Problems Brought to Light When Globalization Is a Company's Goal

¶ … Guitars: A Critical Analysis of a Global Problem Working with people in another country outside your own country is always challenging but it does bring issues into focus that you don't have in your home office. Dealing with people of different ethnicities, from different cultures, using different languages than you are familiar with -- these are delicate issues that can be good learning experiences but they can also go terribly wrong.

How much or how little training a manager has had before moving to a foreign location for a company is critical in understanding how well that manager will do in the foreign experience. What specifically does this experience contribute to your skills? Dealing with diversity, with unfamiliar dynamics in a business genre can help a person be more flexible and ethical when returning home. Step ONE: (2): Business at the Base of the Pyramid is a way to help struggling people in Third World countries.

Businesses cannot change the socioeconomic patterns in a given country, but certainly ethical, caring corporations operating overseas should do all that is reasonable and possible to help poor communities. Step ONE: (3): Any start-up company is going to face serious competition in this globalized business world.

There is no harm in tossing your hat in the international ring as far as selling shoes internationally (especially using digital technologies / online business offering), but no doubt the Chinese and Koreans are already producing shoes by the millions and they may be able to earn a profit and do a better marking job because they have been in the business of selling shoes internationally for years.

Step ONE: (4): A fully developed global mindset cannot be achieved just by reading materials or attending workshops ahead of actually going overseas to a foreign country. That said, a bright, open-minded, experienced business marketing person could become familiar with a certain global market without leaving his home country, but that would be rare. He would need to interact in serious forums with professionals from global corporations. Step ONE: (5): Selecting a strategy that relates to exporting, licensing and wholly own subsidiaries requires knowing and understanding market dynamics and market fluctuations.

A thorough familiarity with a given market including all competitors' advantages and disadvantages, upsides and downsides, is necessary in this regard. Step ONE: (6): Allowing each subsidiary to operate autonomously (at least to some degree, due to the cultural and market diversities involved) is a great idea if it can be done. However, there have to be systems in place that relate to all subsidiaries, and that link all subsidiaries to a central corporate point of influence and power.

Step ONE: (7): People are just responding naturally when they shrink back at the thought of globalizations, because the unknown is always a bit frightening, and launching into something very new and unfamiliar naturally causes stress and discomfort. As time goes along, the globalization backlash will subside; it is the norm now, and the fear will fade. Step ONE: (8): The delegation that wants to improve working conditions and produce a better product is most likely to succeed.

Caring about workers and the conditions they have to produce products in is vital to the success of a business taking over another business. Besides the profit and loss statements, and the cost of personnel, and the market competition that existing factory faces -- and the available labor supply -- the new owner of this plant must also research the tax implications and the quality of the facility's structures. Step ONE: (9): A high-context style of communicating would be most appropriate when operating in a foreign land.

That is because there are non-verbal cues, and different ways of community (with body language, for example), that are just as important (if not more important) than the spoken language. In societies that have high context cultural dynamics, communication can be conducted through things that are implied, rather than spoken. Step ONE: (10): I would hope to lead with low power distance dynamics because I would want to interact with subordinates and not be distant from the average worker.

I would plan to treat subordinates with respect and not be indifferent to their needs and ideas. As to low vs. high performance orientation, I take the high performance route because I like direct communication, and I value training and development and improvement of performance based on honest feedback. Step TWO: Case for Critical Analysis Introduction When Salvador says, "Senor Wainwright, here in Spain we do not crank out product.

We take pride in each creation," he is explaining more than just the pace of work in a factory making guitars. He is sharing, in a very real way, some of the cultural differences between the United States and Spain (or Europe, as a generalization). Of course Adam Wainwright has a responsibility to his corporate office in the U.S.

To make sure sufficient acoustic guitars are produced, but his high value on assertiveness doesn't match Salvador's culture of a low assertiveness; in other words, building an acoustic guitar by hand is more about craftsmanship than it is about competitiveness. This is a cultural conundrum, and Wainwright is asking for short-term rewards when the craftsmen in Spain are thinking long-term.

Problem The main problem here is very obvious: either the wrong manager was sent to Spain or Wainwright is the right person but early in his assignment he is going through culture shock and hasn't settled in to his new business realities. When Vincent Fletcher got the phone call from his manager in Spain (Wainwright), Fletcher knew that Wainwright had only been in Spain for a week and that Wainwright might be simply impatient and pushy.

Wainwright was a high-tech kind of guy expecting that things can always be done quicker. The problem in fact could be that Wainwright wasn't trained properly or wasn't given a culturally-thorough set of guidelines; hence, Fletcher himself has failed to properly prepare Wainwright for this important assignment. Analysis It would be easy to point to Wainwright as the problem, but the upper management individuals that decided to send him to Spain must bear some of the responsibility for the mismatch.

The problem is not the guitar makers, because there is only one way to hand craft a guitar, and the way Salvador -- a "sculptor of sound" whose work is "almost mesmerizing" -- goes about his craft is culturally valid in Spain. You don't rush production when it comes to these kinds of instruments. On the other hand, the guitar factory could be expanded without.