In organizations that are highly hierarchical in structure and as a result have tight spans of control, Power Distance variations may be tolerated yet not accepted. The role of Individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance and Long-Term Orientation for example all could combine to completely re-order how an operations strategy is executed between two different cultures, with dramatically different effects. Mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and other forms of corporate relationships all have as their common component the need to have a consistent strategy for managing cross-cultural factors. One example of this is the decision Hewlett-Packard made to build factories in Singapore that would focus on innovation in addition to lower costs for developing and manufacturing their inkjet printers (Ferdows, 2006). The cultural aspects of expansion of Hewlett-Packard into this region were more of a consideration than the costs of labor, according to Dr. Fedrows (2006). As the culture of Singapore values education highly, and had been graduating more engineers in mechanical engineering per capita than some areas of the United States, and given the fact the Hewlett-Packard was able to standardize their operational processes, the expansion of factories into the country was successful. Fedrows (2006) points out in his studies of how companies integrate cultural advantages with process efficiencies to gain global competitive...
The solution, according to this research, is to create operational strategies that allow for both cultural strengths and uniqueness to be combined with operational aspects of performance. Taken together, organizations have proven to be more successful with this hybrid approach vs. If they had adhered to a purely ethnocentrically-based strategy of operations (Christopherson, 2007). For any operations strategy to be successful it must focus on all aspects of execution, from the cultural components to those that provide for process efficiency, integration and long-term scalability.
References
Susan Christopherson. 2007. Barriers to 'U.S. style' lean retailing: the case of Wal-Mart's failure in Germany. Journal of Economic Geography: Transnational Retail, Supply Networks, and the Global 7, no. 4 (July 1): 451-469. (Accessed March 12, 2009).
Kasra Ferdows. 2006. Transfer of Changing Production Know-How. Production and Operations Management 15, no. 1 (April 1): 1-9. (Accessed March 12, 2009).
Ross a Hammond, Robert Axelrod. 2006. The Evolution of Ethnocentrism. The Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 6 (December 1): 926-936. (Accessed March 11, 2009).
Geert Hofstede, Robert R. McCrae. 2004. Personality…
