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Carry a Chicken in Your Lap
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Carry a Chicken in Your Lap

Or Whatever It Takes to Globalize Your Business

Bruce Alan Johnson and R. William Ayres
St. Martin’s Press, 2009
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7

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Recommendation

In The Music Man, the 1950s Broadway musical, a chorus of traveling salesmen sings, “You’ve got to know the territory!” in an old-time train car chugging toward Iowa. The drummers’ point is that you’ll never get ahead if you don’t understand the region where you work, its people and its customs. If this is true of rural Iowa, it’s even more true of Bahrain, East Timor or Botswana. Unfortunately, many companies fail to prepare their employees for overseas assignments, or they send people who are completely wrong for the jobs. In this book, international commerce experts Bruce Alan Johnson and R. William Ayres explain what kinds of people are suited for overseas jobs, what kinds are not and the training international employees require. getAbstract recommends this book to executives and managers responsible for overseas assignments and staffing, as well as to anyone who plans to work abroad.

Summary

“I’m Not Wearing That!”

The 25-year-old American woman, a midlevel manager for a U.S. multinational corporation, was excited about her overseas assignment. It would be her first job in another country, and she was proud that her bosses had chosen her. Within minutes, her plane would be landing at the airport of a Middle Eastern country. She couldn’t wait to deplane and get started. Then things turned sour. An airplane crewmember asked her to put on a chador, the traditional modesty garment made of black cloth that women wear throughout the Islamic world. “No way!” she yelled. “You’re not getting that damned thing on me.”

The crewmember politely explained to the woman that the country’s national law required women to wear chadors in public, but she continued to refuse to put it on. “You’ll be arrested, miss, and probably be treated very harshly,” the crewmember said, but she remained firm. When the plane landed, security police entered and roughly grabbed her out of her seat. They pulled her down the airplane ramp, where a member of the religious police, the muta’awa, joined them and began to whip her. Her angry screams turned to cries of ...

About the Authors

Bruce Alan Johnson’s company helps business clients tap international markets, earning them more than $330 million in financial engineering and countertrade programs. R. William Ayres is an academic whose discipline is international relations.

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