You know you’re in Hong Kong when you smell it. First, it’s flowery-sweet, popcorn-esque jasmine rice. Next, it’s incense from the factories that line the coast just to the north.
Then, all at once, it’s stinky tofu, raw seafood, and freshly chopped vegetables in a wok. Then again, it also smells like steamed buns filled with barbeque pork and fresh meats simmering in hot oil—chicken, beef, and so many types of fish. Hong Kong smells like a blend of all these things. And garlic. And ginger. And salt water.
Frankly, Hong Kong’s distinct aroma is complicated and difficult to describe. The only way to understand how Hong Kong lives up to its smelly moniker (the English translation is “fragrant harbor”) is to go there.
“All over Asia, each city has its own unique smell, but nothing—nothing—smells like Hong Kong,” says Chad Little of the Marriott School External Relations office. “You really can’t replicate it.”
To fully appreciate the city’s sensory onslaught, one must live and work among the 7 million regulars who make Hong Kong one of the most densely populated and modern metropolises in the world—a place where some surmise at any given time 15 percent of the buildings are being demolished, rebuilt, renovated, or restructured.
Within its famous and fragrant skyline, Hong Kong is home to one of the most thriving and unique business environments on earth.
But, just like experiencing the city’s aroma, to really understand the ins and outs of Hong Kong’s elite white-collar activity, you’ve got to see it firsthand. You’ve got to sit at the table with executives from Coca-Cola and apply your slim understanding of Chinese culture to figure out how they just said no to a deal five times without ever actually saying no.
You’ve got to go to DHL’s Hong Kong operation center on a smoggy day and navigate the accelerated way in which the shipping company stays fast in one of the fastest cities on the planet.
Sure, you can learn the basics about global supply chain and marketing in Hong Kong by reading a few chapters out of a textbook. But if you really want to see how fragrant harbor business is done, get yourself there with a Marriott School study abroad program.
“You go in and see companies that you are so familiar with back home, and you observe how much those companies need to adapt to a foreign market,” says Sarah Mabey, who visited Hong Kong on a 2009 marketing trip. “I have traveled significantly with my family to countries all over the world, but this study abroad allowed me to view the people more in depth and in a different framework. I learned how diverse people’s preferences and tastes can be. This was vital to my future career in marketing because it made me realize that my tastes and preferences do not translate to everyone else’s.”
If tastes and preferences don’t translate across borders, certainly the smells of Hong Kong don’t either. And just as Hong Kong doesn’t smell the same as Beijing, Tokyo, or Shanghai, business in Hong Kong runs differently than in Beijing, Tokyo, or Shanghai. Thus it makes perfect sense then that if you truly want to understand international business, you better internationalize yourself as much as possible.
And that’s where the Marriott School’s Global Management Center comes into play with its annual spring and summer short-term business study abroad programs. The center runs anywhere from eight to ten programs each year, with a variety of destinations available to both undergraduate and graduate students.
A Healthy Dose of Culture
Be it Dubai, Hong Kong, London, or Geneva, the GMC business study abroad programs are providing the type of hands-on fiscal and cultural experience that forever changes students’ perspectives on international business.
“It opens their minds to what’s going on in the world around them,” says GMC executive director Lee Radebaugh. “You can read about it, you can see it in a TV show or in a movie, but it’s not the same as going there.”
And, one might add, it’s not the same as going there and getting into factories, sitting in on board meetings, and visiting executive offices to speak face-to-face with the international stars of global businesses.
“Nations can be pretty perplexing places,” says study abroad veteran Bruce Money, a professor of marketing and international business. “But we’re commanded to study all things; it is a spiritual mandate to get out and study abroad.”
But make no mistake: the Marriott School’s study abroad programs are not mini missions. The focus of the two- to five-week trips is mainly business, with an appropriate serving of culture on the side.
At the end of these excursions, students come away with a greater appreciation for the lands they visit, but more important, they come away with a deeper perspective on how greatly business operations fluctuate in each location and culture.
The intense focus on learning how to do business effectively, respectfully, and ethically in diverse cultures is what separates Marriott School study abroad programs from traditional study abroad offerings, says program coordinator Sherstin Creamer.
“We go in with a business mindset,” says Creamer, who is tasked with spreading the word about the GMC’s programs through recruiting efforts. “We want students to understand different cultures and traditions, but our focus is on business and what makes markets tick.”
Students explain their reasons for participating like this: The world today truly is flat (thank you, Thomas Friedman). If I want to be able to compete in any business venture, I’m going to have to have international experience. It’s no longer a luxury—it’s
a requirement.
Take Amy Hansen for example. The senior from San Diego went on the 2009 Asia Business Study Abroad tour of Singapore, Malaysia, China, and Japan, and came away with the realization that (a) the Far East is bursting with fierce business competition and, (b) the United States is not in business isolation.
“These people are hungry; they are ready to compete for the dollars out there,” Hansen says. “I now know that you have to understand how to interact with people culturally if you want to stay competitive.”
Hansen has a particularly acute vantage point on this issue, having traveled to China ten years prior to her study abroad trip. She says the China she visited a decade ago no longer exists.
“When I went to Beijing it was like night and day,” she recalls. “Everything had changed. Everything had become so metropolitan, so developed. It was an awakening to me and helped me realize the playing field is being leveled.”
Hansen plans to run an online clothing business with employees in Shanghai developing and making clothes, so her trip couldn’t have been more pivotal to her future career.
Trip Itineraries
There is a formula for giving students like Hansen the greatest international business experience possible.
By design, each GMC program is focused on one global region (such as Asia or Europe) or one curricular emphasis (like accounting or marketing).
Students start their international experience in Provo, spending several weeks in pretrip primer-courses on the economic, political, and cultural backgrounds of countries they are to visit.
Then once the groups land on foreign soil, they immediately start touring factories, sitting in on board meetings, and visiting corporate offices to, for instance, get firsthand tastes of how a GM shop in Shanghai is worlds apart from a Toyota factory outside Tokyo.
Forget about other university programs where students are holed up in hotels for twelve hours a day meeting with execs in small conference rooms.
“We may get in fewer business visits a day, but the quality is much higher,” Radebaugh says.
Adds Money: “If you want to know something about international business, there is no substitute for getting on the ground in a foreign country, talking to people, and getting in factories.”
One such factory is the Power Ranger factory in Guangzhou (aka Canton), China. Here, hundreds of workers intensely labor to piece together Mighty Morphin Power Ranger toys.
“If those dolls were made in Canton, Ohio, instead of Canton, China, they would be about $87 apiece,” Money says. “Students in international business have to come to terms with these issues: issues of outsourcing, global supply chain, and marketing. The various aspects of international business really come to life when students go abroad and tour these facilities.”
The Marriott School’s focus on international experience is nothing new, but the intensity has certainly picked up in recent years.
Knowing that economies no longer operate in isolation and knowing that the world is shrinking daily as technology bridges continents, the GMC has added several new locales to its study abroad lineup.
A London accounting program kicked off two years ago, a global marketing program launched in 2009, and just this year Radebaugh and Burke Jackson took the first group of Executive MBA students to the Middle East for a whirlwind tour of the booming business cultures of Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. Radebaugh hopes to make the Middle East trip an annual program as well.
The GMC is considering other programs as well, including the possibility of a Spanish and Portuguese study abroad where students would visit countries in Latin America and Europe.
“The mission of the Global Management Center is to provide international experiences for both students and faculty,” Radebaugh says. “To understand international business, you’ve got to understand the world and not just one particular area. If you don’t understand the dynamics of the global marketplace, you’re going to struggle.”
Based on where some of Radebaugh’s former students are now, it’s clear that the GMC programs are teaching Marriott School students those dynamics.
Many are in China or Japan, while others are in places like Chile or Saudi Arabia. Others are stateside but working with a Rolodex full of international clients.
“I had no idea there were so many cultures, so many opportunities, and so many ways for me to use my degree,” says recent grad Jonathan Wing, who joined Mabey on the 2009 Global Marketing Study Abroad excursion. “A lot of us, unfortunately, keep ourselves in a box.”
In Wing’s case, the global marketing tour gave him a taste for the major differences in marketing approaches in places like New York, London, Geneva, Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.
Most of the GMC programs bounce students across borders (and sometimes continents), while others stay in one place. The global marketing students go around the world, the general business trips of Europe and Asia hit countries within those continents, and the accounting program camps in London to provide an experience with the International Accounting Standards Board.
Number wise, the groups are kept to twenty-five or so students to maximize their face time with executives and to increase their chance of landing coveted internships.
“We want to create critical thinkers and people who are effective and knowledgeable in cross-cultural settings,” Creamer says. “Why? Because we know that’s what they’re going to face no matter where they land in the business world.”
Delving In
Compared to Hong Kong, the streets of London don’t smell, unless you’re passing a pungent pub or fragrant fish shop. The on-again, off-again rain tends to wipe away whatever cultural fragrances lurk in the city’s corners.
The lack of a signature scent is pretty easy to understand, but you still need to go to London if you want to know what it doesn’t smell like.
Accounting professor Erv Black could give you an idea; he’s been taking study abroad groups out since 2004 and has headed up the London accounting program since it was started in 2008.
He’s learned the hard way to never leave your London flat without a jacket, an umbrella, and something to read. He’s learned how you can count on sunburn-inducing heat turning to body-soaking rain and cold on just about any given day. Of course, the reading materials are for the Tube, London’s subway system and the best way to get around—also the fastest way to reach the offices of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
The IASB, which is tasked with setting international accounting standards, is the main reason the Marriott School’s relatively new accounting study abroad program is set in London.
“We meet with and observe the board members; we interact with them,” Black says. “The students really get a better understanding of the international accounting standards and the process used to adopt them.”
The significance of this personal experience with the IASB is paramount, says Nathan Quinn, a recent grad who went to London last year.
“It opened my eyes to the international issues that are pressing the accounting profession, especially the international reporting standards,” says Quinn, now at Deloitte’s advisory practice in San Francisco. “The United States is on the brink of a huge crossover to international standards, and this trip showed me the effects those changes will have on the accounting profession domestically.”
Quinn, like other alums of the Marriott School’s study abroad programs, came home not only with invaluable knowledge and experience, but he also earned his Global Management Certificate. The certificate, administered by the GMC, allows students to distinguish themselves from their peers in an increasingly competitive job hunt.
“The Global Management Certificate has been the perfect way to showcase the international experience that added so much value to my Marriott School experience,” Quinn says. “I was far ahead of students from other schools on my internship because of my understanding of international reporting standards. This will be a great differentiating point for me in the workplace.”
Passport to Perspective
Money says study abroad experiences can be life-altering not only on a business and personal level but also on a spiritual level.
For example, attending sacrament meeting in Rome or Paris or Amsterdam gives students an appreciation of how different and challenging it can be as a member of the LDS Church abroad. But it also allows students to focus on what makes them similar to their fellow members across the pond.
“I saw students’ lives change before my eyes,” Money says. “There were insights into spiritual things that hadn’t been there before. One student decided on the spot to get her life totally in harmony with the church and go on a mission. As a director, I realize those moments are priceless.”
Priceless is a pretty accurate way to describe the Marriott School’s study abroad programs. Whether it be the fragrant streets of Hong Kong or the muggy, rain-soaked alleys of London, the global knowledge earned on these trips can’t be gleaned any other way.
“You’ll have wider perspectives and greater understanding than those who haven’t left the country,” Creamer says. “I genuinely believe having international experiences will make you a better person for the rest of your life, regardless of what you do.”
So go ahead and read about Shanghai and Tokyo and Paris. Look at a few pictures of Dubai and London.
But if you really want to know what they feel and smell like, you better pack your bags.
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Written by Todd Hollingshead
Illustrations by Tim Zeltner
About the Author
Todd Hollingshead is a media relations manager for BYU’s University Communications. He graduated from BYU in 2004 with a BA in communications and worked as a journalist for the Salt Lake Tribune before returning to BYU. He and his wife, Natalie, live in Orem with their two children.
