About me
I’ve been working at Schibsted, a European media group with its headquarter in Oslo, Norway since June 2007. In October 2009 I’ll switch to Telenor, a telecom company, due to a recent downsizing process at the Schibsted head office.
At Schibsted I’ve been working on strategic HR topics such as leadership development, organisational change and, talent management and gender sensitive career development. In previous work with other employers I’ve had my hands on designing training material for teachers on gender sensitising of youngsters, developing quit smoking campaigns aimed at youth, as well as working in a start-up consultancy offering cross-cultural training for companies. Check out my interest for the latter topic in a video interview I edited in 2008.
I’m a true believer in web 2.0 as a tool for increased collaboration across corporate silos. Allow people to share their expertise in interactive manners and you’re likely to get some serious value creation due to knowledge transfer. In case your dying to read more about the potential of the collaborative web, don’t hesitate to check out Wired’s lovely article The See-Through CEO for a dash of inspiration.
Education: I learnt a lot from doing an MA degree in strategic human resources at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain) in 2005-2006. At the turn of the century I completed an MA in sociology at the University of Manchester (UK) after having done a Bachelor in social science at the University of Oslo and University of Bergen (both located in Norway) during the 90’s.
Feel free to geth in touch by commenting on this blog or email me: vegardig (at at) yahoo.no
Vegard Iglebæk
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Cell: +47 4169 2457
Oslo, Norway
Vagard,
Given your comments on web 2.0, you may be interested in completing my survey at: http://www.snipurl.com/socialconnecting.
Regards, Jon.
That’s an incredibly long survey. ;-)
Bonjour!
I m french and also work for HR ; i m the only foreigner working in korean company, based in Seoul (300 employees).
I am trying to create an international team and we are recruiting up to 5 foreigners next year.
Could you advise me some tips (experience, reviews, books, websites) regarding ways I can increase the efficiency of our itnernaitonal team?
As it will be launch early next year, i need to make some kind of plan and I am very new in this matter.
Thank you !
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for your interest in how to create a successful international team. You are about to mount an incredibly interesting task. Here are a few suggestions on how to move forward.
1. Keep in mind that your own experience from being the only foreigner in your company is a fountain of insight and reflection. Use your own reflections as a starting point for issues important to keep in mind when recruiting new forreigners. What have been your reactions on the way your local colleagues make decisions, negotiate a deal, cooperate with their bosses, share information with colleagues, etc?
2. Take a brief look at Geert Hofstede’s framework for cross-cultural communication. He is a Dutch cross-cultural management consultant. Wikipedia’s presentation of him provides a decent starting point for his thoughts. Please note that his framework has some serious flaws: his research was carried out in the 70s. His sources of information were male ingeneers (he ‘forgot’ about the significance of gender, not to mention ethnicity). In addition at that time nobody had heard of things like the internet or mobile phones at that time (or cheap flights) and its immense influence on human communication. In other words: the world has changed dramatically since Hofstede did his research. His theories have not. Beware.
3. Read the article ‘Eight ways to build collaborative teams’. It deals head-on with challenges international teams will face. The full length article is worth every cent of its price (6,50 US dollars) at Harvard Business Online.
4. Check out my favourite books on cross-cultural management on Amazon for inspiration.
5. Feel free to check out my del.icio.us bookmarks on international management indicating free online resources