Differences in Business Culture

Team Building The author of this brief response has been asked to offer some words about team building. Specifically, there will be some discussion about what happens with violated expectations on a cross-cultural team due to the existence of different cultural rules and norms. While a "violation" may be a big deal to some people in some cultures and less of an issue in other cultures, these violated expectations must be dealt with so as to retain and preserve the continuity and performance of the team.

Along the way, the author of this report will offer some detailed examples of what can lead to these violated expectations where not everyone involved feels that a rule was broken. While expectations and norms may vary from culture to culture, there needs to be a single and unified protocol that everyone in the team should follow irrespective of the contrary norms that may exist with some of the cultures.

Analysis While the world has gotten much smaller from a business and communications perspective, we cannot for a moment pretend that cultural difference and variations do not exist when it comes to even the little things of doing business. One example would be meeting times for the team. Let us say that the meeting time is at 10 am in a given time zone and everyone in the group has been made aware of this. For some cultures, it is expected that everyone will be there absolutely no later than 10 am.

For many of those same cultures, there is the expectation or at least the preference that people show up a bit early to the meeting. However, there are some cultures where a meeting time like that is held to be a "rough guideline" and not something set in stone. These people would saunter into a virtual meeting at 10:05 or 10:10 and be taken aback if they are given any sort of heat for not being ready to go right at 10 am.

When it comes to situations like this, it should be stressed that everyone should be on the conference call or video call by 10 am because that is the firm and defined start time of the meeting. It should also be stressed that the start time should be consistent across the board so that the end time is equally consistent (Lewis, 2016). Another common example that one could point to is directness. There are some cultures where being direct and exceedingly blunt is the norm.

However, there are other cultures where a bit of tact or delicateness is preferred or deemed to be required. Many Asian cultures are in the former classification as they tend to be very direct and open with what they feel including what went wrong, what needs to happen and so forth. Many Western cultures are taken aback by such abruptness and ostensible lack of candor. Indeed, many Western cultures are more diplomatic and softer in their approach even if they feel the same things as the Asian cultures mentions prior.

This is certainly not true across the board as there are some Westerners that are equally blunt and to the point. Even so, directness and bluntness in many Western situations can lead to hurt feelings and people being offended. In a similar vein, there has been a shift in most Western cultures towards empowering employees and being more supportive towards employees even if they are not of higher rank and responsibility.

Many Eastern cultures take more of a "do it now and do it my way" approach and they focus more on the bottom line. Typically, if they can less, they will. Many Western employers have moderated that tone with employees and many Western employees will revolt and rise up if they are not treated with more deference and respect. There are.