Multicultural Case Study

In any firm, having an effective management culture is critical to a firm’s success. But once you look at this topic on an international scale, culture can change based on what is right and wrong in a different country. To demonstrate this theory, I have interviewed two different people who have either came to work in the United States from another country, or born domestically and have experience working abroad. One of them is my father, James Lai (Exhibit A); he is an immigrant from Hong Kong, China and have worked extensively in the graphics design industry for many large companies. Some of these companies that he has worked for includes the following: Toymax (now currently a subsidiary of Jakk Pacific Inc.), TecnoZone, The Zone & ENE Group

According to Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary Kern of Harvard Business Review, the four major challenges of managing a multicultural team in a way all relate to conflicting cultural views. In the two interviews that I have done, there is some sort of cultural barrier in both. For my father, it was the language barrier that made it challenging for him in the workforce, which is noted in this article as “trouble with accents and fluency” (Brett). Erin McKean, a former editor in chief of American Dictionaries of Oxford University Press, claims that a definition of a word is “highly stylized, overly compressed and often a tentative stab at capturing the consensus on what a particular word “means” naturally” based on their etymology (McKean). This can be linked back to the scenario that my father was facing; due to the change in geography of where he was working, from Hong Kong to New York, the meaning behind words could also change as well, which in a way causes a language barrier for him in the workforce. The reason for why this is happening is really due to what McKean states in her argument about words having different meanings in different regions; because of the change in environment, the style of the language use can also change as well. As for Shapland, the main problem that he faced when working abroad with others in China was really the

In terms of strategies that were used to work around these cultural barriers, my dad’s supervisor utilized a structural intervention method to fit in, as based on the Harvard Business Review (Brett). Due to the fact that he was working in the toy industry, a lot of cooperation with factories in China is necessary and my dad is usually the only one that has real work experience in the Asian continent. Also, he also understands the general culture in that part of the world. Therefore, he was considered as the specialist in that specific area in his company. On Shapland’s end, however, he had to use more of an adaptation method because of the fact that his schedule was structured based on another country’s cultural difference. Otherwise, he would never be on the same page as the individuals that have different beliefs and cultural practices than his