Features in learning paths for Indian and Swiss on-boarders

Abstract

On-boarding of new employees with varying cultural backgrounds can lead to conflicts, disagreements, and frustrations, even to unequal levels of education and misunderstandings. To address these problems, the authors suggest a learning path focusing on cultural differences in learning features. A constructivist perspective was adopted to develop the learning paths. The research strategy was Design Science Research. Two interviews were conducted with the only two course leaders, one from each culture, at the case company, M&S Inc. The results demonstrate that the value systems in the two cultures differ in the areas of law, authority, and design. With features such as a checklist of learning objectives, a reminder that the learning content may differ from what onboarding employees are used to, a wiki for self-study, or discussion forums show especially variation in learning path in the introductory area and concluding area. These differences reflect the cultural differences between the Swiss and Indian participants. By addressing the differences in learning paths, the paper helps to improve learning outcomes and understanding. Thus, this paper contributes to the acceptance of two cultures by comparing the two cultures of Switzerland and India and considering the derived learning characteristics, which contributes to higher satisfaction and performance.