ii. Assignment 2 - Group Project: Expatriate Interview (Specification for Assignment 2)

(All these are required to be included in Assignment 2)

The assignment requires your team to: a) Undertake two separate interviews with two people that experienced expatriation - One from Singapore who lived abroad and One non-Singaporean who works/ or worked in Singapore; NOTE: this individual can not be a member of your team or class; b) Analyze the content of the interview(s) using the knowledge you gained from this module; and c) Write a report of your analysis, including the transcript of the interview(s) in an appendix.

Assignment:

Your task is to undertake two separate interviews with two organization members (profit/non-profit; private/public are all acceptable organizations) who have worked or are currently working overseas. One must be Singaporean and the other non-Singaporean and they must have lived and worked for a period of at least six months in a country other than their own. This also includes foreign nationals who are currently working in Singapore. The purpose of the assignment is to provide you with personal exposure to expatriate issues and, more broadly, to the issues facing people who work and live in a culture different than the one they grew in. Therefore I recommend you to aim ideally for a male and a female interviewee. In preparing the interview and the report, pay attention to the following points:

• Identify two expatriates you would like to interview (ideally from two different organizations). Decide on a general direction and time needed (a reasonable length would be half an hour to an hour long; you may go longer if they have the time).
•  Establish contact and gain permission for interview. We expect most interviews to be face-to-face. In exceptional cases, we will consider allowing interview in other formats.
• List the topics that you would want to address. We recommend you read closely all nine chapters from your textbook before you finalize your topic list.
• Compose questions to address each of the topics you have chosen. Structure a general interview plan (e.g., the order of questions) before commencing the interviews and use it consistently in both interviews. At the interview: you may ask your interviewee's permission to be recorded-that will help you be more relaxed and natural during the conversation. Alternatively, assign some of the team members to take notes, while one main person at the time conducts the interview-you may want to change roles during the interview.

Report:

(Max 700words)Chapter 1 to 3

In the second section of the report analyze the experience of your interviewees. Review what you heard from the interviews and assess it in light of what you learned in the module. Which aspects substantiate or relate to some of the studies covered in lectures? Are there any issues you learned about that contradict or are not covered by the models and studies addressed in lectures and in the readings? Are there models or cultural dimensions that you found especially useful to make sense of challenges or opportunities faced by your interviewees? Use short extracts of the interviews to support your analysis or make clear reference to which section of the interview transcripts you are referring to.

In the third section of the report, analyze and evaluate the content of the interviews, lining back to the theory and chapters covered in lectures. For example, if your group found some answers surprising, state it briefly and tell us what surprised you and why as well as what was consistent with existing theory and research (including the models and cultural dimensions).

The appendices include the transcript of the interviews, the log of your team work process and individual reflective papers as detailed below:

• Transcript of the two interviews you conducted. List the questions you asked followed by a quoted answer from the interviewees. You may include your comments or explanations too, if you feel they contribute to understanding the dynamics and content of the interview (for example: the interviewee sighted at that question and had a hard time answering or, the phone rang and we had to stop at this point, that's why she did not finished her answer, etc.)

• Log of the team work process. All members must equally participate in their group project. Your final submission must include a detailed log of all your team meetings, detailing the roles of each of the team members in each of the meetings, as well as a breakdown of responsibilities for the final report, this must be signed by all members of the group.

• Each student must submit a 500 word Group Reflective Report on their experience of working with their group. This is an important learning part of this project. There is no marks allocated for this Report but any student who fails to submit this Report will be deducted 5%. This report must be included by each individual student with their student number and name in the appendices.

The submitted Group Report will have the following format:

1. Title Page - project title and group members (include student numbers)

2. Abstract - overview of the project (no more than 150 words)

3. Table of Contents - each section, sub-section and page numbers

4. Introduction - tells the reader what the project report is about, the project aims and outlines the process to achieve the aims

5. First section: short presentation of your interviewees

6. Second section- this sets out how the project was completed, explains key concepts, presents theory / practice on the topic (as pertinent), interview discussion and application to theory. While much of the section will be descriptive, it is important that the group engages in some analysis and reports on this - link theory to the practical interview. There will be a number of headings / sub headings in this section - depending on the description and analysis undertaken.

7. Third section: Group's analysis and evaluation of the interviews - application of theory to your findings in order to demonstrate the ability to apply knowledge.

8. Recommendations - based on your research what do you recommend to future candidates to expatriation, or to companies dealing with expatriation?

9. Conclusion- this will consist of a short paragraph which summarizes the discoveries and learning from the project completion - what new insights emerged from doing the project.

10. Bibliography - reference all sources from journals, websites, books et cetera.

11. Appendices

a. Transcript of the interview

b. Detailed log of your team work process

c. Individual Reflective reports

Assignment Overview:

• Format: the interview report should be max 2,500 words excluding title page, abstract, table of content, references and the appendices. It is recommended that the second part will be about 1,200 words and the third part to be about 700 words using Time New Roman, 12 pt font and 1.5 spacing. Please ensure that your report is well laid out with appropriate headings, content and references (using the Harvard format). NOTE: Sample interview questions are included in Appendix 4 FOR REFERENCE ONLY. NOTE: you must customize and design your own questions appropriate for the interviews.

• Grading Scheme:

§ Relevance and clarity of your analysis (30%)

§ Course concepts/models applied (30 %)

§ Choice of the quotes (interview extracts) to illustrate your statements and analysis (20%)

§ Group's reflection on a specific element of the interview or the group-work process (20%)

• You should also complete the Team Agreement Form which is included in the appendices at the end of this study guide.