Good Example Of Essay On Managing Across Culture

Introduction

The rising trend of globalization is reshaping the way; we are thinking and behaving and helping in fostering the cultural changes in the society. This has greatly impacted the multinational organizations that survive with the cross-cultural teams and have to manage their efforts of various cultures. It is important that the cross cultures must be managed effectively in order to create a strong impact on the organizations and reduce the possible negative impact of the team differences (Anca Ştefania, 2010). The report will discuss how the global teams perform and react, with analysis, of the cultural differences, why cross-cultural teams fail and what can be done to prevent these problems. The competitive advantage of any multinational is highly dependent upon how critical they are able to coordinate and align their human capital and resources across the geographical boundaries. In today’s dynamic business environment, the company have many different options to amalgamate complex operations and information through the development of global teams. It is technically impossible for any company to reap economies of scales, penetrate in international market, earn profits, and establish a global image for its product without proficiently managing its global teams (Anca Ştefania, 2010).

Managing across cultures

The companies operating in different countries must develop a strong foundation for the global teams and the major issue arises when the organizations are unable to manage and foster the human capital in their company because they belong to different cultures. The multinational companies must employ the local workforce and encourage diversity within the organization which should involve the employment opportunities for minority groups and gender. In order to manage the global teams it is imperative that the managers must be provided with diversity management training and there should be no difference in employees in terms of encouragement of promoting the females or other minority groups to leadership positions (Gartside, 2011).
Even when the company expands, the parent company remains the same, and it is integral that the organization should learn to manage the global talent. This involves a competent understanding by the managers that they understand the local culture, varied cultural difference and adopt the management style that best suits the organizational culture. Even if the company plans to send the expatriates to other countries, it needs to train those employees properly so they match the skills and adapt to the local business culture. It is important that the local talent should be employed so that they are better able to understand the work-related activities in their country (Geert, 2005).
As we know that every multinational has designed a plan to expand their business, it is important that their approach towards the talent management should be aligned with their business strategy, with focus on leadership development and global human resource policies that should be aligned with the business strategy of the company. The retention of the skilled and talented workers is of utmost importance, and the local workforce should be attracted and offered attractive remuneration packages and training to keep them associated with the company (Gartside, 2011).

Global teams – A growing business phenomenon

The most effective tool any multinational can apply is to manage properly and well integrate the major components of the international business dynamics by effectively developing the global teams to manage diversity and cross-cultural issues. The global teams are an effective medium to bring together people belonging to different nationalities, culture, and people speaking diverse languages. These teams are formed to follow business norms that are established for every employee, and they coordinate to incorporate the multinational business perspective (Gartside, 2011).
In the traditional teams, people belong from the same culture and follow similar values and norms with similar affiliations, peer groups and at time gender basis. Since the cultural differences are less common in traditional teams, the team members share common views and they are able to interpret the situation, analyze it, and find solutions to the organizational problems in almost the same manner. When we compare the global teams from traditional teams they belong from different cultures, their values, norms are different, and the approach towards management functions is completely different (Geert, 2005).
Various researchers have demonstrated that people who work in the similar culture are more satisfied with their performance than the heterogeneous cross-cultural business teams that have members belonging from different cultures. On the other hand, the teams that have members belonging to different cultures are more creative and present different solutions to one problem. The multicultural teams provide opportunities to work in diversified culture, with people belonging from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Examples of global business teams are: Microsoft effectively utilizes global teams to provide customer sales and post-sale support to its global business partners with independent needs of global customers. On the other hand, Ford is also efficiently using global teams to design its latest cars. In another example, a company has been operating for 24 hours in where a design of computer chip is made and then communicated to the team located at the other part of the world. This way the business operations run uninterrupted (Geert, 2005).

Why Teams with People Belonging to Different Cultures Fail

It is important to note that teams, whether operating globally or domestically encounter similar issues, for example, lack of understanding of the team members, complete knowledge, and information about the tasks, the team objectives are unclear and the individual objectives do not match with the objectives of the team. The team members belonging from diverse cultures face some additional problems such as the difference in ethnic background, language differences, religious difference and varied cultures. The members are unable to cultivate trust among each others, and there is a lack of communication among them. Hence, it is the manager’s role to play their leadership roles in such situation.

How to Overcome Cross Cultural Issues

A pro-active approach to solving these issues is required by the top management. Even though that developing a pro-active approach to manage cross-cultural issues is not practiced in the multinationals today as it requires ample amount of resources, time, leadership skills and the right teams to make the cross-cultural management issues as appropriate. Since the business dynamics are changing and the economies are witnessing a downturn, the businesses have demonstrated a shift towards more on production, cost reductions and optimization of the business processes rather than the cross-cultural management of employees. Since, the cross-cultural workforce is formed without informing them of company objectives or taking into consideration their cultural background it is imperative that the managers should focus on talent management and properly plan their talent issues. At an internal level, it is integral that a well-trained manager should be employed to manage these issues and if not trained the managers must be trained to manage the workforce belonging to different cultures (Glenn, 2006).
The multinational company must deploy an appropriate a well-integrated corporate program in order to effectively establish and develop the global team and the management need to realize that the proper management of the workforce belonging to different cultures is a strategic investment and not a liability or additional expense on the company. It is critical that senior management should work in full collaboration with HR department to organize global teams considering all problems and maintaining a pro-active approach. For example, the technology savvy company IBM designed a global mentoring program for its global workforce in 2008 in order to increase communication and flow of data and information within the company. This helped in developing talent across the globe, also integrated the business operations, and overcame the geographical and communication barriers within team (Anca Ştefania, 2010).

Conclusion

It is important that the cross cultures must be managed effectively in order to create a strong impact on the organizations and reduce the possible negative impact of the team differences. The multinational companies must employ the local workforce and encourage diversity within the organization, which should involve the employment opportunities for minority groups and gender. The most effective tool any multinational can apply is to manage properly and well integrate the major components of the international business dynamics by effectively developing the global teams to manage diversity and cross-cultural issues. A pro-active approach to solving these issues is required by the top management. Even though that developing a pro-active approach to manage cross-cultural issues is not practiced in the multinationals today as it requires ample amount of resources, time, leadership skills and the right teams to make the cross-cultural management issues as appropriate.

References

Anca Ştefania Stan (2010) Managing Global Teams: Studies and Scientific Researches - Economic Edition, no. 15.
Gartside D. (2011) How to Manage Global Workforce, Accenture.com http://www.accenture.com/us-en/outlook/Pages/outlook-journal-2011-manage-global-workforce.aspx
Geert Hofstede and Gert Jan Hofstede (2005) Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. Revised and Expanded, 2nd Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill
Glenn Rifkin (June 2006) The soft skills of Global Managers, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.