Cross culture management - Essay Example

One of the key differences between Dubai and other gulf countries is the fact that relies heavily on business revenue while other gulf countries rely on oil revenue for economic growth. In fact Dubai is a place where one can see business units in which people from different parts of the world working together. Huge number of Indians, Pakistanis, Americans, British, Africans, Sri Lankans, Filipinos etc are working in Dubai at present. Most of the renowned global brands such as PepsiCo, Coca Cola, Microsoft, IBM, etc have their regional offices in Dubai.

This paper analyses various characteristics of the cross cultural business management taking Dubai as an example. Cross Culture Management David A Victor has identified seven parameters which can affect international business communication and management. In his opinion, Language, Environment, Social organizations, Context, Authority, Nonverbal communication, Time concepts etc are different in different countries (Kelm, n. d, p. 2). The managers operating cross culturally should realize all these parameters well before proceeding with their management practices in overseas countries.

For example, suppose an American manager is trying to control the operations of Microsoft Company in Dubai. The manager should realize that both Dubai and America are entirely different countries politically and culturally. . Apart from all those things, the mannerisms gesture, facial expressions, body language etc like nonverbal communication channels of the people also could be different in these two entirely different countries. The concept of time could also be visualized differently in Dubai and America.

In other words Dubai people may do many things at a time whereas Americans may do only one thing at a time. All these things should be taken into the account by the American manager while he devises strategies for his Dubai mission. Konecna (2006) has pointed out that a company operate in different cultures should adopt plurality of cultures or, in other words, polycentric culture bears the feature of cultural compromise. The basis is creating a suitable space for individually different approach to creation of organization culture of each daughter company.

This can arise from cultural traditions of the local environment and is obliged to respect universal goals, approaches and methods only to a limited extend. The reason for choosing a polycentric culture can be for example the fact that the company operates in very different conditions (Konecna 2006, p.59) As mentioned earlier, management theories and principles in different countries could be different. For example, trade unions are so strong and it is difficult to implement autocratic or totalitarian management approaches in India.

At the same time, in Dubai like gulf countries, trade unions are prohibited and therefore the management can execute their missions in a totalitarian manner. An Indian or American working in Dubai may find extreme difficulties during the initial period of their career in Dubai because of the differences in work philosophies and management styles. Since