Cultural Issues Facing Multinational Corporations - Essay Sample

Culture is a set of standard and accepted norms shared by society (Podrug, Pavicic & Bratic,2006).Today, as companies continue to expand across borders and the global marketplace continues to become increasingly acceptable. However, these organizations have to be aware of the cultural issues facing businesses.

There are internal issues that organizations face. For example, there are human resource issues such as recruitment and selection. The companies are required to recruit and hire employees in different countries, and this employee has their way of doing this and hence getting used to the culture of the company is hard since they are used to their culture. Hofstede states there is a difference in workplace values hence multinational enterprises requires to adjust their leadership style to ensure that the host cultural workplace value is accommodated. Another challenge is the role of women and cultural minorities. The manager might found themselves in the culture that women are not recognized hence hiring women in various positions become a challenge. There is also an issue of motivating a diverse cultural team. The manager found themselves in a dilemma especially if they found out that a motivating factor in one culture is demotivating individuals in another culture. There is also the issue of communication(Podrug, Pavicic & Bratic,2006). Multinational corporations are challenged by different communication styles which influence the strong developing relationship with clients. For example, when you look at western communication style, people are straightforward while in countries such as India, people are accustomed to the aggressive approach. There is also an issue of meetings and appointments, in China, for example, you are required to provide a written notice of the appointment two weeks before meeting while in western countries, individual can organize an appointment one day prior the meeting day. Different cultures have different languages, and hence there might be an issue of language barrier especially while dealing with host company clients among others(Podrug, Pavicic & Bratic,2006).

There are various ways that the company can adapt to in to deal with the cultural issues that human resource department faces. First, the company can embark on training and development. The company might be used to a particular culture of doing this that every employee needs to follow. As such, the company requires providing training to new employees on how to carry out their responsibilities on behalf of the company. The multinational corporations can also develop cultural awareness. This entails trying to understand the difference between people from different countries. The multinational business, in this case, comes with a way of understanding the values of their new staffs and allowing the employees to understand the culture of the company(Kreitz, 2008).

Multinational companies also experience external cultural challenges, for example, there is an issue of marketing and advertisement. For instance identifying customer need due to cultural differences in a significant problem. There is also the issues with values and use of the product. Due to cultural difference, individuals view the values of the product differently. Hence companies need to design the product as per the need and values of the target market. Venturing into an international market is expensive, and therefore companies face financial problems while establishing in the new market (Kreitz, 2008).

Cultural issues might affect the performance of the company. However, some benefits comes with cultural issues. For example, having a diversified workforce can learn from each other on various issues. There is also diversification in decision making due to the mixed workforce.

References

Kreitz, P. A. (2008). Best practices for managing organizational diversity. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34(2), 101-120.

Podrug, N., Pavicic, J., & Bratic, V. (2006, January). Cross-cultural comparison of Hofstede's dimensions and decision-making style within CEE context. In From transition to sustainable development: The path to European integration.