Analyse communication at LE.
The positives of communication at L E are many:
- The company appears to have a "working language": French.
- Whereas the workers in Algeria prefer Arabic, most have at least basic French. It is probably rare when a worker speaks to customers.
- The supervisors in Algeria are salaried and speak both French and Arabic well and thus can communicate with French speakers (customers, vendors, employees in Luxembourg, etc) and to workers in Arabic.
- French is one of the major European languages.
There are some negatives of communication at L E :
- The business operates on two continents and, in Algeria, it operates in twelve different factories. Communication between these disparate sites is complicated and dependent on ICT, which can have problems from time to time.
- The fact that there are occasional problems with the IT infrastructure in Algeria causes some inefficiencies in operation.
- There are cultural differences in non-verbal communication between Algeria and Europe. On occasions when someone from Algeria travels to Europe or a European customer wants to see production facilities in Algeria, some training of the Algerian staff may be necessary.
Candidates are not required to know or refer to historical or cultural geographic factors (that French, for example, is an official language in Luxembourg [though that is certainly implied] or that Algeria has had a long relationship with France and the Franco-phone world). Candidates may raise these points if they know them, but they should not be awarded marks for knowledge of these areas but rather the marks should be awarded for business knowledge.
If the response is a one-sided generally relevant approach with no analysis, award a maximum of [3 marks].
Marks should be allocated according to the markbands on page 3.