Lunes, 24 de septiembre de 2007
Cross cultural management
Archivado en: Cross Cultural Management
Para el curso de Management Intercultural, en la Jones International University, entrevisté a una compañera acerca de una situación intercultural que hubiese tenido y cómo la encaró, esto fue lo que me contestó, y un pequeño análisis que aventuré.
A cross-cultural situation
I have interviewed to Leilani Adviento a colleague at Jones International University and I asked her the following questions:
1. In which situation within different cultures do you have involved?
2. What aspect of the situation or problem was more uncomfortable for you?
3. How did you solve the situation or problem?
4. Did you finally get satisfied with the solution?
Leilani answered:
I order a finished good item from one of our international branches, located in Milan, Italy. While it is still Parker Hannifin, the Milan office operates under different divisional rules and is dominated –as to be expected– by the local culture.
The goods were always consolidated for shipping on Europe’s Thursday, which is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. It would be frustrating when I would get a confirmed ex-factory date that did not land on a Thursday. I would get an ex-factory date that read Tuesday and in some instances, the product had shipped the previous Thursday, which for the most part was acceptable, but very inconsistent from a planning perspective. I would clear the goods from customs earlier than anticipated, and customer service would be quite upset that they could not promise the product earlier; for which I would have to admit every time, “I didn’t know it was shipping early”. And let me tell you, it does not speak to sharp planning, which lends a reflection of being careless with money, an image I never wish to convey.
I started coming in earlier and calling Italy. Most of my communication had been via email. After roaming through Europe, budget style, a couple of years ago, I took one year of Italian at the local junior college. I decided to try and charm them with my rusty Italian, at least to show some solidarity, that I was there to help them make bigger profits, and I gushed on and on about how much I appreciated their service.
Overall yes, after emphasizing how important they were to me. To be quite honest I do not know whether or not I offended anyone in Milan. I have to assume no, as they were answering my emails promptly and giving me accurate Thursday ex-factory dates. Perhaps they just wanted me to stop calling with my horrible broken Italian. I was relying on the hearsay I’ve heard about how the hotter the country (temperature wise) the more loving and touchy feely a person is. So, being an Asian from one of the hotter nations, I applied my values in a crapshoot. It seemed to work, but who knows?
Cross Cultural Analysis
When Lani used phone calls and spoke Italian to try to make a tight relationship, she probably gave them a sense of security. She avoided the large power distance talking with them and making some decisions to correct the situation.
This also helped her to give Italians more certainty of the work and it increased the level of communication between both countries offices. One of the reasons she finally solved the problem was because the fact that Italy is a country more relationship oriented (1).
If we check some facts about Italian culture, we can find that Italy is individualistic, and similar to Mexico, shows a strong uncertainty avoidance (2). About this fact, I would like to adventure a hypothesis:
in México, people usually failed fulfilling deadlines, so this is very dangerous in international trading. A cautious manager would send earlier the products in order to avoid delays. It could explain why Italians sent products earlier.
According to André Laurent research referred by Adler about level of agreement with the next statement: “In order to have efficient work relationships, it is often necessary to bypass the hierarchical line” 56% of Italian managers disagreed (3). This data can explain and eventual fear on operative level to make decisions about sending the product more accurately.
Recommendations to increase the chances of the situation being successful
This analysis is limited because an interview is just an approach. If we were in an actual situation of consulting, we certainly need to inquiry closer both interlocutors. This way the a posteriori analysis of the situation, could serve to face similar future situations.
Another useful task would be knowing more about Italian culture, in some way, Lani use her own empirical knowledge about Italians that she had acquired through experience in her roaming. But an approach to know about how do they see nature of people, person’s relationship, external environment and other people relationship, their primary mode of activity, space relationship –and very especially– time relationship, could be very useful as well.
References
(1) Adler, Nancy. International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior. Cincinnati, Ohio. South-western. 2002. Page 49.
(2) Idem. Page 58.
(3) Idem. Page 50.
