Gary Fontaine’s Selected
Publications
Complete copies of these
and the other professional publications listed on my vita can
be obtained by contacting me at the
My eBook entitled
"I was trekking over the Milke Danda toward
Taplejung. ... It was very clear and fine and soon I caught sight of
Kangchenjunga. I've often seen the
Strange Lands -- we were all born into one. Most of us over the years have by
choice or necessity molded ours into the much more familiar and predictable
place we call "home." But strange lands are still out there,
everywhere. By "strange lands" I mean those relationships, teams,
organizations, or foreign lands within which we must deal effectively with new
peoples, cultures, places, and technologies. Increasingly we confront these
lands abroad on global assignments for multinationals, in foreign study, or
intercultural marriage, or even as tourists. We encounter them face-to-face or
online as we participate more and more in geographically dispersed teams. And,
of course, we encounter them at home every time we wander into our culturally
diverse office, classroom or bar. Presence in Strange Lands focuses most
significantly on those literal new lands encountered on sojourns abroad, though
it deals significantly with these others as well.
"Why do we journey to such lands?" That, in a nutshell, is what this
book is about. In spite of ecoshock, frustration, fatigue, failure, and
sometimes danger what lures we sojourners from home to the road? What causes us
to journey to these strange lands for an assignment, a career or a lifetime?
What keeps us there? And, what entices us back there, again, and again–the job,
the money, the adventure, the people and cultures we find, the challenges we
encounter, the stories we can later tell? That is what this book is about. It
is also about the tools we need to take with us to be optimally effective in
these lands. But most particularly, it explores the experience of a "sense
of presence" -- the heightened immediacy, broad awareness, vividness,
responsivity, and clarity so commonly described by sojourners on these
journeys. It explores what a sense of presence is, what induces it, what
nurtures it, and its key role in helping us deal with the challenges to success
encountered in these lands. It introduces the “presence-seekers” -- sometimes
presence “junkies” -- for whom a heightened presence is the allure of a life on
the road. And it describes what happens as we return to that once familiar land
we called "home." Presence in Strange Lands unfolds through the words
of numerous sojourners on a broad variety of journeys to very diverse lands (an
excerpt from one opens this summary). These descriptions of a sense of presence
were elicited through several research projects with methodologies ranging from
informal interviews, to focus groups, to web-based forums. They are intertwined
with interpretation based on current research and theory to guide readers to a
better understanding of their own experiences and to better deal with the
challenges encountered in their own strange lands.
Presence in Strange Lands is a book for "travelers," but one that
deals not so much with the wear on the feet, but the changes to the mind and
the spirit. It opens with the view of Kangchenjunga floating in the sky and
along its trek encounters much both outside us and within us. After journeying
through the many ways that a sense of presence affects our experiences as we
travel the globe--both literally as we get into airplanes and figuratively in
geographically dispersed online teams, it ends with an appeal for continued
dialogue designed to nurture both the exhilaration and insight that we all have
of the Strange Lands in our own lives. And those that by
choice, or necessity, we will face in the future. Available for
purchase online
My eBook entitled
Successfully Meeting the
3 Challenges of All International Assignments
Our world has become international. To do our
business successfully today we must rely not on habits developed at home in the
past--however effective there--but on strategies responsive to the
international world we face. We must do this whether our business is in
commerce, diplomacy, science and technology, education, entertainment, tourism,
transportation, religion, communication, or the military. And to do business
internationally typically requires going there, be it a short-term assignment
to negotiate a treaty or a long-term one to manage a subsidiary.
This book provides both practical and conceptual
insight into the management of these international assignments. It provides an
honest, realistic assessment of the requirements for doing business consistently
effectively on them and what personnel and their organization can do to
maximize that opportunity. It reviews the commonly described strategies for
doing business internationally and their weaknesses. It describes an optimal
strategy for doing it and the essential skills associated with this strategy.
The book then presents how an organization can best manage programs for
screening, self-selection, orientation, training, travel, accommodation, and
support to help personnel in using that strategy.
The book is useful as a companion guide for personnel
in preparation for and during their international assignments; as a key source
for managers, trainers, and human resource specialists responsible for
organizational programs to manage these personnel; and as a textbook for
students in academic or professional programs in international management,
international relations, international studies, intercultural and international
communication, or human resource development. It fills a large gap between material
currently available focused primarily on comparative management and
cross-cultural training ("how other cultures do business") and the
full requirements of managing international assignments ("how to do
business with those from other cultures"). Issues are presented within an
integrated theoretical perspective yet are illustrated at a very practical
level. The focus is international--on personnel from any country assigned to
any country. Available
for purchase online
Global Swarming
Gary Fontaine
fontaine@hawaii.edu
Over the last half century multinational enterprises
have essentially "swarmed" the globe with regional and local offices
in an attempt to benefit from expanded opportunities. The theme of the present paper is that this
phenomenon can be usefully be viewed as significantly self-organized swarms
searching a solution landscape for optimal solutions to challenges presented by
new and rapidly changing organizational ecologies. The paper applies a particle swarm
optimization perspective to this phenomenon, relates it specifically to current
models of knowledge building and exchange in these enterprises, and discusses
the implications for the globalization process.
Fontaine, G. (2006). Global
Swarming. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Intelligent System
Design and Applications (ISDA'06), 1212-1215.
A Self-Organization
Perspective on the Impact of Local verses Global Assignment Strategies and
Knowledge Building
Gary Fontaine
Until recently the prototypical policy for staffing
upper level management positions in local offices of multinationals was to
assign personnel from headquarters. This
strategy of expatriation significantly
enhanced the cultural diversity of local offices and--typically to a lesser
degree--headquarters. A decade or so ago
expatriation strategies began changing to emphasize filling local positions
with local managers because local managers were more familiar with the local
staff, clients, markets, and cultures, were less expensive to support, and
doing so assuaged a variety of political, image and ethical concerns. Additionally there are more trained,
experienced and competent local personnel available and/or local knowledge and
skills are now more recognized and valued.
While there may have been short-term increments in
performance partially attributable to this change in expatriation strategy,
there is the danger of some longer-term decrements. Although multinationals have recognized the
problems "expats" have working and living abroad, they appear not to
have been as attuned to the knowledge
building produced by shuffling them around from local office to local
office to headquarters, and so forth.
They were involved with both the creation and exchange of knowledge
associated with a vastly expanded range of tools for dealing with
organizational challenges locally and globally.
This expansion in knowledge and associated skills is,
of course, critical to prosperity, if not survival, in our rapidly evolving
local and global worlds. Further, recent
theoretical developments in the self-organization
of biological systems suggest that significantly altering the diversity of
people interacting at the local level with specific knowledge and skills is
likely to impact the building of this critical knowledge. This paper examines both theoretical and
policy issues associated with this impact.
Fontaine, G. (2005). A Self-Organization Perspective on the Impact of
Local verses Global Assignment Strategies and
Motivations for Going
International:
Profiles of Asian and
American Foreign Study Students, Cross-Cultural Management Students, and Global
Managers
Gary Fontaine
This study assessed the motivational profiles of sojourners in
international business and foreign study.
A "Reasons for International Travel" questionnaire was
administered to 107 Asian and American foreign study students, 90 Asian
participants and 26 Americans participants in two graduate cross-cultural
management programs, and 32 managers for two large multinationals. Principal components factor analyses produced
six factors: (1) Presence-Seeking; (2) Explorer; (3) Recreation; (4)
Job/Career; (5) Collector/Consumer; and (6) Family Stability. MANOVA and ANOVA indicated surprising
commonality in the profiles across these factors with Explorer, Recreation,
Presence-Seeking and Job/Career most important.
There were, however, several significant differences between groups.
Fontaine, G. (2005). Motivations for going international: Profiles of
Asian and American foreign study students, cross-cultural management students,
and global managers. International Journal of
Management, 22(2).
A Sense of Presence and Self-Reported Performance
in International Teams
Gary Fontaine
Research over the last couple decades has explored the relationship
between a variety of states of consciousness, performance, and motivation. These have included flow and a sense of
presence in face-to-face, online, and virtual environments. This study examined the relationship between
presence and flow experienced by 75 male and female participants from several
Pacific-Rim nations on 4 international teams and their self-reported
performance, enjoyment, and motivation associated with team-related tasks. The results indicate that in these relatively
novel (because of their cultural diversity) task situations self-reported performance correlated
more highly with presence (r = .34, df = 72, p < .01) than flow (r = .26, df = 71, p <
.05). Enjoyment and motivation, however,
correlated more highly with flow (r =
.60, df =
71, p < .01 and r = .40, df = 71, p < .01,
respectively) than presence (r = .26,
p < .05 and r = .25, p <
.05). These findings suggest the need to
further explore the relationship between activity- or task-related states of
consciousness, the characteristics of the tasks involved (particularly in terms
of their novelty), and the effect on performance and motivation.
Fontaine, G. (2004). A sense of presence and self-reported performance in international
teams. Psychological Reports, 95, 154-158.
The “Knowledge
Paradox” in Global Management:
Local versus Global
Assignment Strategies
Gary Fontaine
In the early days of wide-spread globalization the
prototypical policy for staffing upper level management positions in local
offices of multinational enterprises (MNEs) was to assign personnel from
headquarters. This strategy of expatriation provided a major impetus
for the development of the intercultural/international training field which has
been the major focus of my own professional activity--someone needed to help
prepare and support those “expats” as they migrated from global assignment to
global assignment to home again. A
decade or so ago expatriation strategies began changing to include much greater
emphasis on filling local management roles with local personnel. For example, the Shanghai Daily News (2002) reports on a survey by a global executive
search firm which concluded that the localization of executive teams is an
irreversible trend in
Fontaine, G. (2003). The
“Knowledge Paradox” in Global Management:
Local versus Global Assignment Strategies. International Journal of
Knowledge, Culture and Change Management, Vol. 3, 659-669.
Teams in Teleland:
Working Effectively in
Geographically Dispersed Teams
"in" the
Gary Fontaine
In the Asia Pacific, along
with the rest of the world, there has been a rapid expansion in the use of geographically dispersed teams playing
pivotal organizational and interorganizational roles. Yet our understanding of the conditions
nurturing the task effectiveness of those teams is still embryonic. This article examines conceptual issues
associated with the impact of culture,
geography and technology in those teams in the Asia Pacific. It identifies the pivotal role played by
"a sense of presence" (the
feeling of "being there" with team members in different places and
often different times) in both the effectiveness of, and satisfaction in, the
use of such teams. Current research
designed to explore these issues in teams in business and education in the
region is described.
Fontaine, G. (2002). Teams in
Teleland: Working Effectively in
Geographically Dispersed Teams “in” the
Presence
in "Teleland"
Gary Fontaine & Grace
Chun
We all have journeyed to many "strange
lands" over the years, miles, and technologies. Co-author
Fontaine, G. & Chun, G.
(2010). Presence in Teleland. In K. Rudestam & J. Schoenholtz-Read (Eds.), Handbook of online learning: Second Edition, 30-56.
Skills for Successful
International Assignments to, from, and within
Gary Fontaine
This paper first makes the case that
effective preparation, support, and training for international assignments to,
from or within Asia and the Pacific need to be based on sound
models of the skills required to meet the challenges of those assignments for
the assignees themselves, their families accompanying them, those managing
them, and the hosts with whom they are working. The paper then presents the
characteristic ecologies encountered on these international assignments;
identifies copying with ecoshock, developing strategies to effectively complete
essential tasks in a new ecology, and maintaining motivation as the three key
challenges faced in those ecologies; and describes the skills useful in dealing
effectively with these challenges. Finally, the implications for intervention
programs to assist assignees in acquiring these skills and an illustrative
training program outline are presented.
Fontaine, G. (2000). Skills for
successful international assignments to, from, and within
Training for the Key
Challenges Encountered on International Assignments in
Gary Fontaine
This paper first describes the characteristic
ecology encountered on international assignments to or within the
Presented at the International
Symposium on Pacific Asian Business,
The Experience of a Sense of Presence in Intercultural and
International Encounters
Gary Fontaine
The state of consciousness referred to as a
sense of presence has received significant attention in research on
teleoperator and virtual reality systems. There has apparently been, however,
little theoretical development or empirical research associated with the
experience of presence. In that regard, it is useful to look at another very
different context in which it has received attention. This paper reports on a
study recently conducted on the experience of presence in international and
intercultural encounters that may have theoretical significance beyond this
limited context. Overall, the results indicated that the experiences of "realness,
vividness, and feeling very much alive," "attending to the immediate
situation," "a perception of thinking and acting in new and
innovative ways," and "a broad awareness of everything around"
clustered together as a single factor and that a sense of presence in this
context is a state of consciousness with at least these characteristics. There
was also evidence that the experience of the state is related to the perception
of quickness in the passage of time, the recall of details of encounters, their
enjoyment, and the motivation to repeat them.
Fontaine, G. (1993).
The experience of a sense of presence in intercultural
and international encounters. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual
Environments, 1(4), 1-9. Available online.
Training for the Three Key Challenges Encountered on All International
Assignments
Gary Fontaine
International assignments--whether in
business, diplomacy, technology transfer or
whatever--typically involve journeys to strange lands. That is, they are
encounters with new ecologies; new and diverse social, physical, and biological
environments. Those ecologies present several significant challenges. To the
degree that personnel are able to deal effectively with these challenges, their
assignments will be successful. To the degree that personnel are unable to meet
one or more of these challenges, their success will be less than
optimal--perhaps they will fail altogether. Thus the idenfication
of these challenges and training in the skills required to deal with them,
should play a critical role in the training for all international assignments.
Fontaine, G. (1993).
Training for the three key challenge encountered on
all international assignments. Leadership and Organization Journal,
14(3), 8-14. Available online.
Social Support and the Challenges of International Assignments:
Implications for Training
Gary Fontaine
International assignments in business,
diplomacy, foreign study, scientific exchange, or whatever, involve journeys to
"strange lands" or new ecologies, i.e., new sociocultural,
physical, and biological environments. That is both their bane and their lure.
There are several characteristics common to
the ecologies of most international assignments (Desatnick
& Bennett, 1977; Fontaine, 1989). For instance, assignees confront
differences associated with people (e.g., culture, language, physical
appearance, crowdedness); place (seasons, climate, topography, built
facilities, sights, sounds, smells, or simply being far from the home to which
their identity is attached); travel (getting there takes longer, is more
complex, and requires more preparation); time (it usually takes longer to get
things done internationally); communication (language can make communication
with others abroad difficult and time-zones can do the same for communicating
back to the "home office"); structure (assignees are often more
responsible for structuring activities themselves); and support (separation
from the social and organizational support groups left home, disruption of
those accompanying them, and difficulty in developing new ones). These
characteristics essentially define what "international assignments"
are and set them apart from their domestic counterparts.
Other ecological characteristics
differentiate one international assignment from another (Fontaine, 1989). For
instance, the specific character of each of the above will differentiate between
assignments (i.e., assignment to an Asian or American culture with a temperate
or tropical climate, etc.). In addition, assignments may differ in
organizational context (e.g., business, diplomacy, or foreign study); degrees
of power assignees have relative to their hosts; the standard of living they
find; and the type and novelty of the communication, transportation,
manufacturing, educational, or other technologies needed to get tasks done. Of
particular importance to this chapter can be differences between assignments in
duration (e.g., three days, three months, or three years), whether the
destination is a cosmopolitan urban area with a plethora of resources for
support, entertainment, recreation, and so forth or a provincial one with very
few; the availability of a supportive expatriate community; and a
culture/language that eases or hinders entry into host country support groups.
The new ecologies encountered on
international assignments confront assignees with significant challenges to
success in terms of their adjustment, performance, and satisfaction (Black,
Mendenhall & Oddou, 1991; Dunbar, 1992; Parker & McEvoy,
1993). I have earlier (Fontaine, 1989 & 1993a) identified three key
challenges as: (1) coping with ecoshock (assignees' physiological and
psychological reaction to the new ecology); (2) getting the job done by dealing
effectively with diversity; and (3) maintaining the motivation to continue in
spite of almost inevitable frustration, fatigue, ecoshock, and failure. To the
degree that assignees deal effectively with these challenges, their assignments
will be successful. To the degree that they are unable to meet one or more of
them, their success will be less than optimal--perhaps they will fail
altogether. Improving the skills required to deal effectively with each
challenge should be a central objective of training for all international
assignments. As we will see, meeting that objective significantly requires
understanding the roles social support plays both in producing the challenges and
in providing options for dealing with them.
Fontaine,
G. (1996). Social support and the
challenges of international assignments:
Implications for training. In D.
Landis & R. Bhagat (Eds.), Handbook
of intercultural training--second edition (pp. 264-281).
Motivational Factors of International Travelers
Gary Fontaine
The present study assessed the motivational profiles
of selected groups of travelers in international business and foreign study
contexts. A previously developed "Reasons for International Travel"
questionnaire was administered to
Fontaine, G. (1993).
Motivational factors of international travelers. Psychological Reports, 72, 1106.
To
Strange Lands Global Assignment
Specialists.