organizing and managing across culture

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ORGANIZING AND MANAGINGACROSS CULTURE

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INTRODUCTION:This case study describes the problems related with the inter-cultural

communication in Nordic subsidiary in Japan. The cultural differences arebetween the Nordic based HRM programs and local Japanese culture andvalues. The Japanese people were facing the issue of Nordic basedmanagement system which is totally a new concept for them. Thus Nordicmanagement had a deep thinking upon this issue because it was leading tothe strike which was ultimately hampering the working of a company. Themodification in these HRM program in accordance to the Japanese culture isquite necessary.

This study examines the causes and consequences of linguistic andcultural barriers to inter-cultural communication in Nordic subsidiaries inJapan. Interviews were conducted with 30 Nordic (Finland, Denmark, Norwayand Sweden) expatriates and 29 Japanese employees show that the mainlinguistic barriers to intercultural communication were lack of a sharedlanguage and low motivation to improve foreign-language proficiency. Themain cultural barriers were collectivism, and status and power differences.Combined, the consequences of these barriers were extensive reliance onlanguage intermediaries, information filtering, in-group/out-groupcategorization, receiver-centered communication and in-congruentsupervisor-subordinate expectations. The interviews suggest that linguisticand cultural barriers have a differentiated impact on interculturalcommunication. Thus, it can be said that inter-cultural communications may



create confusions among the employees and this may hamper theperformance of employees.

(1) What are the main language and cultural barriers to interculturalcommunication in foreign subsidiaries?Hofstede Model

Hofstede introduced the theory which was mainly emphasized on thefact that how values within the organization are affected by the culture.Moreover, according to the viewpoint of Hofstede, culture can be defined asthe collective programming of mind in which differentiation are done withone person from another.

In this case, Nordic opened a subsidiary in the Japan and in thatJapanese people were appointed along with the Nordic expatriate and there

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they are faced with the issues of cultural differences. There was a hugedifference in the culture of two regions. The main actor of this story are theemployees and management of Nordic expatriate and Japanese employees.Moreover, management faces a biggest issue in handling this difference.However, due to this reason Hofstede have propounded this theory. In histheory, he described various dimensions through which cultural variationscan be analyzed. The dimensions are power status, Individualism v/scollectivism, masculinity v/s femininity, long term v/s short term orientation,indulgence v/s restraints and Uncertainty avoidance. In this current scenario,Nordic people have the culture of individualism while in Japanese culture themore preference is given to collectivism thus, people react in an individualistmanner which become tough for the company to make them work in a team.Further, the power distance is more in Japan because people are consciousabout the hierarchical position in an organization. This is altogether differentquality in Nordic people as they are more focused towards equal rights andbeing independent. Thus they, react in a negative manner and due to whichconflict arises. Moreover, there is male dominance in Japanese culturewhereas there is female dominance in Nordic culture. This create a greaterconflicting situation in a company between male employees of Japan andfemale employees of Nordic expatriates. Further, Japanese are dedicatedtowards the avoidance of uncertainty and on the contrary, Nordic expatriatesare less keen towards uncertainty avoidance. On a similar aspect, Hofstedealso examined that there is a culture of long term orientation and Japanese



culture view their life as a very short moment in a long history of humankind.Thus, it can be said that Japanese culture and Nordic culture have totallydifferent culture and this leads to the development of conflicts.

Hofstede model helped a lot in identifying the cultural differences inJapanese organization with that of Nordic society. But this model havesome limitations due to which clear concept cannot be viewed and due towhich management could not recognize the exact situation andmanagement of cultural difference cannot be done in a proper manner. Thelimitation of Hofstede model are in term of methodological weaknessbecause use of this model is doubtful as it lays emphasis of national culture.The study was done on specific sample which cannot be representative ofoverall population of nation. However, in the model it was considered thatpopulation is homogeneous which is not correct in reality. Furthermore,Hofstede model states that all country has their unique culture whereas it is



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not real in actual scenario because of geographical context. Also, the modeldo not reflect the actual behavior of individual.

Trompenaars ModelCultural differences can also be demonstrated with the help of

Trompenaars that also serve as the achievement vs ascription. Hereachievement culture depicts that how people are performing their function.Here main focus is laid on status whereas ascription culture is also statusbased which reflect that what and who a person is. In this regard Nordicculture is known as achievement where workforce are known for theircompetence. Furthermore, main emphasis is laid on colleagues so that theirachievement can be counted effectively. On the other hand, in Japaneseculture people are valued just because of maturity and their age. Japanesetend to possess ascription culture where they remain unhappy because oftheir job profile. However, job profile matters a lot as employees spend theirmuch of time at workplace. In addition to this Japanese follow the foreignHRM strategy which is different from values and of Japanese.

Here, people working in Japanese culture do not like to adjust in newsituation but still they are asked to follow the Nordic based HRM program.Similarly internal orientation is high for Japanese culture where there is lowexternal control. It is because people do not accept the sudden changes atworkplace and management cannot force them to follow the new practices.At this juncture, management try to change their strategies in accordance



with Japanese values only instead of adjusting as per Nordic based HRMprograms. Furthermore, individualism vs communitarianism whereincommunitaranistic culture like Japan like to work in group. They are nothappy with working condition because of unfavourable working condition.

Here, management also do not feel themselves liable for the workingconditions. In the same way Japanese want management to take care of theirfamily's health and safety. Furthermore, by focusing on issues of Japanesecorporation introduced medical aid and saving scheme. On the other hand,individualism concept is adopted by Nordic culture. Likewise, Neutral conceptis adopted in Nordic culture whereas Japanese people have high emotionalculture Apart from this, Nordic culture is moderate specific and diffuseculture is high in Japan. Not only this, but Nordic culture follow sequentialculture where Japanese tend to focus on synchronic aspect. The limitationsof Trompennars can be considered by understanding that model takes intoaccount behaviour aspect of people rather than value. It lays more emphasison what people mind is holding and what is in their sight. Thus, it may beunrealistic at some point of time.

Enthocentric and PolycentricDifferent marketing strategies such as Enthocentric, polycentric are

also used to management to business in Japaneseculture. Here, the first oneis ethnocentric under which staffing is done by taking competent personnelfrom home country. This process is done just to fill the important position of



corporate by which manpower can show interest of the home office so as toalign workforce of foreign offices and home headquarter. It facilitates toreduce the additional cost and remove cultural barriers that exist amonggroup of people. In addition to this, Poly-centric approach is that corporationhire host country nationals for some of the important positions. However, thismodel is useful only in develop countries so that employees with higheducation and appropriate training can be located. It aids to generateposition attitude among employees as local workforce generally has morecapability to handle buyers. On the other hand, polycentric approach maynot be profitable for broader aspect of corporation. Therefore, Nordic basedculture was accepted by Japanese with procedures and planning so as tomakes employees happy and comfortable with work environment.

When the whole scenario was compared than it was found that therewere many issues created due to the inter-cultural communication barrier. Ifthere is communication gap and than the employees will not be able to workcohesively in a group or team. It is because in Japan there is a culture ofcollectivism and those in Nordic, individualism culture is being followed. Thus,employees hired from Japan would prefer to work in a team but themanagers from Nordic will not entertain this and ultimately it will lead to thesegregation of employees. Moreover, the cultural differences will also notleads to the equal distribution of rights to all the employees whereas theJapanese employees will ask for the hierarchical position in the organizationbecause of high experience. On the contrary, Nordic employees will not



entertain this part and it will lead to the release of conflicts among the levelof management. This will also result in the deterioration of the performanceof employees because effectiveness cannot be created during conflicts.Further, this will limit the growth of company as the profitability will getlower down due to the ineffective performance by the employees. All theseconflicts have been aroused due to the miscommunication among theemployees and management. Further, there will be stagnant growth ofemployees because employees would not be able to adopt the new culture ina less span of time. All these aspect have occurred due to the inter-culturalcommunications. If these barriers are removed than only Nordic subsidiarycan survive in the markets of Japan. Furthermore, these issues will not allowthe firm to create a competitive edge in the dynamic market becauseemployees of the firm will not become effective and sue to which satisfactoryproduct cannot be made. Thus, customers cannot be made satisfied if thereis organizational conflicts based on the languages and linguistic culture.

Further, it has been explained that there are several barriers to inter-cultural communication such as languages and their meaning are different inNordic and Japanese culture. Further, the beliefs and values in Nordic differsfrom that of Japan and this create a major barrier for the the Nordicsubsidiary to get establish in Japan culture in an effective manner. Thus,other kind of barriers such as misinterpretation of languages create barriersfor the inter-cultural communication.



(2) What are the consequences of language and cultural barriers inforeign subsidiaries?

Intense research have been made on this matter and for that purpose,exploratory research have been conducted because the type of research isqualitative in nature. Further, the research was aimed towards the Nordiccountries that is Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway because thesecountries have similar culture and its comparison has been made with theJapan which has altogether different culture. For this purpose, three zonetheory have been applied in which zone one had the people who have basiclanguage skills, in zone two people has intermediate language skills andlastly in zone three people had fluent language skills. At the time ofperforming the job, expatriate were able to interact directly with theemployees or intermediaries were involved while interacting with people.Employees who were working in zone one were able to communicate only asimple messages with their respective team members. Major barrier in thiscategory was that inter-cultural communication in absence of any kind ofshared language. This made the entire process very frustrating andcomplicated.

On the contrary, zone two expatriate were able to communicate withlocal people without the help of intermediaries. Most of the expatriate wereable to interact with the localites in Japanese language. Lastly, the zonethree expatriate used a proper strategy during inter-cultural communication.The strategy was that at the time of interaction, they used the mixture of



English and Japanese language. Further, this strategy separated theseemployees from local people and other expatriate who were having low levelof Japanese proficiency. Zone three expatriate have different kind of benefit.Moreover, the cost of compensation was also low because only fewemployees were required to provide training for the English Proficiency.

After analyzing the whole scenario, it was found that the main issuewas related inter-cultural communication barrier. Moreover, the culturalvalues of the employees of Nordic were undermining. It has also been foundthat there are several communication barriers which consists of languagebarriers, cultural differences and presentation styles. The most commonissue is related to language is that all people who belong to different countryand region tend to speak other type of language. It is the reason thatemployees cannot accomplish their objectives on right time. However,English as common language is needed to be set in order to reduce the



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impact of such kind of barriers. In this regard, several practices are used bycorporation expanding at global level so as to integrate workforce. On theother hand, every culture has its own business ethics, accepted behavior,decorum and set of values. In fact, facial expressions and gestures are alsodifferent for all religion owing to this people face communication barriers. Forexample, to shake hand it quite common in Nordic culture but the same maynot be accepted in every culture. However, it might consider wrong in somesituations. Apart from this, presentation style is also the fact which createscommunication barriers among respondents. Here, separate group orcountry has different way of presentation and asking questions. For example,American like to have brisk pace whereas Latin American like speech withhigh emotional appeal. In this way, different communication barriers areassociated with cross culture.

Furthermore, it has also been identified that cultural values andlanguage have direct impact on intercultural communication in multinationalorganization. This is because Japanese tends to focus on flexible culturewhereas Nordic culture wants to strong organizational culture. However,Nordic culture believes that management must have rules and regulationwith regards to culture by which employees do not face problems when theycome across global. For this purpose, cross culture is maintained effectivelyto enhance the level of satisfaction among employees and motivate them towork with integrity. However, cultural differences are invited in everyorganization where conflict easily takes place. The reason behind the same is



that employees do not find favorable working condition and work satisfaction.Owing to this, companies suffer from issues like low productivity, highemployee turnover and customer dissatisfaction. Thus, it is very importantfor corporation to assess the barriers related to values and languages ofemployees and accordingly diversity is needed to be maintained. This in turnissues faced by firm can be minimized to a great extent.

This barrier has a intense negative impact on the organization'sworking because the employees of the organization will not understand theexact meaning of the languages and thus management style will also be notfitted in the Japanese culture. This will be highly difficult for the Nordicexpatriate to manage the Japanese people in an organization. Moreover,effective performance cannot be obtained from the local Japanese people.This will impact the profitability of the company and competitive edge couldnot be created in a Japanese region as well.

The collected information depicts that corporation expanding at globallevel should put efforts to reduce barriers related to communication. At thisjuncture, language translator could be used at the initial stage. This aids tosupport Japanese even after adopting Nordic culture. English as commonlanguage needs to be adopted at workplace which in turn employees canwork with integrity. Further, regular meeting and effective mode ofcommunication like telephone and mail should be used on the regular basis.It will support employees to adjust with situation and cope up with changingscenario effectively. In addition to this, awareness needs to be developed



among employees and understanding must be developed with regards tocultural diversity. In short, emphasis is laid effective communication so as toenhance the level of motivation and satisfaction among the existingworkforce.

Moreover, the company can encourage the strategy being adopted bythe zone three expatriate so that they does not face the issue of beingneglected and also the communication issue. Moreover, the company has toadopt the culture of Japan in order to make the employees feel satisfied andto retain them in the organization. This will help in creating competitive edgein the context of effective and efficient employees. If the employees arehighly effective and they are satisfied at the same time, than they can makethe customer satisfied and also the business can be grown or developed.Zone one people should be trained and also the English language should be



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made the most widely used language in the organization so thatcommunication barriers can be removed. This will help the company to earnmaximum profits in the market of Japan and also competitive edge can becreated in the industry.

The entire study being carried out has supported in knowing thatcultural difference has direct influence on the communication. Further, it iswell known fact that culture and religion of individual plays a significant roleespecially at the time when any individual interacts with other. Moreover, itacts as a hurdle as sometime individual may not able to speak the languagewhich is understandable by all. This directly leads to rise in situation such ascommunication barrier where individual may not prefer to interact with eachother. Apart from this, companies which are operating at global level hireindividuals who are from different background and areas. Due to this reason,their way of interacting and other things are considered. In every businessenterprise, it is one of the main issues such as how to deal with multiculturalworkforce for the betterment of company as adoption of one single languageis beneficial but it is quite difficult to manage. On the basis of culture andreligion, individual may speak different language and working style may alsobe different. Therefore, in this cultural difference acts as a barrier due towhich individual may not prefer to be a crucial part of the communicationprocess. Apart from this, different theories along with models applied such asHofstede model is effective enough to understand about the culturaldimensions. This model relies on six dimensions which are associated with



national culture such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance index, longterm vs short term orientation, masculinity vs femininity etc. Thesedimensions support in knowing the overall behavior of people living in thesociety and how they interact with one another. In short, this model hasenhanced the efficiency of the entire study and has supported to accomplishthe aim of study. Through this, concept regarding cultural differences hasbeen better understood.


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