Marketing management
Different national culture causes different consume behaviors. According to Gogel and Larreche (1991), “marketing across cultures is a complex process of balancing resources and effectiveness between building product strength and identity on the one hand and increasing geographical coverage on the other hand”. There are some problems will be met when multinational companies expand foreign market without analyzing the material culture of the proposed foreign market and they do not change their product standards to meet the requirement of specific market. Furthermore, the cultural diversity usually is ignored by multinational companies. They usually use their initial product promotion when they are exporting marketing campaigns in another country. For example, in Japan, people prefer to buy shampoo which uses a beautiful Japanese girl in its advertisement, but in Russia, people will never buy any washing power which uses a Japanese housewife in its advertisements (Miroshnik, 2002). If a Japan shampoo company, who does not know the cultural diversity between Japan and Russia, launches a kind of shampoo in Russia by using the same advertisement as in Japan, they will fail in the Russia market obviously. Finally, multinational companies should increase consideration that what products and brand mean to the people in different culture when they are exporting marketing campaign in a foreign country. They have to pay attention to avoiding inappropriate translations, considering different cultural behaviors and product usage.
Human resource management
Multinational companies should use different managerial behaviors to manage human resources in different cultural environment. Firstly, people who come from different cultural backgrounds have different views about the world. These views significantly affect the ability to develop a meaningful statement of company values. Thus, it is incorrect that some multinational companies simply translate their statements of values and distribute them to another country directly. This will lead the statement to be interpreted by other cultures just as small meaningfulness. Recruitment and selection is also one aspect of human resource issues in foreign countries. It is a wise long-term investment to seek out expatriate managers who have lived for long periods in the other partner’s culture. Mangers who just have a capacity to operate at the surface of different national culture should be avoided (Berrell, Gloet& Wrignt, 2002). In addition, it should avoid recruiting and selecting managers who do not prepare to spend most portions of their total careers abroad, because one research shows that approximately 70 per cent of managers leave their work within two years of completing their assignments (Wright, 1996). Thirdly, managers should concern with the career expectations and goals are different of people who come from different nations. For instance, lifetime employment is more common in high uncertainty avoidance countries such as Japan, Portugal, Greece, Russia, etc. In contrast, high job mobility more commonly occurs in low uncertainty avoidance countries such as USA, Hong Kong, Denmark, etc. (Berrell, Gloet& Wrignt, 2002).
Alliances management
The problem of managing alliances is the last but not the least one met in multinational companies. Obviously, companies shape their own organizational cultures when they are under the background of their national culture. On the one hand, alliances can offer their own advantages to a new company, which allow the company to capture new skills, new products and new markets quickly. On the other hand, they also bring their own initial management problems which will increase difficulty of problems in the new company. This causes the initial problems more difficult to be solved. The next common problem among alliances is that they lack of share culture. In the case study of Australian and Malay managers in a collaborative university venture in Malaysia. Australian and Malay managers meet the some problems about the rapidly increasing student numbers. Australian managers have met the similar circumstance, so they can solve this problem with their experience, but Malaysia managers do not have any experience to deal this problem (Berrell, Gloet& Wrignt, 2002). Thus, alliances have to communicate each other frequently to bring up share culture when they accompany with foreign alliances. If alliances do not set up the share culture, it will make them easy to misunderstand. Alliances should find a way to take their best from each component culture and create a new, unique organizational culture in their new company.
Suggestions and advice
There are some suggestions and advice for solving the foregoing problems in multinational companies. The first step of solution is to recognize and understand the culture diversity deeply such as life habits and national customs, then to constitute a strategic statement to set up share cultures. Another important phase is to employ a right international manager who owns necessary technical and cross-cultural skills. Furthermore, the manager can solve short-term problems and accomplish long-term strategic objectives in the organization. Training programme should be carried out at the same time, which can lead the members of multinational companies to understand the culture diversity and communicate with others deeply. In addition, the training should avoid only scratching the surface about living an expatriate life, and the training function must be flexible enough to deal with all potential changes. All of the actions should be actualized by following the strategic statement and have to be monitored. The monitor system must alarm whenever actions fall away the strategic statement. Finally, the strategic statement needs to be adjusted when situations of organization are changing. The changes caused by many aspects such as personal adjustment and culture diversity which had not been recognized. If multinational companies can deal with across cultures correctly, it can provide tangible benefits and can be used competitively (Sonderberg & Holden, 2002).
The problems of culture differences really exist, which should be faced by multinational companies when they are running multinational business, and culture should not simply be considered as an obstacle when doing business across culture. Culture will take tangible benefits to organization when it is disposed effectively. Thus, international managers should pay attentions to deal with the problems which exist in three main aspects of organization, namely, marketing management, human resource management and alliances management.
References
Berrell, M., M. Gloet & P. Wright (2002). ‘Organizational learning in international joint ventures: implications for management development’ The Journal of Management Development 21(2): 83-100
Gogel, R. and Larreche, J.C. (1991). Pan-European Marketing: Combining Product Strength and Geographical Coverage. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass
Miroshnik, V. (2002). ‘Culture and international management: a review’ The Journal of Management Development 21(7): 521-544
Tylor, Edward B. (1977). Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. London:John Murray
Sonderberg, A-M & N Holden. (2002), ‘Rethinking cross cultural management in a globalizing business world’ International Journal of Cross Culture Management 2(1): 103-121
Wright, P., Geroy, G. and Baker, D. (1996), Management Training Challenges in Vietnam, Corporate University Review, July/August, pp. 40-1.
