CROSS-CULTURAL MANAGEMENT - Essay Example

Every company across the world is trying to maximize the profitability from the opportunity it has in the global world economy. Companies are looking for the opportunities to expand their businesses and serve the international markets. International markets on one hand provide lucrative opportunities and on the other hand poses different challenges for the international business managers. Much of these challenges come due to the differences of the cultures of the target market places. Every market differs with each other in geographic specifications, customer demographics, consumer choices and preferences, taste, culture and traditions and in various different aspects.

It is very important for the international businesses to cater the needs of different markets by responding to different environmental factors. One of the most important issues for the business organisations’ in the present business scenario is ‘Culture’. Culture has been defined in different ways by academicians, sociologists, researchers and various experts from different fields. Hofstede (1980) has regarded it as ‘collective programming of the mind’. This collective programming allows people to distinguish the members of one group from the other.

Maanen and Schein (1979) has defined culture as values, beliefs, and expectations that members of a group come to share. Success and failure of any project of organisation is subject to its culture and culture of the people working in/with it. Organization culture allows its employee certain degree of freedom, innovativeness and support. It depends on leadership for the mission, vision and approach. Employees of any organization must follow the vision of management in order to achieve desired results.

The components of organization’s culture are as follows: Mooij and Marieke (2004) state “Organization culture is collection of vision, values, norms, beliefs and attitude of an organization.” Organisation culture is one