Cross-Cultural Issues Stephen Shawler Face - Case Study Example

Cross-cultural Management Issues Name Institution Course Date Cross-cultural Management Issues Introduction Culture is defined as the assimilated knowledge that is used to interpret and evaluate experiences and develop social behaviour (Pant 2009,p. 7). Culture is a learned phenomenon that assists people in their struggles to interact with each other in a community or society. When incorporated in culture where either the beliefs or values are deferring, a good number of people face difficulties adjusting. The existence of culture characterizes people and distinguishes a group of people from another. It integrates how a group of people live and behave towards each other. When individuals join a business organisation, all their values and beliefs tag along (Pant 2009, p.8). Their individual cultures cannot help the success of the organisation and thereby are required to learn the existing culture of the organisation and adapt accordingly. This essay will highlight the cross-cultural issues Stephen Shawler face in the provided case study and will discuss the possible options Stephen Shawler could follow to address the issues. Stephen Shawler was hired as co-CEO of Essilor Korea as he had a lot of experience, having worked in Samyung Trading for more than 20 years (Pant 2009, p. 8). After months of staying in Korea, Stephen built good relations with professional individuals. When Stephen was working with Samyung trading, the company operated exclusively in the non-branded business subdivision that involved sales people relying heavily on price. However, Essilor Korea operation was totally different. Their products such as flagship Varilux was branded and expensive commodity that required a more pronounced sale approach that would highlight its quality and characteristic. This existing difference proved that although Flagship Varilux lenses have been available in Korea for a long period of time, brand awareness was pretty low making the sales negotiable. Stephen Shawler was faced with difficulties of changing strategic approach among the Samyung employees from non-branded to branded commodities. With this fundamental focus in place, Shawler took time to first understand the Korean market and enhance his credibility in the venture. He worked alongside 8 individuals who were responsible for sales and marketing (Cullen and Parboteeah 2008). Stephen plan was largely based on creating vision and bringing his team members together to discuss the day-to-day operational issues. However, only one member of his team had an understanding of English and could communicate clearly in English. This individual, Min Bahn was responsible for logistics and marketing. He worked with Samyung Trading for a number of years and was believed to be a key player in Essilor Korea. Stephen relied on him for assistance in everyday activities. He was required to go for meetings with Shawler for translating purposes. Every activity he undertook with Shawler, Min Bahn had to report to the president thereby creating a potential for conflict. During the translations, Stephen had to be careful with whatever he was saying because he did not trust Min Bahn wholly. With Stephen Shawler relying on Min Bahn for everything, he was already overworked (Cullen and Parboteeah 2008). Shawler decided to create a vacancy for a position of a fulltime English-speaking administrator but the president did not agree with it. Shawler decided to invite President S.J. Lee in every meeting he attended. However this was not reciprocated as he was not invited to any management meetings attended by S.J. Lee since the meetings took place in Korean. Overtime, Shawler was concerned that President S.J. Lee undermined his administration authority by giving conflicting instructions to Shawler marketing team. This created conflict between President S.J. Lee and Shawler over a number of months. In addition, apart from the challenges Shawler faced with President C.T. Lee, creation of an effective and goal-oriented team proved to be very hard. During the meetings held constantly, they used Su Ju as a translator who most of the time complicated the process. Team members had to listen without sharing ideas and thoughts. After months of team challenges, Stephen Shawler decided to consult with Mi Bahn about the situations with his team hoping to get help and create a strong bond with him. However, Min Bahn’s feedback was not what Shawler expected, ‘this is the Korean way. We don’t want a dialogue. We just want you to tell us what to do and we will do it’ (Pant 2009 p.7). This was different from what Stephen wanted in a team. He believed that in order for a team to achieve objectives and goals of the company, the team members should be engaging and voice opinions and ideas. Another challenge that Stephen Shawler faced in terms of team framework was the fact that the entire members in his team did not share his vision of making Essilor Korea the leading trademarked lens company in Korea. Whenever Shawler talked about overriding the market leader company, Hoya, all the members shook their head as a way of saying that they were not sure that this could happen. Even S.J. Lee was sceptical about Shawler goals and ambitions. Shawler was very much convinced that he was hired to significantly transform and expand the business. In addition, he believed that in creating an effective management team, he would be able to bring the organisation and the president to situation where they would share his vision of making Essilor Korea number one lenses company. To achieve his vision for the company, Shawler rationalised his management team structure and regrouped the role of his team. In the course of doing this, he identified three individuals who spoke in English and reinstated them to focus on Customer Service, Training and Development and Logistics. However, C.T. Lee often imposed budget constraint that proved to be impossible for Shawler to recruit individuals with skills needed. Because of this, Shawler was not able to hire individuals with skill set he wanted; he only recruited people who were qualified but not to the level that he thought was ideal (Cullen and Parboteeah 2008). Shawler hired English-speaking Korean for the positions of Customer Service and Administrator (Luthans 2005). However, every individual hired by him did not last for long before quitting as they complained nobody liked or trusted them in the company. Employees thought they were spies hired to acquire confidential information. The English-speaking employees hired were perceived as ‘Shawler’s people’ and were excluded by the old guard. According to Shawler, the staffing problems were stumbling block for the goals he had in mind to be achieved. Mistrust of Shawler and his administration criteria by old guard is an example of cross-cultural management issue that he faced. After the many challenges Shawler faced in terms of staffing and conflict between him and the president, he decided to hire J.G. Chung, an old colleagues from Johnson and Johnson. The manufacturing problems that existed started running smoothly. Although things were now improving, S.Y. Lee requested the regional CFO to replace Shawler claiming that he was not operating the company with partnership spirit in mind. In addition, he claimed that Shawler favoured westernized employees he hired. Although Essilor was happy with the work done by Shawler, they were more concerned about the conflicts that had unfolded between staff members. Cultural differences brought about the challenges that Shawler faced in terms of parochialism. The operational structure of any organisation is designed in an environment where social system is completely different from system in which the organisation is based (Brinkerhoff 2011). The existing social system impacts the behaviour and response of the party involved. For instance, the employees posted to different countries tend to show a number of behaviours that are line with their citizens and country. They also tend not to recognize the existing difference between their cultures and cultures from the other countries. Even if they do realize, they may perceive that the effects of the differences existing between their culture and other cultures is insignificant. And as a result, they end up concluding that their culture and the cultures from the other countries are more similar than reality (Brinkerhoff 2011).. Shawler faced this predicament in his decisions and operational styles. In addition, individualism may be another issue that Shawler had to face in working at Essilor Korea. Cultures can either be collectivist or individualist. Individualist culture encourages personal achievement at the expense of company’s goals which results to strong sense of competition (Callero 2013). On the other hand, collectivist cultures emphasize on achievement of family and company’s goals at the expense of personal or individual goals and needs. Collectivist and individualist contribute to cross-cultural issues. Korea culture is collectivist while the United States culture is individualist. In Korea, direct confrontation in business is avoided and expressions and excuses may be used to describe disagreement instead of directly saying no. In addition, the collectivistic in Korea have an impact on the period required for a task to be completed. Korea believes in taking time before accomplishing an important business goal. Shawler was so mush inclined to achieveing his desired goals without considering his team. Also, he wanted to make Essilor Korea the leading lenses company in Korea at high pace but in constrast, his team imitating the culture of being collectivist, required a substantial period of time before accomplishing such goals. Another challenge in terms of cultural differences Shawler faced was power distance. Power distance is a cross-cultural communication issue and it refers to the distribution of power in a way that the less powerful party agrees to the unequal power distribution. Some cultures tend to agree to higher degree of unequal distribution of power than others. In a greater power distance nation or culture, the relationship existing between the leader and the subordinates is highly dependent factor. In a low power distance culture, the relationship existing between the leader and subordinates is an interdependent factor. Asian countries such as Korea are high power distance countries. People in such countries believe in the fact that power is a fact of life. Korean culture teaches its members that people are not equal and that every individual occupies a particular place in hierarchy of life. Therefore, in a business setting, an employee expects leaders to resolve disputes, give orders and make decisions all by themselves. Subordinates follow what the leaders say rather than contribute or challenge him or her. On the other hand, in countries at low power distance spectrum, leaders are expected to consult with the subordinates before making any decisions. Subordinates openly state their own opinions and ideas if they are not satisfied with the leaders’ point of view. Before Shawler moved to Korea, he worked within culture that required organisational decisions to be made by both the leader and subordinates. However, in Korea, subordinates were used to following whatever the leader suggested. In addition, it was evident that uncertainity avoidance was one of the cultural issues Shawler faced (Beugre 2007). Uncertainty avoidance is all about culture’s tolerance for uncertain and ambiguity situations. It illustrates to what extend a particular culture tune its members to either be confortable or uncomfortable in particular situations different from usual. Uncertainty avoidance cultures tend to reduce the occurrence of these situations by imposing laws and rules, security measures and absolute truth. Some cultures are more comfortable than others in terms of uncertainty and ambiguity. Low uncertainty avoidance index indicates that individuals from a given culture are more comfortable with uncertainty, are more likely to take risks and are independent of rules. On the other hand, high index scores means that people in a given culture are less likely to take risks, follow structured rules and are uncomfortable with ambiguity. Korea has high uncertainty avoidance score. Shawler was ready to take business risk in order to achieve business goals but his team memebrs were not on the same page. They followed the company’s rules and regulations and were unconfortable with situations that required them to take risks. There also existed in-group and out-group cultural issues (Matsumoto 2001). In-group is described as a social group where an individual psychologically consider himself as a member whereas, out-group is described as a social group where person psychological does not identify himself as a member. Categorization in terms of in-group and out-group tend to increase a person’s perception that certain group of people are identical to one another. Members of out-group most of the time are considered homogenous. Shawler psychologically isolated himself from the rest of the group since he felt no sense of belonging. He felt that the old guard of Ellisor Korea were against his decisions and contributions since he was an outsider. This was one of the reasons why conflict occured between him and the president. Korean culture can be viewed as having deep values and beliefs in lasting business relationships but is resilient to establishing this relationship with the outsiders (Ferraro 2010). The Korean people have the tendency of being hard to know since they have scares and short leisure time, limited entertainment facilities and separation of individual lives. The standoffishness of the Korean individuals in Ellisor Korea was troubling to Stephen Shawler. He saw this as a limitation to genial workplace relation. Korean people are more in to listening than speaking and they love listening and doing (Sanabria and Seal 2013). This was different from what Shawler wanted; he wanted a team of individuals who would listen but at the same time express their ideas and opinions to effective operation. According to scholar by the name Hofstede, culture is a mental entity that enables a group of individuals to understand the world (Hofstede and Minkov 2010). Therefore it is futile to perceive culture as what can be seen on the surface. For this reason, Hofstede notes that culture is a way of determining the interest, beliefs and values of people. Culture structure is what people experience and causes them to takes things in different ways. Shared meaning can make people sharing a common culture to be open to changes if more advanced solutions to challenges are desired. According to him, managers from foreign countries should integrate the balance between dependability and adaptation of local culture for organisation to succeed (Hofstede 2000). Shawler failed to do this. He did not consider the culture of the Korean people in his decisions and operational style. On the other hand, according to Cho and Yoon, Korea is collectivist country and corporate culture of Korea is considered more collectivist than most of the countries in the world. Cho and Yoon argue that competition existing between in-group and out-group is retained generating dynamic characteristics of Korean corporate culture (Cho and Yoon 2001). The factors of extensive collectivism include cultural legacy, social climate and political leadership (Pollock and Reken 2009). These three factors are foundation for corporate culture. The three dimensions mentioned intensify the collectivism in Korea. In addition to this Korean people have developed a situation where employees are considered family. Addition of a new member to the family may create discomfort and mistrust especially if the member is from a different culture. It was very hard for the Ellisor and Korea family to accept a new family member in the organisations. Although Shawler knew the challenges he would be faced with in Korea, the strategy he used was absolute failure. Determining the best strategy of operation should have been the Shawler top priority since he was dealing with totally different market and people. He entered the market with his mind stuck on just acquiring the right individuals so that he could get the job done as this approach worked best in his previous experience. In his mind, Shawler was more into developing the management team and ended up forgetting the importance of team transformation and change as the team were only familiar with totally different strategy. As seen in this case, the strategy employed by Shawler was more like a fast track operational process. Shawler mostly wanted to get the result he wanted through his team instead of taking the process one step at a time. In addition to this, in the case, Shawler failed to understand the challenges that may result from cross-cultural management. This issue is equality important as sales, profits and growth of business especially when the leader comes from a totally different cultural background from the rest of the staff (Pollock and Reken 2009). In the case study, cultural differences were the reason why the team members were resilience to change. Being from different cultural background, the team members did not trust Shawler believing that he was not transparent (Pollock and Reken 2009). The company being a joint venture, Ellisor Korea supported power sharing representatives from Samyung and Ellisor. Due to lack of cooperation and interdependence between S.J. Lee and Shawler, poor planning resulted that consequently led to poor management. President S.J. Lee was not accommodating to Shawler’s decisions regarding the company. Also, after a series of attempts to patch things up with S.J. Lee, Shawler was reluctant and ignored the conflicts that resulted between them. Moreover, Shawler was very rigid when it came to his emphasis on management change. He incorporated this change a bit aggressive and did not give the team members a chance to mention what they wanted. To avoid these issues, less aggressive approach to managing the team was required (Cavusgil, Gary and John 2007). One way of tackling with cross-cultural issues is to acquire cross-cultural proficiency which helps an individual connect with foreign counterparts (Cavusgil, Gary and John 2007). It is important for managers to have a deep knowledge of culture in the foreign country. Managers have the capacity to achieve profound cross-cultural interactions by ensuring that they are inquisitive and not jumping into conclusion about counterpart’s behaviours. Effective and efficient managers take time to acquire important facts and knowledge in order to avoid offensive behaviour when incorporating into a new culture (Luthans 2005). Although Shawler had accustomed well to the Asian culture, he lacked enough knowledge that would have helped him interact well with the foreign employees without crossing lines and creating mistrust and conflicts. Shawler solution to avoiding cross-cultural issues would be acquiring base knowledge about Korean lifestyle, attitudes and its political and economic background (Luthans 2005). Such knowledge would have helped him to understand the counterpart’s mind-set and objectives. Decisions and activities would have been easier to interpret. His sincere interest would have created trust and respect, creating an opportunity for productive relationship. Another way of avoiding the cross-cultural issues is to avoid cultural bias (Mandal and Awasthi 2014). One problem that Shawler had was ethnocentric assumptions that foreign employees thought and behaved the same way as his folks back home. These assumptions led to poor planning and execution strategies. Communication between him and his team members was distorted. Shawler perceived the team members’ behaviour to be odd and improper. Shawler wanted a team that would share his vision of making the company number one brand in Korea, but this never happened. He also wanted team that would communicate and express their thoughts and opinions but the team was all about listening and executing. This situation interfered with his ability to interact effectively with them which led to communication breakdown. Shawler’s culture dictated how he reacted to the new values and beliefs. He viewed his own culture as the norm- self-reference criterion (Mandal and Awasthi 2014). Understanding this criterion is the first step to avoiding cross-cultural issues. Shawler would have analysed the existing awkward situations and conflicts that occurred and develop empathy for others point of view. Another way to avoiding issues of cross-cultural management was to work effectively with foreign employees which required an investment (Cullen and Parboteeah 2008). Shawler needed four fundamental personality traits to deal with these issues: tolerance for ambiguity where he had to tolerate uncertainty and actions of others; perceptiveness, where he had to observe and value subtle information and behaviour of the counterparts; valuing personal understanding, that involved recognising the importance of building interpersonal relationship with the team members which was important compared to achieving one-time goal; flexibility and adaptability; which required him to be creative in generating solutions and be open minded about situations arising in the company (Mandal and Awasthi 2014). Conclusion In conclusion, ability to attract and motivate individuals from different cultural background can lead to productivity and competitive advantage. Shawler would have succeeded in the diverse cultural background by gaining creativity, flexible adaptation to change and an effective way of solving conflicts. To avoid potential challenges, Shawler should have been culturally sensitive, find a way of motivating the employees and adapt to flexible leadership style. Reference list Beugré. (2007). A cultural perspective of organizational justice. Charlotte, N.C: Information Age Pub. Brinkerhoff, D 2011, Essentials of sociology, Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, Belmont, CA. Cavusgil , S.T., Gary, K & John, R 2007, Management & the new realities, Student Value Edition (3rd Edition, Cengage, London. Cho, Y. H & Yoon, J 2001, The origin and function of dynamic collectivism: an analysis of Korean corporate culture, Asia Pacific Business Review, vol. 7, no. 4, p. 70-88. Cullen, J & Parboteeah, K 2008, Multinational management: a strategic approach, South Western Publisher, USA. 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