Doing business across cultures

1
Doing business across cultures

• Usunier (1998) Marketing across Cultures Prentice
  Hall

2
The key to success

• Choosing the right partners, agents, etc
• high cost of switching
• so it is important to get right both
• the terms of the deal
• the relationship between the people
• Relationships depend on trust
• Cultural misunderstandings undermine trust

3

• communication is decoded according to
  culturally-conditioned preconceptions,
• especially credibility of the source.
• important to research the differences
• in organisational culture
• in expectations of correct business behaviour

4
Who is a suitable business partner?Or what type
of manager do you respect?

• Strong
• decisive
• plain speaking
• young with new ideas
• leads from the front

• Cautious
• open-minded
• modest
• old and experienced
• delegates to others

5
Do you agree that

• Managers should admit their mistakes?
• Managers should not be addressed by their first
  names?
• Managers should earn respect, not expect it
  because of their status?
• Powerful people do not need to shout?
• Successful men are usually fat?

6
Tangled webs
Individual Collective
Masculine Feminine
Symbols
Stories
Power
Rituals
Organisation
Control
Power Distance
Uncertainty Avoidance
7
Organisational cultures

• High / Low Power Distance
• delegated authority before consulting superiors
• High /Low Uncertainty Avoidance
• speed of decision-making
• paper-work required to formalise arrangements
• High /Low Individualism
• obliged to support the company line
• flexibility in negotiations
• High / low Masculinity
• the values and attitudes of the individuals.

8
Approaches to negotiation

• Distributive
• dividing up a fixed cake
• we win, they lose
• Limited good
• identifying with a group special interest which
  over-rides everything
• Integrative
• working together to increase rewards for both
  sides
• solving problems for mutual benefit

9
Mental Processes

• Ideological
• working towards an ideal eg socialist, green,
  religious, against which everything is judged
• Pragmatic
• solving the immediate problem now
• Time frame
• immediate result or long-term investment
• Ethnocentricity
• how much do they know or care of other cultures

10
What type of agreement

• My word is my bond
• Implicit
• Read between the lines
• On-going and developing
• Trusting
• High Context culture

• Put it in writing
• Explicit
• spell it out
• Fixed and binding
• Suspicious
• Low context
• (Hall)

11
Cultural Sensemakingbased on Osland and Bird
(2000)Academy of Management Executive February

• Context
• Roles and Relationships
• Cultural scripts
• how to act in that role and context
• explained by
• Underlying cultural values
• the influence of cultural history
• see last terms lecture

12
Cultural Awareness spiral

• Level 1 - its all very foreign
• Level 2 - but really theyre just like us
• Level 3 - or are they?
• Level 4 - understanding the reasons
• Level 5 - but thats totally weird
• Collins 1987