Cross-national management practices and frameworks

Cross-National Management: Questions

Although the Chinese company Nice Group and the American company it is entering into a partnership with may not face linguistic barriers, they are likely to face considerable cultural barriers that could impede their mutual understanding. The first likely communications obstacle is one of managerial styles. America is a highly individualistic culture, and tends to prefer managers who adopt an empowering or 'coaching' style, meaning that they either give employees considerable autonomy and/or provide support and guidance to employees. This is true particularly regarding complex tasks that require professional expertise. Employees are regarded as valuable human assets who can make a meaningful contribution to the company. In contrast, within high-context cultures such as China, there is a tendency to prefer a far more directive style of management, and to view employees' individual needs as less important than serving the collective (Motivation, n.d, Handout).

Another issue is one of accepted practices of doing business. In a developing world economy such as China's, ethics regarding bribery and corruption tend to be far more fluid than in a developed world nation. For the Nice Group, what is considered normative behavior within the Chinese bureaucratic context is not likely to be the same as in the United States, where rules are expected to be obeyed.

A third issue is that of stereotyping. This is almost impossible to avoid, even today: Chinese managers may have stereotypes about Americans, and Americans may have stereotypes about their Chinese colleagues. No one comes to the negotiating table as a blank slate. The dangers of stereotyping should be kept in mind, even while one must be aware of cultural differences -- Americans should not necessarily assume that everything they know about the Chinese lack of individualism, for example, is true in all instances (Dimensions of culture, Slides 2-3).

A final, less definable difference may be the styles of thinking adopted by the different sides. Americans are famously more 'monochromatic' thinkers and tend to approach problems in a fairly linear, top-down fashion. In contrast, members of high-context societies such as the Chinese tend to be more polychromatic in their way of thinking: issues are viewed as multi-valenced in nature, and are perceived as manifesting subtle levels of social meaning (Dimensions of culture, Slides 13-14).

Q2. Even if the two groups of hotel employees work for the same chain, their relationships will likely manifest cultural tensions. The first leadership challenge is that front-of-line staff are likely to be better-educated than the back-of-the-house employees, causing the employees behind the scenes to bristle with cultural and class resentment. This will generate a lack of team unity. There may be additional national and cultural conflicts that arise, based upon historic resentments between front-of-house and back-of-house employees. For example, a higher-level employee at the hotel restaurant who is an English-speaking native of India may be resented by a member of the kitchen crew with roots in Pakistan. Staff members may display active or passive resistance to front-of-house orders. The back-of-the-house employees may resist or undermine the front-of-the-house staff's efforts to make guests feel at home. Back-of-the-house staff may also harbor a sense of anger and resentment against hotel guests who are affluent and come from cultures and nations with which they are not familiar.

A second challenge is that high levels of employee attrition are likely, given the frustrations back-of-the-house staff may feel at what they see as their unjustly subordinate status. They may feel that it is they who really keep the hotel running, versus the showier positions of the front-of-house staff. Their benefits are likely not as generous as those of the front-of-house staff, and as hourly employees, they may feel justified 'jumping ship' for a few extra dollars offered by a competitor. This is a problem because all employees demand a financial and time investment for the company, regarding training.

A third challenge that will arise is the training itself. At one hotel chain, it was discovered that new hires from the Russian population did not find learning through memorization or role playing to come naturally to them, reflecting their different cognitive structures reinforced by their original cultural environment (Shea 1994: 6). The structure of the training program and the learning style of the back-of-house staff may not be commensurate.

Q3. A multinational team will encompass individuals from a wide variety of cultural contexts. The first step is to conduct a review of the various cultural backgrounds of members, to anticipate any conflicts that might ensue. Individuals from cultures that are very low-context, where individual motivation and autonomy is important (such as the United States and Scandinavian countries) may bring different assumptions to the new working environment than individuals from high-context cultures, where direction from management and collectivism are valued (such as East Asian, Southern European and Middle Eastern cultures).

Even the dialogue of the negotiations may be different, based upon the cultural contexts of the participants. Individuals from high-context cultures are likely to be less direct in terms of how they phrase their displeasure and support and place a greater emphasis on honoring social hierarchies. Low-context cultures tend to operate with the assumption that people mean what they say, and consider 'getting to the point' as an almost sacred obligations. They view 'time as money' and are likely to be impatient with the lateness and discursive sense of time that is attached to some high-context cultures, particularly in Southern European cultures.