It is undeniable that an expatriate's length of adjustment in a foreign country can be highly correlated to his performance in a host country. Taking this into account, an organization should be responsible not only to ensure that their expatriates will not suffer from serious cross-cultural adjustment problems but also to provide them with adequate training. However, researches show that there are still many large multinationals that are reluctant to take such steps, mostly due to the reasons of cost and shortsighted goals. For example, "only 13 percent of the European firms provide their expatriates with access to cultural awareness courses, though a further 47 percent now provided briefings for culturally challenging postings.'" (Price Waterhouse, 97-98) Fortunately, more and more large firms now realize the costs and pains that they can suffer for an international assignment failure due to the lacking care for their expatriates, they are now paying more attention to this subject.
In order to minimize the adjustment problem and to facilitate a better cross-cultural adjustment for the expatriates, adequate training such as cultural awareness program would be used. While, preliminary visit is also one of the useful techniques, language training is also critical and essential. .
Culture awareness training is one of the most basic and common forms of pre-departure training that can improve one's cultural awareness. Through it, one would gain a better understanding of the different values and perceptions that the host people hold. This could help them greatly in dealing with daily matters simply from their social life, community to organizational life in the host country. However, one should take into account that the duration of the training should be corresponded to the degree of the interaction and culture novelty as Mendehall, Dunbar and Oddou suggested in their book, "Expatriate selection, training and career-pathing", 1987.
