The Trend of Globalization Has Changed the Mechanism of Many Businesses - Essay Example

Case Analysis - Intercultural communication Introduction The trend of globalization has changed the mechanism of many businesses in the in the international context. When a company operates across the borders it becomes very essential to understand the cultural aspect of the particular area so that the core values of the company are aligned with the ethical aspect of the region. In the present scenario many companies has to face to many form of ethical barriers while operating globally. The ones who possess high CQ or cultural intelligence are able to overcome such cultural barriers through effective strategies and the ones who do not possess high CQ are subjected to failures to the extent of removing their business operations from a specific region. The term globalization can be defined on the basis of four elements such as network extensity that facilitates connecting with different organizations, countries and people located across the globe, interaction intensity in such networks, speed of movement of such people, products, information across the globe, and the impact that is caused on various communities due to such a trend. Discussion In the context of globalization there often exists dilemma amongst the companies as to follow the ethical standards that are set in their home country or to adapt to the cultures and ethics of the local country so as to sustain its business operations (Varner & Beamer, 2011).One of the most renowned companies in the technology sector that faced such a dilemma was Google. It is the largest search engine across the globe with a total market of 70% in United States as identified in the year 2010. The company has not only been able to achieve high performance standards and success but also have set an image of being highly ethical by nature. The company performs all its operations based on the philosophy that money can be made even without doing any such thing that is evil. The major turmoil that the company noticed was in the year 2006 with the launch of a search engine that was China based. The company’s major motive was to gain market share in China and to make the Chinese population easily access all forms of information through its search engine (Human Rights Watch, 2010). However the company in order to be aligned with the censorship laws of the Chinese government agreed on the aspect of filtering certain words and information that would violate the law. Such words majorly were those that were politically sensitive such as democracy, etc. However the company faced major challenge through this initiative as many personnel engaged in human rights and even political leaders claimed that the company was not in align with its own ethical standards that stated that every individual has a right to access of information and even right to freedom of their expression. There were many technology firms such as Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, etc., who had faced similar form of challenges as many criticisms came forward from such leaders who wanted that these companies should not compromise in the context of human rights while they perform business operations in the global context. In the present scenario when a company faces such challenges the only measure that they adopt is adapting to the local culture (Varner & Beamer, 2011).This is stated as the cultural intelligence or CQ level of the company (Varner & Beamer, 2011).CQ can be defined as the ability of a person or a company to understand and learn any different cultural norms and then set forth an action plan so that the action is aligned with the cultural aspect of the region (Varner & Beamer, 2011).The model of cultural intelligence states that three main components that facilitate the CQ level such as cognition, motivation and behaviors (Varner & Beamer, 2011).The first stage of cognition can be related to thinking process that encompasses the ability to gain information about the new culture and perform accordingly (Novinger, 2013).The second stage is of motivation that states the desire to successfully adapt to the changing situations. The last stage is of behaviors which outline the action on the basis of adaption to the new culture (Varner & Beamer, 2011).One of the major elements that support the change in culture is technology. The term technology can be stated as the way through which human beings relate themselves with the physical environment (Varner & Beamer, 2011).This technology also on the contrary becomes a vital factor when it comes to dealing with different culture people (Varner & Beamer, 2011).The history behind the launch of Google.cn is linked with the launch of a blog by the company in 2006 highlighting that this launch was majorly because of the inability of their Chinese customers to use Google.com because of unavailable and slow service. The company launched this blog as a forum to launch their local search engine in China to be called as Google.cn. The company was well aware of the issues that would be put forward by the Chinese government in context of censorship that would violate the commitment of the company that reflected upon the freedom towards information access. It can be stated that at the initial stages the company had a high CQ level in terms of adapting to the new culture or rather the rules proclaimed by the Chinese government (Varner & Beamer, 2011).However Beijing had an issue with every other technology based companies operating in China because of its censorship laws. The man who was the key figure behind the launch of this local search engine was the senior vice president of Google, Alan Eustace. He stated that the major intention of the company to launch such a search engine was to extend business relations with China and to gain high profit margins. The company lost reasonable market share in the country as they were not able to offer a reliable service majorly due to lack of their presence locally. As stated by Hofstede the factor of power distance was very prominent in China. The power distance factor states the degree to which the people who are less powerful in a system consider power to be unequally distributed (Piepenburg, 2011).It can also be stated that cultures which exhibit low level of power distance indicates that power relations are more of democratic by nature (Hofstede, 2002).The Chinese government has been discarding people to access information and focused more on censored technology. The local presence of the company in China was essential simply because it would improve upon the reliability and even satisfy the users. On the other hand the company in order to gain such a position needs to acquire license of internet content provider so that they can perform their business operations in the region and which would even mean that the company had to remove and filter links that was considered to be illegal in the context of China (Sorrells, 2012).The company had a two-fold dilemma either to establish a position in the region while avoiding their corporate mission or to stay out of the region (Piller, 2011).The challenges were the company had to serve its customers efficiently with easily accessibility of information and also at the same time they were suppose to respond to the cultural norms of the local communities. The company performed its operations in China till 2010 but then it had to remove its presence from the country as it was violating on the human rights. The company declared that it would continue on the operations only if the Chinese government agreed on removing filtering requirements and Internet censorship. The company showed high CQ level because in the initial stages it was able to easily respond to the cultural factor of China. As it gained local presence in the new market it violated human rights and even corporate mission so as to be aligned with the rules and norms of the Chinese government (Varner & Beamer, 2011).When the company faced challenges from the human right activists and leaders it removed its censored search engine and launched Google.com.hk so that all of the users can access information without any filtered information. This initiative was supported by the Chinese government that renewed the license of internet content provider as the company agreed on providing both the options to the users that is of Google.cn and Google.com.hk without directing the Chinese users to the former site. The former was the Hong Kong version of the search engine that provided the user the freedom to access information and the later was the censored version as per the rules of the Chinese government. The alignment of the company’s operations with the culture of China can be stated as the company possessed high CQ. Conclusion Google has set high performance standards in terms of satisfying its users and being aligned with the ethical values of the company. The company while entering into the new market China was subjected to many challenges that were majorly related to the cultural differences that existed between the home country and the host country. However the company has been able to certain changes in the cultural norms through its cognitive thinking process. The major aim of the company was to provide a platform for the Chinese users that would eliminate the slow and unavailable service of the search engine that the users faced. References Hofstede, G. H. (2002). Exploring Culture: Exercises, Stories and Synthetic Cultures. Netherlands: Intercultural Press. Human Rights Watch. (2010). China. Google decision shows government intransigence. Retrieved from: http:llwww.lrrw.orglen/news/2010/03/22/china-google-wirhdrawal-shows-government-intransigence. Novinger, T. (2013). Intercultural Communication: A Practical Guide. USA: University of Texas Press. Piepenburg, K. (2011). Critical analysis of Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions. UK: GRIN Verlag. Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction. Great Britain: Edinburgh University Press. Sorrells, K. (2012). Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice. USA: SAGE. Varner, I., & Beamer, L. (2011). Intercultural communication in the global workplace. New York: McGraw-Hill. Read More