Birkenshire Corporation The Pink Towels Case Study

Birkenshire Corporation: The Pink Towels

In the ‘Birkenshire Corporation: The Pink Towels’ case, the main problem was the lack of cultural sensitivity and awareness. This lack of cultural sensitivity however, not only came from the administration, but from the employees as well. “One day before International Women’s Day, all 244 female staff members of Birkenshire received an email from the human resources department announcing a gift of pink towels in celebration of the day” (Huang, T.Y., 2017). While this idea was intended to be a gift to support females and the celebration in the Colorful World Park of Changsha, China; the administration department did not consider how this gesture could make the staff feel. One of the staff expressed this

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