International Culture and Communication - Essay Example

Sub Department International culture and communication Multinational Corporations (MNCs) can be described as big businesses which because of their big size and adequate capital have opened subsidiaries in numerous countries other than their mother nation. A world famous example of an MNC is the Coca-Cola Company which started in America but is now found in almost every country in the world. MNCs in most cases have their head offices located in their mother countries, even though there are country and regional managers that manage their activities at country and regional levels respectively. On the other hand, organizational culture comprises of all the business customs of a given business, such as the MNCs in this case. Such customs comprise of the leadership styles, values, and techniques of operating a business, issues concerning human resources, goals, missions, objectives and much more. The big question is therefore whether the various techniques to employee voice have any impact on the MNCs’ organizational culture. Over the years, employee voice has been a topical issue that has courted heated debate and interest. Thus, there exists historical periods of worker-employer association when an extremely insignificant room for employees took part or voiced out their opinions in the manner that they are treated in relation to the way they hope the management would treat them (Wilkinson,2014).A lot has changed over time and still goes on to change with the employees becoming more and more empowered to voice out their views on extensive issues on human resources (Wilkinson,2014).They can do this either through direct engagement with the management ,a condition also known as direct voice or structured representation also known as indirect voice. This paper seeks to investigate the cultural implications of the MNCs of the various approaches to the voice of employees. Approaches to the employee voice have never at any given period been a stationary issue. They have not only been changing but also taking various aspects over the years. Multinational Corporations have been facing extremely tricky situations due to the distinctive nature of their businesses. They operate in extremely varied environments before any nation provides a distinctive business environment for a given multinational corporation. Achieving consistency in a way that workers of the same multinational corporation are treated has been one challenging issue (Marginson & Sisson, 2004). Normally, labour environments are exceptional because of various labour legislations in various hosting nations. Currently coca-cola happens to be among the largest MNCs in the world. The different operational environments have led to various techniques to employee voice and thus it becomes frequently essential for multinationals such as Coca-Cola to fine-tune their business cultures so as to be in alignment with diversity. The objectives of the business remains the same, even though other features of organizational culture like human resource guidelines, techniques of business operations as well as leadership styles vary from one nation to another. These 3 are the biggest contributors to the varying company-employee associations from one nation to another (Lawler & Hundley, 2008). Previously, most MNC management preferred direct voice as a method of engaging the workforce in issues regarding their wellbeing. They were rarely permitted to have any authoritative contribution to major decisions regarding policy issues. Thus voice technique happened to be extremely pleasant to the multinationals since workers could get influenced from their standpoints on issues which the managements of MNCs can ignore (Lawler & Hundley, 2008).The technique mostly never lead to a 50-50 position for all the employees and multinational management. Workers at that point lacked any other alternative at their disposal which would assist them in voicing out their opinions and plight most efficiently. Definitely, there were misgivings from the employees. Thus, employee voice is an issue that has been persistently growing as well as mutating. With changes in time, workers got a bit insistent with their requirements. There have been growing demands for extra inclusion and participation .Such confrontations swept across the world, proving to be a game-changer factor, not only for the MNC management but also for the MNC workers. When the employees realized they were on the direct voice technique’s receiving end which confirmed to be vulnerable to MNC’s top management manipulation, the workers opted to use an indirect technique (Marginson & Sisson, 2004). Consequently, the national as well as the global labour organisation asked for workers having voted in representatives to be directly holding negotiations with the multinational management on subjects related to their working environments as well as affairs. The indirect voice assumes the forms of work councils, trade unions, nominated representatives of employees to management councils etc. These are all unique and differ from one another, mostly because of the various environments offered by the various nations where MNCs carry out their business (Tchobanian, 1995).Up to now; the indirect employee voice technique has proved to be quite prolific for the employees of MNCs worldwide. Just like any other business, MNCs are aware that there is no business that can be operated in crisis situation which may result due to failure to listen as well as negotiate with workers. Hence, they have, thus, been forced to come up with very essential modifications to the organizational culture features affecting directly or to some degree even indirectly on the affairs of the employees (Marginson & Sisson, 2004). Currently, unlike before, workers can participate in industrial action whenever their demands have not been fulfilled. The managements of MNCs try hard to steer clear of such activities that might interrupt the effective working of the country and/or regional subsidiaries. The other employee voice technique which is a combination of indirect and direct voice and employs a mixture of features of the 2 key techniques. The 3rd technique is the most favoured by multinationals since it enables the management to assume direct voice as the first alternative. In instances in which direct voices are not able to settle at the same conclusion on a given issue, then the indirect voice becomes very essential (Collings, et al,2006).As of now, the MNCs have to constantly change their tact with majority of them having to turn to employee appraisal and appeasement as a method of developing an environment that is welcoming in which the management as well as the workers can best operate and deliver optimally on organizational objectives and goals (Kouzes & Posner,2012). The results of the pacification approach leads in the revival of the direct voice, and as the multinationals have discovered, is the least confrontational as well as the least chaotic method of employee engagement. It offers a podium where an employee can engage a multinational’s top management productively with extreme soberness (Whitfield et al, 1994).Majority of multinationals have discovered that even a subordinate worker should provide ideas capable of further expanding the business. Consequently, direct voice technique is most favoured by most MNCs in the US. Top Managements of such MNCs in the US have constantly had the willingness to employ the direct voice technique in every one of their overseas-based subsidiaries, however, that has been a challenging issue particularly when African countries and Western Europe where the indirect technique of representing employee has become extremely well-established. For instance, in Germany, there should be work councils that are tasked with the affairs of the employee (Varul & Ferner, 1995). Consequently, policy conflicts such as those between the United States as well as the countries hosting the American multinationals branches have made issues extremely challenging for multinationals, however, they have managed over time to cede ground for the purpose of business success .They felt obligated as far as fulfilling the local regulations as well as labour arrangements within the host nations. Voice arrangements may not be alienated from the impact they have on company-employer relationship and employment patterns, even though the direct voice technique is the finest since it leads employees in not feeling overpowered or downgraded to nonessential contributions to somber organizational matters. Multinationals, whether based in the Japan, UK or USA all share one thing in general; all have cost innovativeness (Ferner et al,2005).Attaining innovativeness needs an atmosphere where workers are more openly ,instead of obliquely engaged. Majority of multinationals currently have rationalized their act to hold the direct employee voice technique, which is what the UK and US multinationals have constantly supported. This therefore makes it simple for majority of multinationals to weather the storm that is brought about by diversity as well as different environments (Nakayama & Martin, 2012). Multinational managements have come to realize that setting up a consultative forum whereby the employee voice is listened to without tough prerequisites has overarching advantages to the growth of business. Apart from improving productivity as well as having a contented workforce, multinationals have turned out to be breeding dens for creativity and innovativeness (Schnabel, Zagelmever & Kohaut, 2006).Unlike the previous popular conviction by the managements of multinational that workers must never be given a lot of space for airing their grievances and views, the modern day multinationals have become very liberal and recognize communicating effectively between employees and managements as being a main technique to attaining organizational objectives. Employee voice can be described as one of the motivating factors believed to build unity between the top administration of multinationals as well as their employees. Essentially, this gets rid of the rift that may occur between the 2 entities (Summers & Hyman, 2005). The indirect or direct voice can be strong or weak voice instruments and is dependent on the environment in which one of them has been employed. Thus, for instance in America, multinationals take direct voice to be the sole means of engagement between the management of the MNCs and the workers. Thus, employees’ desire for participation and inclusion is more readily accomplished in America via direct voice technique as compared to anywhere else globally. The employees therefore are made to feel that they belong since they are engaged in a 2-way approach without representatives. This technique has a very positive impact on the productivity and confidence of the employee. Currently, even the indirect voice technique has turned out to be undependable because such representatives as work unions and councils have turned to chasing self-interests instead of the employee groups’ interests that they represent. Representative voice techniques such as those have in other parts of the globe become more vulnerable to manipulation acts like bribery and therefore it has become obligatory to employ a redefined direct voice technique in some parts of the western world (Ferraro, 2010). The mother country of a MNC determines the voice technique taken, however there has been registration of more success in cases where the mother countries of the multinationals take into consideration the existing conditions within the hosting regions (Ferner, 1997).Thus, for instance an indirect together with a direct voice hybrid works best for United States multinationals with branches in nations which need representative voice such as Germany. It is therefore undoubtedly that United States’ multinationals are not in favour of unionism and for a prolonged period of time have been unreceptive of the combative technique. They would therefore never entirely leave the direct voice technique in favour of any other technique. They are also aware on the flipside that they should go on operating businesses in various nations. This is why they employ the hybrid technique as the fall back plan whenever engaging their employees arises. Consequently, it is therefore obvious that the US multinationals rate highly as far as innovativeness is concerned (Ferner, 1997). Trade unionism within the African set up is the only manner of sufficiently addressing employee issues. Labour organizations came about majorly because workers felt they were remunerated poorly, with the direct voice technique proving to be extremely ineffective as far as transforming their situation is concerned. Direct voice technique therefore operates best in environments that facilitate working of the employees as a unit whenever welfare matters are concerned. Subsidiaries of multinationals that had been hosted in African nations at some point were giving very low remunerations and provided restricted room for workers to air their predicament. Actually, this resulted in a protesting society with unions being the single certain tool of making sure that workers were seriously engaged in matters pertaining indirectly or directly on their wellbeing. Over the years, multinational employees mainly in African nations have been empowered to take an active role in even very important issues of the multinationals (Lawler & Hundley, 2008). Thus, in conclusion, we can claim that the voice systems have enormously resulted in immense modifications of the executive cultures as well as norms of practically every main multinationals world over. Numerous alterations were made in order for the MNCs to fit within the local systems as well as arrangements of the host nations. The traditional direct voice technique that did not demonstrate a lot of efficiency for workers has been redesigned and is now more and more progressively taking central position. The forceful, combative and in several instances, chaotic representative/unionist voice technique is scarcely employed in isolation. The need to have a business environment that is peaceful supersedes everything else. Multinationals are more and more progressively adopting diversity as well as recognizing that uniformity in management might not be appropriate in the present day global business. Indirect, direct or a fusion of the 2 voice techniques are used by the multinationals depending on the operating atmosphere. In this case, the environment comprises of every existing condition in the various nations of business operation, for instance, domestic labour matters in addition to a glut of legal matters concerning worker-worker useful association (McDonnell et al, 2007). Thus, there is still no consistency in the worker voice techniques anyplace worldwide and there is not any of it in future that can be accomplished. The multinationals only attempt to adhere to the diversity which primarily works not only for their own benefit as far as attainment of organizational together with business objectives is concerned, but to that of their staff as well. This leads to a win-win position for every employee as well as the management of MNCs. List of References Colling T, Gunnigle P, Quintanilla J and Tempel A (2006) ‘Collective representation andparticipation’ in Almond P and Ferner A (eds) American Multinationals in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferner,A. (1997) ‘Country of origin effects and HRM in multinational companies’. HumanResource Management Journal, 7 (1), 19-37. Ferner, A & Varul, M. (1999). The German Way? German Multinationals and the Managementof Human Resources in their UK Subsidiaries. London: Anglo-German Foundation. Ferraro, G. 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