The global business environment of today is characterized by Organizations that work with different cultures across the world. Multinational corporations particularly experience the situation of the subject matter since the situation in foreign countries is usually different from the home country (location of the parent company) in many ways based on culture. Nonetheless, it emerges that the element of cultural integration remains to be an important factor for the achievement of overall success for businesses working with different cultures. A look at the situation shows that there are a number of challenges that the organizations have to deal with on a continual basis.
One of the major challenges for the organizations lies in the issue of the language barrier. This challenge manifests more from the perspective of the internal environment of the organization. It is well understood that the management of an organization ought to establish and maintain sufficient communication patterns with the personnel (Samovar, et al., 2015). Such often proves to be a challenge in situations where the members of the management speak a different language (usually the language of the home country of the parent company) from the subordinates. In order to deal with this challenge, the organizations are usually implored to employ native people to serve in the management teams of their subsidiaries in foreign countries. A keen look at the situation, however, shows that the company may use the situation of the challenge to its advantage. Such is achieved by the establishment of an organizational culture that promotes ideologies of teamwork by the establishment of working groups of persons from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In some other cases, the members of management have to engage in measures of learning the dialect used in foreign countries.
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Another challenge facing organizations working with divergent cultures is that of differences in conventional cultural practices of the society per se. such is usually manifested on the platforms of religion and other cultural practices or beliefs (Young, & Ghoshal, 2016). To better comprehend the situation, one may ponder about a situation of an organization dealing with meat products of pork for instance. Such an organization may find it very difficult to operate in Muslim countries wherein the people normally do not consume pork by the function of their religion. It is also important to consider the fact that people from different cultures normally do not conduct business in the same manner. As such, it is very important for a business or an organization to study and evaluate the elements of a given culture before venturing therein. Other than matters of religion, special focus also ought to be given to matters such as forms or norms of business etiquette, nonverbal communication, and boundaries of personal space (Tjosvold, 2017).
The norms of different cultures also establish a sense of different views of ethics. In as much as there is a universal concept of ethics by the function of globalization, people of different cultures have divergent views of considerations of morality (Deresky, 2017). While it may be a cultural norm for women to wear short skirts and freely interact with men in the West, the same is considered as an aspect of immorality in the Middle East. The resultant effect is that the management organs of organizations dealing with different cultures ought to be sensitive in the development and implementation of their business strategies with consideration of the cultural values of all stakeholders.
The considerations of the matters of ethics need to revolve not only around the matters of morality and religion but also the aspects of consumer preferences, roles of the community, human values, and ecological sustainability among many others. Such often brings about a challenge for businesses since they need to train and retrain their managers and employees to ensure they are competent and conscious from an intercultural perspective. Overall, it is safe to say that matters of divergences of culture go a long way in influencing the operational management and working styles of businesses.
References
Deresky, H. (2017). International management: Managing across borders and cultures . Pearson Education India.
Samovar, L. A., Porter, R. E., McDaniel, E. R., & Roy, C. S. (2015). Communication between cultures . Nelson Education.
Young, C., & Ghoshal, S. (2016). Organization theory and the multinational corporation . Springer.
Tjosvold, D. (2017). Cross-cultural management: foundations and future . Routledge.
