X-Culture: Thoroughly Surprised

Guest Blogger: Jessica Mellinger, Nathan M. Bisk College of Business student

When I first opened my email that held the names of my future group members I was a little nervous as to how this would turn out. I knew there would be some problems with communication barriers such as language, time zones, and work ethic however, so far I have been thoroughly surprised. The first official email we got was a survey to see how internationally and culturally aware we were, then we got our groups. The group members are comprised of six of us from the UK, Thailand, Colombia, Barbados, Ghana, and the United States. Luckily all members have been in constant contact so far contributing towards our first deadline of deciding what company we want to choose.

At first the communication between the members was limited but after a few days it picked up and we got the ball rolling on the project. After much deliberating we were able to all decide on picking Coca-Cola. We originally wanted to do nestle but after much debating the end vote was Coca-Cola because it will be easier to access the documents of a US listed company and analyze them. Additionally the company products are primarily soft drinks which interests a good majority of the group.

The next step we did was deciding on how we would communicate with each other. Some of the members threw out ideas such as drop box, google docs, whattsapp, email, and facebook, but we ended up deciding to just primarily use email, and google docs, with facebook and whatsapp used sparsely on the side. We decided that with all the different time zones and languages involved communication would be easier this way.

Overall I am excited to see how the project develops and if we are able to keep up the level of communication we maintained so far, if not improve it. I look forward to working with this group and seeing how it all turns out.