Cross-cultural management

Managing a trul multinational company would obviously be much simpler if it required only one set of corporate objectives, goals policies, practices, products and services. But local differences often make this impossible. The conflict between globalization and localization has led to the invention of the word “glocalization”. Compnaies that want to be successful in foreign markets have to be aware of the local cultural characteristics that affect the way business is done. A fairly obvious cultural divide hat has been much studied is the one between , on the one hand, the countries of North America and north-west Europe, where management is largely based on analysis, rationality, logic and systems, and, on the other, the Latin cultures of southern Europe and SouthAmerica, where personal relations, intuition, emotion and sensitivity are of much greater importance. The largely Protestant cultures on both sides of the North Atlantic (Canada, the USA, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia) are essentially individualist Insuch cultures, status has to be achieved. You don’t automatically respect people just because they’ve been in a company for 30 years. A young, dynamic, aggressive manager with an MBA *a Master in Business Adinistration degree) can quickly rise in the hierarchy. In most Latin and Asian cultures, on the contraty, status is automatically accorded to the boss, who is more likel to ve in his fifties or sisties than in his thirties. This is particularly true in Japan, where companies traditionallly have a policy of promotion by seniority. A 50-year-old Japnaese manager, or a Greek or Italian or Chilean one, would quite simply be offended by having to negotiate with an aggressive, well-educated, but inexperienced American or German 20 years his junior. He would also want to thke the time to get to know the person