Perspective on Businesses and Cross-Cultural Mistakes - Essay Example

These cross cultural dissimilarities follow on through to a higher level area such as corporate culture, marketing, management techniques, Public Relations and Human Resources (Abel Adekola, 2007). There have existed some extremely expensive mistakes done by businesses organizations in the past unnoticeably. These mistakes occur due to ignorance and lack of proper knowledge of the targeted customer / employee’s cultures, moral codes, language, and other basic elements used to aid trade (Lalita A, 1996).

There exist International business cross cultural solutions demands that get increasingly viewed as the valid and necessary system in enhancing interaction and communication in and between organizations, between organizations and customers and coworkers or associates (Lalita A, 1996). In order to overcome possible pitfalls, specialist attention stays required in the system of cross cultural consultants. As one would go for a medic for a medicinal diagnosis or an auditor to examine accounts, cross cultural consultants give the expertise, familiarity and skills to diagnose problems and offer solutions to this inter or intrapersonal cultural differences (Lalita A, 1996). . Equipped with experience, acquaintance and above all fairness, cross cultural consultants creates a bridge of understanding and opens streaks of communication (Lalita A., 1996). Take for instance, a company by name Federal Expenses (FEDEX) wisely chose to expand abroad when it discovered the local market got saturated.

However, the "hub and spoke" or centralized delivery system that remained so successful domestically remained inappropriate for overseas distribution. Furthermore, they failed to deliberate cultural differences: Spanish workers preferred late office hours, while in Russia, the workers chose truck cleaning soap home because of consumer shortages (Lalita A, 1996). The company eventually shut down more than 100 European operations following $1.2 billion losses. In another instance, a golf ball manufacturing corporation packaged the golf balls in packets of four for convenient buying in Japan.

Tactlessly, the pronunciation of the word "four" sounds alike the word "death" in Japanese and things packaged in fours is unpopular (Lalita A., 1996). However, when such misunderstanding occurs, there are things that can be done to recover from the blunder (though very difficult) or to make sure that the blunder will never arise again. A proper approach can be laid out by the affected organization putting in place cultural, language or any other cross cultural misunderstanding. Education on employees may be carried out if the misunderstanding occurs within an organization (Lalita A, 1996).

Miscommunication between people occurs all the time, particularly when one party use a second language. Organizations often end up hearing miss - communicated information in the form of a joke: especially if they cause the