Multinational Corporation - Essay Example

QuestSource is a multinational corporation that recently expanded into China. Its human resource director is a woman named Karen Moore. Moore had a counterpart in China called Tsang Yao. Tsang had been responsible for hiring personnel. He had hired over 10 people that were his family members including a nephew for an important managerial position. Karen Moore made the mistake of judging the selection process of employees without learning about the cultural norms of China. Karen perceived that preferential treatment was been used in the hiring process. She failed to realize that Tsang Yao was making decisions based on the Chinese principle of Guanxi or network of relations. “In the Chinese business world, however, it is also understood as the network of relationships among various parties that cooperate together and support one another” (Netfirms).

The second mistake Karen made was that she did not talk to Tsang Yao and went over his head to file a complaint to the COO which made her look bad due to her ignorance of Chinese culture. If Kaken had talked to Yao first she could have mitigated the situation and gotten educated about the importance of Guanxi in China. The third mistake Karen made occurred upon being assigned to the Chinese office. At that moment she should have researched Chinese culture and spent several weeks reading information from journal articles, professional databases, books, and the internet regarding Chinese culture. An excellent database that provides great information about countries is the CultureGrams database. China is the most populated place in the world with a population of 1.33 billion inhabitants (CulureGrams, 2011)

The assumption that Karen made was that Tsang Yao was discriminating against other candidates by hiring his family members and friends based on preferential treatment. Karen wanted to protect the best interest of the company since in the United States that type of mass hiring of family and friends could lead to a discrimination lawsuit. She assumed that Tsang Yao was taking advantage of his position to enrich his family. Karen thought that better candidates were being passed over and were not considered by Tsang Yao. Karen’s primary problem was her lack of communication with her colleagues. There was no reason to get the COO involved. Karen should have confronted Yao first prior to going up the power ladder. She was astonished when Daniel Young reprimanded her instead of taking corrective action to ensure equal opportunity rights were protected.

I believe in the value of equal opportunity. In the United States, these laws ensure everyone is given the same opportunity. The problem for Karen was that she was not operating in the U.S. anymore. I agree with the position taken by Daniel Young because he has much more experience working in China than Karen. In Karen's eyes, Mr. Young was acting unethically since he even implied that the manager was chosen because he was the son of a judge that could help the company in the future. I understand why Karen was so confused after the meeting with Mr. Young. Mr. Young had become a corrupt businessman. His actions would not be tolerated in the U.S. business environment. QuestSource is an American company. The company could be run in two ways: it can adapt to the Chinese culture or it can impose its U.S corporate culture on the employees that work for the company. It seemed as if Karen thought that the old U.S. corporate culture was still eminent in China. She was wrong since the firm adapted to the Chinese way of doing business.