CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS - Motivational Factors and Adaptation Process of Latin-American Wor

This chapter is divided in four parts, conclusions, implications, limitations, and suggestions.

The conclusions include a brief summary of this research and its main findings. The implications for Latin-Americans who are in the process of deciding to migrate, or who already migrated and are still at the early stages of their adaptation process into the Taiwanese society and working environment; as well as implications for companies, governmental or non-governmental organizations in Latin-America and Taiwan are presented. The limitation of this research was discussed. And, eventually, suggestions on future research are given.

Conclusions

The objective of this research was to explore the motivational factors of Latin-American workers for choosing Taiwan as their destination country for working and living, and to understand the adaptation process of Latin-Americans into the Taiwanese society and working environment during the first year after their arrival in Taiwan. Literatures regarding migration theories and adaptation theories were reviewed, the definition of cross-cultural adaptation and mood were presented, and the Hofstede’s dimensions model analysis for Latin-America and Taiwan was described for provide the research a base for this study.

To gain insightful information with quality, semi-structured interviews, open-ended questions and graphics were applied. All the information collected was coded, categorized and posteriorly analyzed to present the motivational factors and the adaptation process of Latin-American workers in Taiwan, to answer the research questions.

The motivational factors were divided in concordance with the literature reviewed in macro-level, meso-macro-level, and micro-level motivational factors; and the adaptation process was presented in a timeline structure, defining the difficulties for the participants adaptation, their strategies for minimizing those difficulties, and the results after implementing those strategies during different periods of time in the course of the first year of adaptation to the Taiwanese society and working environment.

All the participants of the study made their analysis when deciding to migrate and when choosing the destination country from different perspectives; as result, all the Latin-American workers in Taiwan that participated of the study had macro-level, meso-level, and micro-level motivational factors for deciding to migrate and for choosing Taiwan as their destination country.

The analysis of the data also suggested that there are more “pull” factors attracting Latin-American workers to Taiwan that “push” factors encouraging them to make the decision of migrating out of their home countries.

The findings also showed that the participants of the research in all the cases made a direct comparison between their home country and Taiwan, measuring the monetary, non-monetary, and psychological investment, and also the expected monetary, non-monetary, and psychological expected return respectively. It is interesting to note that during the interview, when addressing the motivational factors, all the participants were asked if there was any factor they considered a risk of coming to Taiwan; and 13 candidates agreed that they were “scared” about losing what they had in their home countries; it means that regardless the exhaustive comparative analysis made by the participants of the study, making the migration decision and choosing Taiwan as destination country for working and living still represented a high risk for them.

The main findings for the adaptation process showed that all the candidates passed by different difficulties, when addressing the Taiwanese local culture and the working environment in the Asian country; also showed that all the participants set different strategies to manage those difficulties to make smoother their adaptation process; and for finalizing, showed that in most of the cases, setting strategies for improving the adaptation process have as consequence positive results.

Language and communication style differences were the greatest difficulties experienced by the interviewees during their first year of adaptation to the Taiwanese society and working environment; but the findings showed, that learning the language was also one of the biggest motivational factors for the participants for choosing Taiwan as their destination country for working and living.

The findings also exposed that language and communication differences were the precursors of other difficulties for Latin-American workers during the adaptation process in Taiwan; as consequence, all of the participants made especial emphasis and set numerous strategies to

improve those two aspects, because dominating the language and being able to communicate effectively with locals was assumed as a guarantee of an easier and better adaptation process to the Taiwanese society.

The findings revealed that, when it is set on a timeline structure, the perceived adaptation seen from the participants’ point of view, defers significantly from one of the most important and popular adaptation theories, the U-curve hypothesis of Lysgaard (1955), and is more similar to the J-Curve of Davis (1963), (Figure 5.1.). It means that, regarding to the adaptation process during the first year of staying in Taiwan the participants in general did not experience or perceived any decrease on their adaptation.

Figure 5.1. Comparison between Lysgaard’s (1955) U-Shaped Curve and the Results of the Study

Implications

The findings of this study have implications for the public and private sectors, not only in Taiwan but also in Latin-America; also have implications for the Latin-Americans who are in the process of deciding to migrate to Taiwan, or who already migrated and are still at the early stages of their adaptation process into the Taiwanese society and working environment.

Public Sector

The global economy is characterized nowadays by the easy movement of persons across borders. Due to this phenomenon, the migration to the most developed countries has been increasing and tends to keep the same trend. In this context, this study allows the public sector, understood as the governmental organizations and institutions of Taiwan and the Latin-American countries, to analyze the motivational factors that encourage the Latin-American workers to migrate to Taiwan; thus, developing strategies towards retaining the local talents in the case of Latin-American countries; and, either attracting or impeding the uncontrolled flow of migrant labor into the country in the case of Taiwan.

Private Sector

Since the number of Latin-American workers is increasing in Taiwan; and the Taiwanese government has been encouraging Taiwanese companies to pay more attention and to explore to the Latin-American market due to the importance of the region in the global economy. For Taiwanese companies is becoming more important to attract qualified workforce from the mentioned region. This study can give to Taiwanese companies a general picture of the motivational factors of Latin-Americans for deciding to migrate, allowing them to set strategies for seducing the qualified workforce they may require.

For Taiwanese companies is also important to understand the processes of adaptation of the foreign workers; and from that perspective, the findings of this study facilitate a better understanding about the cultural, social and economic characteristics of their potential or current Latin-American workers; and also provide helpful information for taking right actions in terms facilitating the Latin-American workers’ incorporation into the local social and working life in Taiwan, towards taking the full advantage of their potential, increasing their productivity and improving their performance; thus beneficiating both the foreign employee and the company.

For Latin-American Companies is also important to understand the motivational factors of Latin-American workers to migrate out of their home countries, aiming to retain their talents.

This study provides vital information for Latin-American companies for understanding the motivational factors of Latin-American workers, which could allow Latin-American companies to become more competitive in the global race for getting the best human talents.

Latin-Americans deciding to migrate or already migrated to Taiwan

For Latin-Americans who are thinking to migrate to Taiwan, or the ones who already migrated to Taiwan but are at the early stage of their adaptation process; it is important to understand the differences that they will encounter in the Asian country; also to the difficulties they will probably have, and the strategies they could implement for facilitating their adaptation into the Taiwanese local culture and working environment. This study provides detailed information and presented narrations and personal experiences from other Latin-Americans that passed by the adaptation process into the society and working environment in Taiwan.

Limitations

This research adopted different data collection methods like semi-structured interview, open-ended questionnaire, and asked the participants for describe through a line on a figure designed by the author for understanding their perceived adaptation and mood during their adaptation process. However the main findings of the research presented four limitations.

First, for this study were interviewed 15 Latin-Americans from 7 different countries (Colombia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Peru), and their opinions, experiences and responses might not be applicable for others coming from different countries due to the cultural, social, economic, and behavioral factors might defer from one to another country in Latin-America

Second, among the participants, 14 of the 15 arrived and lived in Taipei during their first year of adaptation process into the Taiwanese society and working environment, their opinions, experiences and responses may not be applicable for others that lived in different places of Taiwan during their first year of adaptation due to the differences between living in Taipei and other regions, cities, towns, suburbs, and etcetera, of Taiwan.

Third, 8 of the 15 participants did not work in Taiwan during their first year of adaptation process into the Taiwanese society; the adaptation process and perceptions might be significantly different for the participants who started working in Taiwan during the first year after their arrival.

And fourth, for the analysis of the perceived adaptation and mood, for which in this study the data was collected by asking the participants to illustrate through a line in a timeline their perceived adaptation and their mood, 15 participants, even being almost 10% of the Latin-Americans currently working in Taiwan in jobs that required professional skills, is a small number and might not be enough consistent.

Suggestions

Although the findings of this research added to the foundation of relevant researches, the limitations mentioned previously constrained the research findings. Therefore for future researches is suggested to address these limitations.

For future researches, it is recommended for the researcher to select a more heterogeneous group of participants according to their country of origin and their working and living place in Taiwan; for example, according to the participants’ origin, the group should be composed by at least one representative from each country of Latin-America, and general insights about each country’s cultural, social and economic characteristics might be presented, thus, ensuring the differences among all Latin-American countries and Taiwan are covered by the research; on the other hand, the researcher could select participants who experienced the adaptation process into the Taiwanese society and working environment in different cities and/or regions of the country, permitting the analysis of the different adaptation process of the participants in all Taiwan.

Also for future researches, it is recommended for the researcher to select a more homogeneous group of participants regarding the conditions the experienced during the adaptation process; for example, selecting only participants that worked since their arrival in Taiwan or at least during the first year of their adaptation process into the local society and working environment.

In closing, it is suggested for future researches that aim to analyze the perceived adaptation process, to set, as for quantitative researches, a large number of participants for more reliability, and establish the correlation between mood and perceived adaptation.

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APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Interview Questions (Translated)

1. Why you started to think about the possibility of working and living in Taiwan?

2. Why you wanted to leave your country?

3. What were the things that attract you the most of Taiwan?

4. Compare to your own country, which factors (political, social, familiar, and personal) of Taiwan you thought were an advantage for working and living?

5. What were the risks of coming to Taiwan for you? (Being far from your country and culture, losing your job, being far from your friends and family, or some other things?) 6. What were your anticipated goals of working in here? What were your expectations about

the job opportunity you wanted to have? (Specific salary level, job position, international company, etcetera)

7. Did some person you know recommend you to come to Taiwan? Would you or have you recommended to any known person, friend or relative to come to Taiwan.

8. When you just arrived here, did you feel a many differences (cultural, social, interpersonal, economical, gastronomical, communicational, and etcetera) compared with your country? Can you tell me your experience?

9. What did you do in your workplace and in general to make yourself more fit with the Taiwanese culture?

10. Did you change any habit of you that you had in your country? Or, did you start any habit?

11. What did you think were the principal differences between the Latin-American culture, and the Taiwanese culture?

12. During the time working in Taiwan, have you ever felt disappointed about the situation and you wanted to go back to your country or move to some other places? Can you describe that situation?

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