Human resources

Professionally interact with fellow students or business managers to learn skills necessary for  entrepreneurial success.
Analyze risks inherent in owning a business.
Prompt:
In week 1 you conducted your first interview with a small-business owner/manager.  This week you will complete a second interview with the entrepreneur/manager and address the ongoing challenges the business has faced in the past, is currently facing, and will continue to face in the future.   Start your week by reviewing your interview write-up from last week.  The obvious next step, unless you did this last week, is to set up a date and time when you may conduct this second interview.  Next, as you did last week, create an interview outline to use. As this week’s focus is on “ongoing challenges,” build your interview outline around past, present, and future challenges the business has, is, and will face.  Feel free to modify this outline, but here is one way to start:

• Areas of challenge to a small-business (there easily could be several more):
• Human resources related (skills, retirement, turnover)
• Related to competition (increased, unscrupulous, larger, e-commerce)
• pricing related (international, out of state, or new competitor based)
• Hindrances to growth (people, financing, competition)
• Services related (delivery, market constraints, inventory)
• Product related (product evolution, competitiveness or availability from manufacturer, or access issues)
• Asset or Financing related
• Inventory
• Legal, regulatory, or license related

As you learned last week, the key to a good interview is preparation, using open-ended questions (as opposed to yes-no questions), and exercising good listening skills.  This course will be a challenge to your time management skills.  There is a lot to cover this week, including a discussion Forum and reading materials on small business challenges in the Reading & Resource section.
Instructions:
As you did last week, write up your notes or transcribe your recordings into a narrative and present your findings and conclusions in a logical manner.  Your narrative should be a minimum of 5 pages.  One possible organization may be as follows:

• Section 1 – Past and Present Challenges Faced by the Entrepreneur
• Section 2 – Future Challenges that Could Affect the viability of the business
• Section 3 – Your conclusions and insights regarding the challenges this company may face in the future.

Your paper should be in APA format. Finalize and submit your report by Sunday midnight.
Grading Rubric:
A rubric is provided here for your convenience that details how this assignment will be graded.  Please review it carefully prior to submitting your work.

Considering the facts that I have learned, I now see the necessity of paying close attention to providing employees with safe options for reporting any type of misconduct. In the future, I, as a leader, will make sure that my employees trust me and know that if something negative happens in the workplace, I will immediately and fairly address it. The same will be required from my managers. They will need to acquire specific conflict management skills and learn how to deal with uncomfortable conversations so that they can deal with any situation appropriately and promptly. As a result, strong management will be developed so that the staff feels safe and works hard.

Week 6

When it comes to cross-cultural conflicts, those various disagreements and disputes discussed above do not seem so complicated anymore. Indeed, cultural differences can usually make it much more challenging for two companies from different countries to make a business deal. What seems normal and common in one culture may be extremely offensive to another, and being unaware of such differences may lead to an unintentional conflict.

I did not have any experience in managing or being involved in cross-cultural business communication or conflict, and, to be honest, I am thankful for that. Although such situations are a valuable opportunity to develop unique skills and competencies, they are also stressful and require careful preparation. Therefore, if I ever become involved in communication between companies from different countries and cultures, I will make sure that our organization takes specific steps to avoid any conflict situation and approaches the negotiations with sensitivity and awareness. First, a careful analysis of other companies’ cultural features and characteristics will be performed with the main focus on its basic communication signs. It will be necessary to understand how they greet their colleagues and partners at business meetings, where they usually hold them, what they require to make a decision and how they are used to communicating, including the use of names or surnames and specific hand gestures. However, if the cross-cultural conflict does arise for one reason or another, I will know what to do, thanks to the lecture materials and additional readings. Since there are several conflict management models, it will be possible to find the most appropriate one.

Working with people from other cultures may also be complicated and lead to conflict if the parties have conscious or unconscious biases. Though I have never had cross-cultural business communication or conflict experience, I have been to other counties and talked to people from different cultures. Despite the fact that I accept any diversities, I was never completely free of biases, both negative and neutral, as most of them are inherent in the majority of persons through the media, movies, and other sources of information. As mentioned by Zychowicz (2021), there should be unconscious bias training that would make employees free from stereotypical thinking and make it easier and more comfortable for different cultures to communicate and accept each other. Now I realize the necessity of such training and will do my best to provide the workers with it in the future.

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