per cent of its population (the others being Malays and Indians). Practicing an open economy, Singapore has cultivated the presence of MNCs, which have helped fuel its economic success. As with many other countries, when MNCs locate in Singapore, they usually bring with them their own workplace culture. Interviewers for such MNCs have imbibed that culture, and when they interview applicants for jobs, they tend to look for people who can fit well into that culture. On the other hand, most graduating job applicants, who have lived and studied in Singapore all their lives, often do not share the same cultural assumptions as their MNC interviewers, and thus may find themselves discriminated against in the job interview, albeit unconsciously.

Background of the Study

In the context of this study, it did not matter that the interviewers were Singaporean Chinese. What matters is that, in order to have succeeded in their careers with an MNC, they had to adopt the workplace culture of the Anglo-American MNC they work in. Since English is the language of education and business in Singapore, and proficiency in the language is a criterion for university admissions, our students can be assumed to have sufficient language skills for the job interview. Our assumption was that, all else being equal (e.g. language skills and personality traits), cultural background and upbringing play an important part in whether or not one performs well in an interview. Specifically, we assumed that many entry-level job applicants in Singapore, who tend to be from a Chinese cultural background and with a Chinese upbringing, may find it difficult to succeed in job interviews with Anglo-American MNCs, particularly because some of their cultural traits are the opposite of those looked for by the interviewers.

The Interview Process

O'Grady and Millen (1994) studied the difficulties faced by applicants from what they call "non Anglo-Celtic backgrounds" (p. 5) who did not share the values and attitudes of their Australian interviewers. It is the shared cultural background, they say, which helped the applicant in the following excerpt correctly interpret the interviewer's indirect question in an interview for a position in international marketing, a position that involved possible overseas travel:

Interviewer:

You've just recently married I see.

Applicant:

…