MBA 5322 – NA - Business Case Study

CROSS-CULTURAL MANAGEMENT
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The Advent of globalization and the rapid development of economies have resulted to multinational companies to become more prevalent. The aspect of intercultural communication has presented new challenges with respect to management of these companies. Culture is the primary factor that influences the way people think and behave in a given business environment. Culture therefore, plays an important role in supporting certain types of organizations than others thereby, influencing the performance of a company. The management and communications of an organization is influenced by a national culture. This implies that culture significantly influences management style in a multicultural view point. The fierce competition experiences have led to multinational companies to do everything they can to survive as they promote and strengthen themselves internally. This is because human resource consists of the largest cost operation, and can be controlled through adaptation to these circumstances. Human resource has been found to be the key to success. The purpose of this paper is to explore the cross-cultural human resource management issue regarding MacDonald’s entry into Asian market. When the company enters into foreign countries, the differences in culture have been indicated in all aspects to conduct its business, and failure to acknowledge the cultural differences would cost a lot for this company resulting to failure of competition.
MacDonald’s is a company that has established new ventures to the domestic and international customers with fast food outlets. Its venture in Asian territory has made the company new to the cross-cultural human resource management since the period of its establishment is immature. The company has been offering fast food in its parent firm which is confined to the western nation’s culture. Many customers enjoy eating out and thus, MacDonald’s has provided outlets where they offer various foodstuffs to its consumers with different needs. The firm established its Asian outlets with expatriates and employees from its parent country, this brought challenges in relating to its customers and the society in this new environment.
The case of MacDonald’s is very valuable to evaluate the impact of cross cultural aspects regarding its operations, by taking into consideration a harmonious working relationship between the expatriates, local employees and customers. I was involved with MacDonald’s during its extension of their business externally to Asian market where they face challenges due to cross-cultural and communication differences. The only approach by which group members could work together to attain their objective regarding the organization is through realization of cultural differences and communication (Neyer & Harzing, 2008). Being an employee of MacDonald’s corporation, I was involved in communication with the stakeholders to equip them with sufficient understanding of the organization goals. I had to eliminate the challenge of cultural barriers by being proficient in cross-cultural communication to achieve success. It was a revelation that, the greater cultural difference there is in a business environment, the more the likelihood of communication misunderstanding become (He & Liu, 2010). Hence, the problem of cross-cultural conflict within MacDonald’s had to be evaluated with great attention.
In order to understand one another, there was a need to Share a common cultural experience. This I had to attain through the aspect of culture, intercultural communication and the adaptation of the culture, in addition to superior-subordinate relationship and decision making (Black & Mendenhall, 1990). The engagement between the people from a different culture provided identity talks such as individualism, masculinity and long term orientation thereby influencing cultural identity of people in the organization.
Therefore, the different cultural dimensions influenced communication in MacDonald’s through contrasting the management style, behavior of staff and communication between different cultures, which contribute to cross-cultural barriers in the firms (Harzing & Feely, 2008). I built up cross-cultural competence in the Asian market segment for MacDonald’s success in its business ventures by combining the performance orientation with a strong level of people orientation. Having an open mind set enabled the success of the company, since I was curious with the culture of its Asian segment and eager to learn on the new environment of this business venture.
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