Managing across culture.

Managing across culture

Introduction

The purpose of this analysis is to better understanding the some incidents those are possible occurs in intercultural organization, merger, joint venture organization, and these problem may cause organization high turnover rate, lower productivity, lose cohesiveness, lower employee morale, and so on. Thus, to understanding how to managing across culture in many companies, especially in multinational company is very important.

Benefits of managing across culture

As many private business goal to stabilize the profits is success influence by foreign sales and foreign resource, or governments business which is may or may not be profits motivated, company engaged in manage across culture is because can expand the sales, acquire resources, diversity sources of sales and supplier, and minimal the competitive risks.

I' m a full time student and do not have any working experience, but through my observation and some case studies I can find that today' s economic challenges force many organizations try to become the “ biggest guys", for example, a manufacture of computer, Compaq, they outsourcing some accessories from other company because those company have the economic of scales, lower labor cost, or advanced technology, many accessories are OEM product, such as memory from HY which is made by south-Korean company, CD-ROM form LG, laptop battery from Japanese company, mother board form Taiwan, and so on. Compaq also need hire many local employees for oversea branches or customer service. Another example, my father is a manager of Shanghai B&B Peaks Garments Co. Ltd; the company is a Sino-Singapore Joint-Venture Company, It is a large-scale leather garments exporting manufacture, processes for some famous brands leather garments to export to U.S.A, Japan, Canada, West-Europe, the customers include: U.S.A — GUESS，LONDONFOG, BOSTON OUTFIT，WINLIT，GⅢ, AUSTRALIA—ATELIER, VICTOR, and so on. The company also hires professional technician from South Korea. These employees and oversea suppliers or customers have different cultures, can cause companies thrust into international relationships. A manager needs to now what the across culture can cause, and how to manage the across culture.

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When some managers or employee has transfer to another branches in others countries, such as the Korean technicians transfer to Shanghai, China, because the culture difference, language difference, and local technician may fear their situation will be threatened, both of local and foreign employee may appeals to: arrogant, unfriendly, and hostile. How people will active these situations is affected by the social culture and organizational culture, as Kreitner & Kinicki (2001, pp.106) have stats: Employees bring their societal culture to work with them in the form of customs and language. Organizational culture, a by-product of societal culture, in turn affects the individual’s values/ethics, attitudes, assumptions, and expectations. The societal culture includes Economic or technological setting, government political or legal of their native country, their ethic background and religions. For example, Chinese employee are don’t understand why the Korean technicians they go to bar and drink until late at night, they think they should go to home or dinner with wife and child. But my father told me, this is the Korean’s culture, in Korea, many male think man should be busy, so they always go to bar and drink, whether real business or not, until midnight, they think their wives will proud there are so many business. I don’t not weather is true or not, but I always see they go to bar when they finish work.

Some employee may appeals ethnocentrism, ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s native country, language, and modes of behavior are superior to all others, has its roots in the dawn of civilizations. Kreitner & Kinicki (2001, pp.109). This situation often occurs when company or employee from countries, which is technical advanced, or high GDP, such as German, Japanese, and American, and Japanese companies had the most ethnocentric human resource practices and the most international human resource problem. But ethnocentrism is bad for business even organization growth, ethnocentric staffing and human resource policies will cause many problems, include higher turnover rate, difficult to recruiting employee, and lawsuit over personnel policies. How to deals with ethnocentrism is the organization through education, greater cross-culture awareness, international experience and conscious effort to value cultural diversity.

Societal cultures include high-context and low-context

Managers in multicultural setting needs to know the difference if they are to communicate and interact effectively. “People from high-context cultures rely heavily on situational cues for meaning when perceiving and communicating with another person” while “in low-context cultures, written and spoken words carry the burden of shared meaning.” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2001), high context culture usually in Asia countries, include Japan, China, Korean, etc, while low context culture countries include German, England, Swiss, and so on. An example is when talking about a contract, when American say “yes”, that means the contract is ok and he/she will sign the contract, but when a Japanese client say “yes”, that doesn’t means he/she will sign the contract, it means he/she will consider the contract later.

Individualism versus collectivism

Individualistic culture is primary emphasis on personal freedom and choice, the characteristic as “I” and “me”. Collectivist culture emphasis that a personal goal is less important than community goals and interests, the characteristic of collectivist as “we” and “us”. According to research, found that the highest degree of individualism in Israel, Romania, Nigeria, Canada and United States. Countries ranking lowest in individualism thus qualifying as collectivist cultures include Egypt, Mexico, India, China and Japan. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2001) For efficiently productivity, managers should satisfied both employee’s individual goals and organizational goals.

Cultural perceptions of Times

Different cultural people have different perception of times, low context culture, such as USA, German and so on, are tend to run on monochronic time, they feel time is limited and don’t want waste it, they preference for doing something at a time. High context culture tend to run polychronic time, such as Philippine, Mexico, they preference for doing more than one thing at a time because times is flexible and multidimensional. But now technology such as computer, mobile phone allows more people do more than one things at a time.

Interpersonal space

When I have been to Singapore, I was surprised why India Labors always pull their hands when they walk on the street, they are all male, and this action may unacceptable by many others countries. People from high-context cultures were observed standing close when talking to someone, such as when Chinese people talking about business, they like appeals they are very good friend, even brother. While low-context cultures appeared to dictate a greater amount of interpersonal space. Manager in multicultural organization should notice that.

Communication

When managing across culture, the language and how to communication between the local and oversea employee is a real problem. Even same language but different culture has different word perceptions. To solve these problems, there are have three options: (1) stick to their own language, (2) rely in translators, or (3) learn the local language. What organization can do is careful design the job qualification and training program, such as when recruit employee, require employee can speak two or more language, such as English, Japanese, and provide training program to help them.

Organizational culture

A good example to express organizational culture is Microsoft, in this organization, all employee are working hard, like their boss – Bill, Gates, and they communication heavily by email, the supervisor don’t care what are you wearing, you eat in the office, you sleep in office, but, you must complete the project, otherwise, you may delay all other departments project. Microsoft is a sample of effective and efficiently.

Reasons why managers fail on foreign assignment

Some managers will fail on foreign assignment, the reasons are include: cannot adjust to new physical or cultural surroundings, managers’ spouse cannot adapt to new physical or cultural surroundings, family problem, the manager is emotionally immature, can not cope foreign duties, not technically competent, and the manager lacks the proper motivation for a foreign assignment. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2001)

Conclusion:

There are plenty of reasons to pay close attention to corporation culture, strong culture help tie people to the firm by creating a share sense of identity and purpose. A strong culture can help companies attract and retain outstanding people. (Mcfarlin, 2001). Organization and managers need to better understanding how to managing across culture and how to communicate by carefully develop the desired culture form the start (anonymous, 2000) , , implement orientation programs, a lot of training and develop program, company’s policies, and managing diversity.