Recommendation

I recommend the blog of Juliana Vergara, because I think she has explained in a clear and easy way the different topics explain in class. The design of her blog is pretty nice with light colors and great images that allows a peaceful reading. She used appropiatte tools like photos, paper references and give a practical analysis of each topic. To conclude, just check it out !!!

http://wwwjulivermar-juliana.blogspot.com/2010/03/east-asia.html

China

The paper proposed to study the China topic was about the Guanxi and the role of MNE’s. In Chinese societies guanxi can be defined as “a friendship with unlimited exchange of favours”, which means if two people share a guanxi relationship they feel fully committed to each other (M. Orru, 1997). This kind of relationships brings harmony to society, reciprocity and high commitments are the basis of the concept.

The social statute the rules the social and business interactions is known as renqing, which means that an individual emotionally reacts to the many situations he or she has to deal on the daily basis.

The Guanxi was influenced by Confucianism. This ideology emphasizes the value of harmony, urging individuals to adapt to the collective to control their emotions, to avoid conflict and to maintain internal harmony. Social relations should be conducted in such a way that everybody’s face is maintained and face is a key component in the dynamics of guanxi (M. Chen, 1995). The appliance of guanxi can be presented through two perspectives: the horizontal relationship –related to competitiveness- and the vertical relationship –related to human resource management-.

The paper discussed a research made with some Taiwanese MNE’s, these organizations build a strategy to enter to the UK market base on the Guanxi approach, although they have some trouble trying to implement this method, due to the lack of commitment and efficiency of UK employees.


Questions:

Discuss in your blog the relevance of Guanxi and the existence of Chinese business networks as supporting factors to the internationalization process of Chinese companies.

The Guanxi philosophy is very practical to an organization as well as to society, because its values and beliefs are focused to find harmony. The guanxi approach could make a friendly and cooperative work environment, which allows employees to care about the interactions with their colleagues. These actions could avoid emotional conflicts or disrespectful behaviours that could affect the productivity and the efficiency of companies.

Referring to internationalization process of Chinese companies, Chinese business networks are an essential supporting factor, because the networks could give important tips to enter to new markets, reach contacts, and provide practical ideas to develop a useful strategy to consolidate the company in the new environment.

Taking into account that networks requires a broader perspective of interaction between managers, employees and customers. The Guanxi is a functional approach which enables the different organizations to manage their relationships in a better harmonizer manner.

References

Taken from www.thecontractrecruiter.com/.../guanxi-con-rel1.jpg, March 17th 2010

Chen, I Chun Lisa and Easterby-Smith Mark. 2008. “Is Guanxi still working, while Chinese MNCs go global? The case of Taiwanese MNCs in the UK”. Human Systems Management 27: 131-142.

East Asia

This topic was presented with an explication of the countries which compound this area and the cultures that belong to these countries. The states located in East Asia are China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. All these nations have many things in common like the geographical proximity, religion and invasions.

The main religions are Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto. Religion plays a fundamental role within societies in East Asia and regulated the most important aspects of the individual’s life. They also have a long invasion history among them, because of the diverse empires which rose in those areas. All these share past have created various similarities and differences that could affect the business environment.

Our classmates also explained the Japanese and Korean management model, and the Samsung group case. Those tools give us good ideas to negotiate with people from that part of the world. The Japanese and Korean management style has been one of the most successful methods and has influenced many organizations around the world.

To conclude, East Asia has some of the more powerful economies in the world. The international arena is now focusing in those countries and some experts have predicted that the new superpowers states are located in this region. For that reason is very important to understand and know how to deal with those cultures in order to have prosperous negotiations. Cultural intelligence could be a great skill to analyze and solve possible conflicts originated from cross-cultural interaction.

Questions:

List the main similarities and differences of Japanese and Korean management styles.
Japanese Management Style:

-Growth strategy
-Aggregate pricing, economies of scale
-Supplier relationship
-Participation low-middle level management
-Right kind of customers
-Flexible manufacturing
-Corporate values

Korean Management Style

- Grown oriented

-Japan economic model
-Government intervention

References

Photo taken from http://www.uppermidwest.org/, March 17th 2010

Expatriates Assignment & Overseas Experience

Our classmates explained the differences between an expatriate assignment and an overseas experience. Expatriates assignments refers to people who go to another country, hired in most cases by transnational companies, in order to work effectively in an international scenario. After a period of working outside of his or her home country, the person might return to his or her country and share with coworkers all the knowledge and the skills acquire in order to improve the company at its domestic market. While overseas experience is more related with young people who go abroad for a prolonged period for several purposes like study, travel or work. An overseas experience begins with the person’s individual decision of going abroad.

There are different kinds of expatriates which are long-term expatriate assignments, short-term expatriate assignment, international commuter, and frequent flyer. Also, there are several strategic reasons for international assignments like professional development, knowledge transfer, fulfillment of scarce skills, control, and coordination.

The main characteristics of an overseas experience are cultural experience as important as work, geographical mobility, curiosity-driven, personal learning agendas, individual is self-supporting, and weak company attachments. There are also several experiences like self-directed experimentation, self-designed apprenticeships, cast off negative past legacies, find occupational industry identity, develop confidence and self-reliance, return with clearer career focus, increased interest in self-employment, and gives to individual the opportunity to find their own learning.

In a nutshell, Expatriates assignments are made to professional and are directed to increase the productivity of the company. While overseas experience is more a personal development that could be useful for the individual in the academic, work and cultural field.

Questions:

Explain one of the causes for expatriate assignment failure and provide 3 recommendations to address it:
One of the big issues regarding expatriate assignments is the family matter. In some cases the person has to leave his or her family behind which results in the early return of the expatriate due to emotional involvements that impede him or her to do their tasks in an appropriate way. In the case that the employee could leave with its family, other problems arouse like that they could not adapt to the new environment. Another important issue concerning expatriate assignments is the inadequate selection criteria, when a manager choose the wrong person to go abroad the feedbacks of the experience could be lose as a results of the insufficient competences of the employee to assimilate the procedures.
The best ways to avoid these situations to happen with an expatriate assignment are:
Managers should develop a proper selection process which allow him/her to identify the different skills need to take advantage of the situation. Taking into account that sends a person overseas is not a cheap procedure, managers should be aware of the selection criteria which permit them to pick the most capable employee.
Make the transfer easier to the employee as well as to the family, meaning by that, having a previous investigation of the host country which let he family know the conditions and life standards of the surroundings. Also, provide them with the basic needs that a family necessitates to adapt to a new environment like house, schools, medical insurance and a good remuneration.

References

Photo taken from www.krishnanco.com/Stock/Expatriate.jpg, March 14th, 2010

Exploring Diversity

The following topic was Exploring Diversity. Cristina explained different concepts like: the characteristics of diversity, dimensions, and cultural issues. We also saw different situation in which diversity played an essential role and discussed the possible solutions to the cases.

Diversity is a fundamental component within organizations today, because globalization has increase the number of people moving from one place to another. Managers must deal with employees from different race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, cultures among others. This diversity could transfer into advantages to the companies, because there would be different points of view and several approaches to solve a possible trouble. It is more likely to individuals or groups that differ form other groups or individuals in matters of religion, race and political orientation to enter in conflict. These conflicts often occur as a consequence of discrimination.

According to Cant, there are some competencies to understand diversity that could be useful to mitigate the impact of cultural issues. These competencies are: flexibility, resourcefulness, tolerance for ambiguity, vision, cultural self- awareness, cultural consciousness, and multicultural leadership. Also an important skill to deal with these conditions is cultural intelligence which is the ability to operate in a variety of situations.

In my opinion, diversity is an important part of ours lives nowadays. It depends of how we manage the different circumstances in which we need to interact with people from diverse races or ideologies. Through these situations, we can learn and have more tools that we can implement in different negotiations or in our day life.


¿Do you think the entry and integration of new members to the European Union are processes that promote diversity? or, on the contrary, ¿strive to homogenize the European Society?

I think that the integration of new members to the European Union are processes that promote diversity, because all countries from Europe have different races and cultures, that means, that with the incorporation of one state they are allowing diverse people which came from another background and customs.

According to Toggenburg, The European Commission recognizes that European societies are multi-cultural and multiethnic. The degree of that diversity depends to a significant level on the kind of immigration policy implemented. As a result, the control of borders, the decision who can enter a territory and reside there lays at the core of the management of ethics and cultural diversity.

The moment of integration covers a broad range of ambitious measures accommodating migrants and minorities within a society. With respect to European Union citizens who moved to another stated and form minorities, the Union did not adopt a distinctive integrative policy. The overall prohibition of any way of discrimination on the basis of nationality is meant to cover these groups. Therefore, the fundamental freedoms and EU citizenship assure discrimination-free access to social and economic rights. The law also covers the right of preservation of cultural identity. (Toggenburg 2005)

As we can identify in the document there are a lot of policies that protect migrants and minorities in the European Union assuring the same rights to nationals or migrants. Hence they are encouraging cultural identity within the countries that belong to the Union and they are not trying to shape a uniformity society.

References

Photo taken from http://www.gettyimages.com/, March 10th 2010

Toggenburg, Gabriel N. 2005. “Who is managing ethnic and cultural diversity in the European Condominium? The moments of entry, integration and preservation”. Journal of Common Market Studies 43 (4) 717-38.

Migrant Workers

Our classmates explicated the concept of migration which consists in a person who is to be engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a state of which she or he is not a national. Another definition for migrant workers is a voluntary or involuntary movement of people from one place to another.

This movement of people is not new; it has been happened for ages. Migrant work initiates at the same time to the conquest of the empires and the discovery of new land. During the European Colonization 27 million slaves were trade as migrant work. This ended in the ethnical mixture of culture in every region of the world.

There are several motives for a person to migrate and in the same way there are different types of migration: internal migration, external migration, chain migration, step migration, seasonal migration and impelled migration. People migrate for two causes: the push –few opportunities, slavery, political fear, pollution, among others- and the pull –aspects to get out of the country like job opportunities, better standards of lifestyle, education, and etc-.

The principal destinations to people to migrate are: North America, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand and the main sources of migrant workers are: Asia, Latin America and Africa. The primary causes to people to move from one country to another are: social and economic exclusion, the attraction generate by developed countries, the need of these countries of counting with migration, the internal armed conflicts and the natural disasters.


Questions:

¿Do you think the Points System in Canada is meant to protect the country’s sovereignty? or ¿is it just a deliberated form of discrimination? ¿why?

I think the Points System in Canada is intended to protect the country’s sovereignty and is not a deliberated form of discrimination, because the Point System replaced another criterion which was based on religion and race. This new criteria emphasized the skills, education, and training of the independent immigrant rather than his or her ethnic or confessional background. The efficacy of the Points System, with its emphasis on immigrants of a skilled or professional occupational profile, has been mitigated by the number of individuals admitted to Canada as dependents, family members or refugees. The admission of dependents as economic or business class immigrants has been justified as both humane and practical. The government maintains that the ready admission of dependents has enhanced the country’s pull in its competition for the truly skilled. Canada can choose to relax its restrictions on immigration in order to maintain current or desired levels.

Canada implemented this policy in order to contend the old problem of brain drain. Canadian professional were moving to United States, these brought economic consequences to Canada. The Points System was created to equilibrate the previous situation.

In my opinion, this system is a useful tool for Canadian government, because they can control in a better way the people who are travelling to their country. The measure is not discriminatory because they are not basing on religion, ethnic or cultural backgrounds. By the contrary, they are basing on certain skills that could be acquired with some degree of education and training.

References

Photo taken from www.gettyimages.com, March 15th 2010

Verbeeten, David. 2007. The Past and Future of Immigration to Canada. Journal of International Migration & Integration, 8(1): 1-10.

Managing Diversity

This was the first topic presented by students. Mauricio and Daniel explained the importance of diversity in a company and how it may affect the decision, atmosphere and status. They gave explanation about how diversity spreads through many layers of human complexity. Managers should view multiculturalism as an opportunity to maximize innovation and communication skills.

Managing diversity can increase the good performance of the staff of an organization, using the teamwork as an approach of support and creativity. It is important to deal with diversity, to be more productive, the entire individuals have different capacities that the company could use to improve its efficiency.

According to Chevrier, diversity cannot be an obstacle in the organization, the cooperation between companies is necessary to be more competitive. The alliances are a key part for businesses for that reason is important that the students be open-mind and expert in topics like managing conflicts, communication, accepting authority and cooperation.

Diversity benefits individuals, teams and organizations. In the individual increase employee self-awareness of biases, stereotypes and prejudices, enhance worker tolerance for people who are different, and form employees who are more flexible and able to deal with change. In the teams maximizes innovation and productivity on complex tasks, counter with different approaches to thinking and problem-solving, and improve communication skills and the ability to work productively in groups. In the organization augment flexibility, adaptability and pro-activity within the organization, access to a diverse range of markets, customers, suppliers and distributors, translating into bottom line results.


Questions:

Is diversity management at IBM a source of competitive advantage? Why?
Management diversity at IBM is a source of competitive advantage for several motives. To start, the approach permits IBM to have a broader perspective of customer, understanding the range of diversity and multicultural aspects that could be found within the market. This helps to make their products more accessible to new markets and legislations in order to generate more profit. Another important fact is that the strategy facilitates IBM to integrate all the employees and understand the different values that each culture brings to the company.
In a nutshell, having a diversity management contributes to understand and be prepared to compete in global markets due to the fact that societies are pretty different around the world, and be aware of diversity make easier to the company to adapt to new environments.
Do you think the IBM case reflects a strong organizational commitment to diversity?
IBM case reflects a strong organizational commitment to diversity because they are implementing a strategy that consists in creates eight tasks forces that people with different appearance and characteristics like: Whites, Asians, Blacks, handicaps, and people with different sexual orientation. The purpose of the tactic was to understand differences among groups in order to gain knowledge of it and make improvements. IBM strategy was successful because all the people were involved in it, from the highest levels to the operators. Thanks to this plan the number of executives with disabilities has increased more than three times.

References

Photo taken from http://www.gettyimages.com/, March 16th 2010

Sylvie, Chevrier. 2003. "Cross-cultural management in multinational project groups " Journal of World Business 38:141-149.

National And Organizational Culture

The second topic was national and organizational culture. Cristina explained that organizations are groups that have the same objective, whether its economic or social, and control their objectives. She also made clear different concepts like: culture, organizational culture, functions of culture, the difference between national culture and organizational culture and functions of culture within an organization. We also saw how a nation could be similar/ different to a culture and discussed different definitions of culture and which factors could affect an international company.

Culture is a set of traditional beliefs and values that are shared and transmitted. Values and perceptions differ according to the culture; misunderstanding culture could be costly to an organization. Organizational culture refers to the effect of national culture on ways of doing business. Knowledge of organizational culture, management attitudes and business methods existing in a country and the willingness to accommodate the differences are important to success.

The corporation

The film was about the evolution and impact of the corporation since early years until today and the cost of the exceptional wealth. The film began showing the diverse definitions of the corporation and how this legal person is the cause of poverty, death, pollution and exploitation. The Catholic Church and the Communist Party were pretty good examples of corporations nearly 100 years ago. The unethical behaviour of the Global Superpowers shows an anti-social personality not only with person but also to the environment, the corporations are psychopaths.

The documentary explains the concept of the corporation and showed how the industry manipulates the consumer and forgets the ethic of the market. The movie criticized the capitalist system, the advertising of the brands and some other topics. It left a difficult situation whether to be or not in the side of the corporation, or how to equilibrates both parts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y

Question: Do you think there is a corporate culture in every organization?

I think that corporate culture is inherent to the organization. Cultural organization is the mode how things are made, procedures, and norms within the company. Te corporate culture are adopt though the time pass by and are communicate from directors to their employees.

The problem is that in many companies they have one but it is not working properly. There is more to corporate culture than national culture, but it is hard to separate them. When entrepreneurs start businesses, they do what make sense to them in the context of values and assumptions they may had in mind since they were children. How they treat their people, and what they expect, may depend on national cultural assumptions so deeply rooted that few ever question them. (Millman, Gregory 2007)

Mergers and Acquisitions can fail due to incompatibility in their corporate culture. In many M & A’s deals synergy is not achieved.

References

Millman Gregory. Corporate Culture: more myth than reality? While business success and failure are often laid to “culture” the term is elusive and frequently misused. Experts in organization behaviour say it is difficult to alter a company’s culture, and when it does shifts, it is often the result of successful business performance changes. July 2007

Photo taken from http://www.gettyimages.com/ March 16th 2010

Ethnographic Research

The first topic in Organizations & Cultures was Ethnography. According to the document proposed to the subject, Ethnography is a social science research method which uses personal experience and possible participation as a study technique. The ethnographic main point could include intensive language and cultural learning, intensive study of a single field or domain, and a blend of historical, observational, and interview methods. The most common kind of data collections are: interview, observation, and documents.

These methods are a means of tapping local points of view, households and community funds of knowledge, a means of identifying significant categories of human experience up-close and personal.

Ethnography requires emic and ethic perspectives. Emic refers to the intrinsic cultural distinctions that are meaningful to the members of a give society. The native members of a culture are the sole judges of the validity of an emic description, just as the native speakers of a language are the sole judges of the accuracy of a phonemic identification. An emic constructs its correctly termed, if it is in accord with the perceptions and understandings considered appropriate by the insider’s culture (consensus). Ethic refers to the extrinsic concepts and categories that have meaning for scientific observers. Scientists are the sole judges of the validity of an ethic account. An ethic constructs its correctly termed, if it is in accord with the epistemological principles deemed appropriate by science.

As a set of methods, ethnography is not far removed from the sort of approach that we use all in everyday life to make sense of our surroundings. It is less specialized and less technically sophisticated that approaches like the experiment or the social survey.

Question: How Ethnographic research can be used for international business?

Ethnographic research can improve the legitimacy and reliability of business communication research by using both quantitative and qualitative methods and studying both real life and simulations. The research themes highly ranked by managers were teamwork, negotiations, and listening. A study made using Delphi panels illustrated that 41 international business people and 22 educators agree that the team communication, the media used and nonverbal patterns, such as silence and translation problems and diversity should be taught. Two of the top matters for a focused intercultural business communication course are attribution and negotiation. (Smeltzer, 1993)

The methodology used to describe the impact of these techniques in international business, is an abstract approach because ethnographic and sociolinguistic studies rarely focus on outcomes, tactics, and effectiveness of negotiations. Ethnographic analysis may use real life situations.
Interviews, observation, and documents can be used for international business in order that these tools could identify the needs of a group. Having enough information will have a positive impact in different situations of business like decide a proper strategy, recognize a possible difficulty and understand diverse cultures.

References

Innovation and International Business Communication: Can European Research Help to increase the Validity and Reliability for Our. The Journal of Business Communication, April 2000
Genzuk Michael. A Synthesis of Ethnographic Research

Photo taken from Jareaux Robin, Examining Hieroglyphics. March 16 ,2010