In The Case of the Floundering Expatriate by Gordon Adler, Bert Donaldson, an American businessman, was hired to oversee the integration of various European companies into the US-based company, Argos Diesel (Adler, 2005, p. 24-30). Donaldson was unable to build rapport with any of the European team members, due to his cultural deficiency and lack of guidance on how to best collaborate with his European counterparts. As a result, the intercultural relationships among members of the European team were poor and the project did not progress during Donaldson’s two-year period in Europe. This proves Donaldson, Frank Waterhouse – CEO of Argos Diesel in Europe and Donaldson’s supervisor – and the company culture established by Argos International, …show more content…
Waterhouse is deciding how to proceed with Donaldson, who was appointed by Argos International CEO and chairman Bill Loun. Donaldson, an outstanding employee in the Detroit office who was responsible for overseeing acquisitions of different parts suppliers across Europe, has made several cultural missteps that have negatively affected the European transition. According to Waterhouse’s executive assistant, Ursula Lindt, “staff morale on the fifth floor is lower than ever,” and there is a widespread perception that Donaldson “must be having problems at home” due to his late nights spent at the office (Adler, 2005, p. 25). Moreover, Donaldson does not mingle prior to the meeting, and he addressed his executive assistant, Frau Schweri, as a secretary despite her role in the office, which caused offense. Waterhouse was informed by Argos Europe’s Human Resources Vice President, Paul Janssen, that Donaldson’s introduction was perceived as condescending by some of the managers. While Waterhouse feels that Donaldson is not an effective leader for Argos Europe, he also acknowledges that Donaldson is trying hard to do his job well and does not feel he should be punished for the errors. Conversely, Waterhouse believes that a strong understanding of European culture is not something that can be taught to Donaldson (Adler, 1995, p. …show more content…
188). The European partners defined Donaldson 's personality within their interactions as “abrasive” and noted poor organization. While Donaldson was able to deliver clear results in the United States, his leadership style and relational interactions are not effective in Europe. Moreover, the case study points out that Waterhouse was ambivalent upon reading Donaldson’s vision statement for the company: “Managing Change and Creating Vision: Improving Argos with Teamwork” (Adler, 2000, p. 25). Because there is a breakdown in the way relationships are built between Donaldson and the European team, there is a lack of trust in the clarity and ability of Donaldson to carry out the vision he’s set forth. There is no evidence on the part of the Europeans to believe that Donaldson is equipped to improve Argos through teamwork, but by building trust, the magnetism towards the vision will follow. Another major intercultural conflict factor that is preventing the successful Argos Diesel, Europe integration process is the ethnocentric perception that Donaldson displays about the American workplace style. According to Ting-Toomey and Chung (1991), “a rigidly held ethnocentric attitude promotes a climate of distrust in any intercultural conflict,” (pp. 187). Donaldson’s
Wild, J. J., Wild, K. L., & Han, J. C. (2008). (CH2)Cross-Cultural Business and (CH5)International Trade,. International business: the challenges of globalization (4th ed., pp. 48, 61-62, 132, 136, 147). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.
A mutual accord in the international business literature is that business has increasingly become more globalized. Nonetheless, it is not only businesses that have become more globalized but also people who have become more global, (Friedman & Liu, 2008). As a result of increased globalization, cultural diversity is a common phenomenon in organizations. The implication of such a phenomenon is that managers are increasingly supervising employees from different cultural backgrounds, beliefs and attitudes than themselves, (Steers, Nardon & Sanchez-Runde, 2013). Such is the case for Molson Coors. Molson Coors found itself in a challenging situation where its cultural values markedly differed with those of Starbev, a Czech Republic
...hich helped the company to long jump over standard steps of internationalization path model. Psychic distance was another find. Psychic distance explains the differences and similarities in different countries for example culture, political system, industrial progress and markets etc the company followed the Uppsala model to over come this and steadily expanded its business. These strategies show an increase in the turnover and profits of the years, and the companies’ business model has proven to be very resilient in both situations when oil prices were high or low. But based on all of these findings, it can clearly be seen that the existing theories in the IB literature at this time do not fully put up with the realities of companies and entrepreneurs outside the developed nations who are taking different and unique path toward globalization and achieving success.
By understanding the dimensions of local national cultures and applying suitable local business practices management can succeed in foreign cultures. By recognizing that immersion in foreign culture can be traumatic, that culture shock varies from person to person and consequently selecting appropriate candidates to travel overseas management can address culture shock. The way management responds to these challenges impacts the globalization of
One of the major differences between America, Sweden, and Italy are the diverse beliefs that they each have about the best way for business to be conducted. The American representatives from Upjohn Pharmaceuticals believed that they would be able to head over to Sweden and approach the merger with a ‘command and control’ style, which implies that they went over there and automatically believed that their way was the best way and that they were in charge of the transaction, hence adopting a forceful and less considerate business tactic. This is almost completely opposite to the way that the Swedes and the Italians like to function, as their approach to the business environment is far more passive, and relationship oriented, it was therefore unlikely for the American businessmen to be successful in their methodology. This particular difference with relation to the typical business attitudes that all parties in this case bring to the table would have, and in fact did affect the way in which business was conducted. The Americans representing Upjohn automatically created a rift in the relationship with the Swedish and Italians from Pharmacia, due to the cavalier mind-set that they brought with them to Sweden, and this major difference between the cultures could easily have been avoided with a little bit of research.
“Country specific cultures can add risk in global outsourcing. Language and work ethics vary from country to country and that may contribute to risk” Dhar & Balakrishnan 2006 . Many of the countries that offer remote IT support such as China and Eastern Europe have very ba...
Cross-cultural and language training prior to departure featured high on the respondents ' list of actions a company could take to assist their adjustment on arrival in the new environment and their on-the-job effectiveness. This feeling of utter confusion and helplessness experienced by the expatriate illustrates how a simple investment in improving an understanding of the culture through specialist country-specific training could make the difference between a successful, profitable overseas assignment and an ineffective, long term struggle.
The specific dilemma here is that non-trust is systemic in multinationals in that two parties, i.e., the headquarter and regional organisations, have different or even conflicting interests, strategies, and values causing instability and hence distrust. Under rapid business growth, China wants as much as possible of technological know-how and decision power while Germany is concerned of losing technical advantage and control on the region in general. In addition, sometimes what Chinese managers want is not always consistent with good business practice in the sense that most German managers view business. However, it is important to be aware that such a dilemma often creates a multitude of situations and events in the management communication, which continuous confirms stereotypes and prejudiced ideas, further reduces trust levels between two sides.
The following sections explore the cultural differences encountered by all businesses desiring to expand their organizations internationally. For most, international culture is typically associated with visible and/or audible elements such as language, food, music and fashion. The “Iceberg Theory” provides a good visual model to broaden ones understanding of all cultural elements which should be considered. The iceberg (Figure 1) depicts both visible (on the surface) and invisible (below the surface) cultural elements (MacLachian). In an international setting, the elements below the surface are the most significant and all too often overlooked. The subsurface elements include cultural aspects such as thought processes, gender
Recently, UAE Government statistics show that expats make up over 88% of the UAE population while Emiratis proportion is relatively small about 11% of the population (Nissar Hoath, 2011). In fact, United Arab Emirates is considered as one of the countries that have a massive numbers of foreigners. Subsequently, it led to a huge imbalance in the demographic structure which eventually resulted other social and cultural concerns. UAE nationals are struggling every day with this imbalance as they feel they are under threat of losing their identity, values, customs, tradition and language. Furthermore, there are some challenges they face because of the way some foreigners behave and act. Therefore, the UAE government should act immediately to control
The company is entering new markets and exporting products overseas to China and Thailand. Hence, Fürst Wallerstein faces issues through the education system of Germany, lack of employee experience, and their staff tends to have language and cultural barriers. Many employees are very loyal, working at the company since many years, and most of the employees’ families have been with Fürst Wallerstein for many generations. It is challenging to source young, talented, local, innovative- thinking and fluent English- speaking employees that have experience with different traditions and cultures in foreign countries. Therefore Carl-Eugen zu Oettingen-Wallerstein handles all foreign business operations solitary (Oettingen-Wallerstein, 2014) at the moment.
“The internationalization of business has proceeded at a rapid pace as the world has become a global economy.”(Mathis, Jackson 2000) This is the very reason why companies now have the need for international executives. As all aspects of a business spread worldwide, so must the employees. An expatriate by definition is a home-county national, usually an employee of the firm, who is sent abroad to manage a foreign subsidiary. (Rodrigues, 2001) A successful expatriate generally requires an extensive amount of time and money, however, a failed expatriate can be even more costly for an organization. A study of multinational corporations showed that 69% (of the firms surveyed) had recall rates of expatriates between 10 to 20 percent. Compared to Japan and their figures, (86% of firms had less than 5% recall rate) the United States has room for improvement. (Tung, 1981) There are many reason for expatriates to fail and many differences between Japan and United States’ human resource management planning.
Not only does these assumptions are bases of society, but also people’s preferred modes of conducts. In HRM, managers in multinational workplaces need to be someone who is adaptive to different preferences at work. Specifically, expatriate, because he/she has more possibilities for exposure to cultural differences. The reason is, many firms send expatriate to overseas subsidiaries for flows of information and administration. Also, headquarters can achieve control through both socialization and formal report provided by the expatriate (Schneider, 1988). Every national expatriate has his or her own way of doing things. For example, in USA, managers would adopt a more formal and impersonal
The components of culture discussed in the textbook, ‘International Business: The Challenges of Globalization,’ include aesthetics, manners and customs, education, physical and material environments, personal communication, religion, social structure, values and attitudes (Wild, Wild, Valladres Montemayor, 2015). When moving businesses’ to international markets like Birkenshire Corporations did, being a British organization having operations in China (Huang, T.Y., 2017), these elements of culture are extremely important to consider. Whether being in marketing and having to change the packaging of the product such as language, colors, and picture used; in social structure of the company and how staff arr expected to communicate, or the manners and customs a company has. In the case of Birkenshire Corporation, the main element of culture that was ignored and not considered was the manners and customs. Ignorance of culture was done by both the administrative department, made up of Chinese and non-Chinese staff, and the employees who received the gifts, made up of people from other cultures such as Latin-America, Australia, Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa (Huang, T.Y., 2017). If these employees had been made aware of the manners and customs of all the various cultures present in the Birkenshire organization, this issue could have been resolved in a way that didn’t offend
Global enterprises face the challenge of managing and developing human resources in the global setting. International or global resource management is about the world-wide management of individuals, not simply managing expatriates. (Moti, 2011) This paper will discuss key skills and qualifications that are deemed necessary for an overseas assignment for an individual in a management position. I will also identify some challenges that can arise with the appointment of a new manager in an international location. The Denmark Government has instituted policies to attract foreign investors and is intent on being “the gateway to Scandinavia” (Walden, 2001) For the purposes of this paper it should be assumed that the location of the facility is located in Denmark.