Sustainable International Business Future -Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss about the Sustainable International Business Future. Answer: Introduction: Organizations have been continuously expanding across the borders with the comprehensive marketplace becoming progressively more available for the small and large businesses similar, 2017 bringing in more prospects for working globally. Cross-cultural and multinational teams have been becoming a common factor where businesses are being able to benefit from gradually more diversified base of knowledge and other perceptive advancements to business issues (Muzychenko and Liesch 2015). However, along with the profits of expertise and insight, international organizations have been facing probable obstacles when it comes down to culture and global business. There are number of ways of defining culture, simply being described as certain common norms, which are accepted and shared by the society. However, in the context of the global business, one accepted and common professional norm from one country might be different from that of another (Bauer, Matzler and Wolf 2016). This paper would take into account the understanding and identification of the ways culture has been affecting global business in areas like communication, etiquette and organizational hierarchy that can help an individual in avoiding misunderstandings with contemporaries and clients on global basis and excel in the environment of globalized business. This paper would at length discuss about Global trade is now very established, so cultural differences should no longer be an issue in international business. Impact of Culture on Global Business: It would not be logical for a business in relying on the present loom of conducting business at a time when it is deciding on expanding at the international level. In a study of the international or global negotiations between the organizations, it has been maintained that successful negotiations not only need expertise in technology like the technique in communication, but also requires understanding the negotiations context that have been conducted in sheltering the profitable contracts. The cultural impact on the global organizations while expanding to newer regions with various customary cultures has been the subject of many research studies along with understanding the cultural differences. According to the Hofstede, culture can be defined as the communal agreement of the mind, which states that the member from one group is diverse from that of the others (Mazanec et al. 2015). His theory his mainly based on the value that can be placed upon six cultural dimensions. These are mainly power, collectivism, masculinity, indulgence, temporal orientation and uncertainty avoidance. Power distance can be defined as the level to which the less powerful associates of the organizations are expected to accept the fact that power is distributed unevenly. It does not gauge the power level in given culture but evaluates the way people feel it. In case of collectivism it is the level to which individuals are incorporated into various groups. Individualistic cultures signify attainment of personal goals whereas in the collective societies it is the well-being of the overall group. Masculinity takes in the allotment of emotional roles between the genders. This dimension takes in the level of significance a culture positions on stereotypical values of masculine as power, materialism along with feminine values like emphasizing on the values of human relationships. For indulgence it is about measuring the ability of the culture in satisfying the immediate requirements and desires of the members. Valuing of restraint means having strict social rules in which satisfaction driv ers are discouraged. Temporal orientation takes in the long term and short term orientation where short term orientation values the conventional methods and long term focuses on value rewards and being goal oriented (Beugelsdijk, Maseland and Hoorn 2015). Uncertainty avoidance takes in the tolerance of the society along with ambiguity. It measures the way society tackles with situations of unknown nature and unexpected events. As per the international business theory, global organizations have been trying in expanding to countries that presents with more similarities than the differences existing within two cultures so that the culture disparity is avoided (Chua, Roth and Lemoine 2015). It has generally been hard in making an absolute assumption that expansion of organizations into the territories with high level of cultural differences has an adverse effect on the performance. The knowledge of the organizational culture is important for the managers and should normally be measured in the feedback process, extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. For instance, US believe in strong relation between the pay level and job satisfaction, whereas in Japan the same fact has less effect (Efrat 2014). An American Manager, thus, would find it hard in motivating staffs through rewards and increments in Japan. Successful global companies understand the significance of culture that crops up from their marketing strategies that are culturally stranded of the targeted industries. A company having weaker understanding of the domestic culture of the target market can commend disastrous mistakes in improving on the marketing strategies through designing of the advertisements that might upset people for reasons containing unacceptable content. Companies that do not fully comprehend the culture of the targeted region, certain critical strategies of marketing fail to attract the attention of the customers right from the beginning. There have been many examples of the ethnically irreconcilable contents of marketing like use of an owl in an Indian advertisement is generally seen as positive luck content, while, animals wearing sunglasses and spectacles in advertisements intended for Thailand would not work well as they are generally thought to be lower life forms. Cultural Issues in International Business: Communication: Communication of effective nature is significant to the success of any sort of business venture, but is generally decisive when there is actual risk of ones message getting misplaced in translation development. Attitudes takes into account the way people behave and communicate along with interpreting the messages from certain other people. Perceptions of people can be manipulated by the differences existing within the values, priorities and advancement to the sort of the social organizations to where individuals belong. In many of the global companies, English is considered the primary language of business. However, the important fact is not the language one speaks, but the way the message is being conveyed. For example, Finns generally value succinctness and directness, whereas, the Indian professionals are more indirect and nuanced in their way of communicating at the organizational level (Brown 2014). Certain things like making direct eye contacts, dense handshakes or a kiss on th e cheek might be common work culture at certain countries, whereas, the same might be unusual or at times odious to a foreign client or colleague. For an individual, it is important to perform researches in advance of the professional connections with others of different culture. Navigating the factor of cross-cultural communication can be a challenge, it is important to advance the differences in culture with more openness, understanding and curiosity, comforting the others ((Efrat 2014). Societies differ significantly in their perception of the role of the manager. Much of this difference is aspect to the judgment of the one who would be taking the decisions and the peoples responsibility for certain specified tasks. Two issues in Cross Cultural Communication: Ambiguity: Cultures have been offering people with various thinking ways and construing the world. Same words can have different meaning to the people coming from different cultures, even at the time of speaking the same language. At the time when the language is dissimilar and communication is mainly through the process of translation, the probability for misunderstanding augments. Each culture has certain exclusive contexts and style of communicating. Ambiguity takes place in the communication development when individuals do not realize the cultural context of their own and that of the listener (Lee, Trimi and Kim 2013). For instance, an American manager was pleased with the performance of his Chinese team. Therefore, he decided on giving the team certain rewards and the motivational enhancement. The American manager promoted the top performers within the Chinese team to the post of Assistant Manager. However, to the surprise of the American manager, there was deterioration in the performance of the Manager in the next business quarter. Upon relevant discussion and individual research, it was found that the team generally performs well for the teams sake, but the members do not perform well when they are being put in situations where they work for the one individuals benefit (Samovar et al. 2015). It was big revelation on the part of the American manager as he apprehended the various values of culture. People from various cultures come together; they have a propensity in assuming certain things, not always aware of the difference in the style of communication and the cultural values, not taking the c ognizance of the system of values of other cultures. This generally leads to a situation where the listener generally loses out on the message part along with developing an inaccurate perspective about the information that is being delivered. Ethnocentrism: Ethnocentrism can be defined as the postulation where an individual considers his own cultural group to be more rational where he considers other cultures inferior. Ethnocentrism is often taken in as the unusual behavior that is complex to avoid in advance. When being confronted in a different culture, individuals tend to critic it with reference to their personal standards along with evaluating the new culture from the perspective of the host nation (Cavusgil and Knight 2015). The discerning listening and value decision factor, affecting severely the quality of communication, can also exemplify such a behavior. Workplace Etiquette: Various approaches to the professional communication can be stated as one of the immeasurable differences at the workplace norms globally. For example, the address formality is generally a bigger consideration while tackling with the colleagues and partners in business from diverse countries. Certain countries prefer surnames and titles whereas others accept the first name only. It generally varies across the organizations, with Asian countries like China and South Korea having the tendency to use formal Mr./Ms. Surname, whereas, Canadians and Americans use the first name only. The punctuality concept also differs between the cultures existing in a global business environment. Various ideas of the things that composes being on time, generally leads to cultural perceptions that are negative in nature. For instance, an American might turn up at a meeting a few minutes early, whereas an Italian or a Mexican individual might arrive several minutes late after the planned start time and still be measured on time. Along with the etiquette differences, comes the difference in attitude, mainly in things like altercation at workplace, rules and regulations and the unspecified working hours. Some determines the long hours of working as the sign of obligation and attainment, whereas, others might deem these extra hours to be exhibition of lack of competence or the reprioritization of the personal time (Morrell et al. 2013). Organizational Hierarchy: Organizational hierarchy along with the attitude towards the roles of the management can vary extensively between the cultures. The individuals working in the middle or junior level management positions at times are confident of speaking in meetings, questioning the decisions of the senior that happens bases on the cultural custom. Often this sort of attitudes led to a reflection of the societal values of the country or the level of the societal parity. For example, Japan conventionally values social hierarchy, comparative status and the respect for seniority; bringing the same to the organizational table. This hierarchy assists in defining roles and other responsibilities across the organization. This also takes into account that the senior management places command respect, expecting a certain formality level from the junior team members. However, the Scandinavian countries like Norway put much emphasis on the societal equality, having the propensity in having moderately flat organizational hierarchy (Koch et al. 2016). This can generally be seen as the informal communication, putting much emphasis on the factor of cooperation across the organization. At the time of defining roles in the global or cross-cultural teams having diversified outlook and anticipation of the organizational hierarchy, it is generally easy in seeing the reasons that make cultural differences an issue (Adler and Graham 2017). Models and Theories related to Global Trade: Over the years, there has been discussion over several theories and concepts that underpin the importance of global trade and the ways companies have been valuing international business and focusing on uniformity. Dealing with Cultural Differences in Global Business: In global business scenario, it is difficult for organizational managements in learning culture of their equivalents and tackles an individual as per their belief. However, there are certain ways through which cultural differences can be minimized in global business encounters. According to the determinants of competitive advantage in nations, any company striving for expansion globally should take into consideration the industry structure and rivalry existing in that particular country along with the government rules and regulations. Culture should not pose itself as a barrier for organizations that are planning global expansions. Companies do look out for certain benefits like cheap labor and tax exemption while trying to expand in foreign lands for increasing their revenue and profit margin. A lot of thought process and strategies goes into it in setting up of business in other countries. They try and invest in factors like technology and training for people of a certain country to get acquainted with the essential things that is required by a particular company for its operations in foreign land. Cultural differences sometimes pose a threat where organizations need to focus on advanced factors like researches, technology and human instead of only on basic factors like climate, demographics and natural resources (Adler and Graham 2017). As per Dunnings Eclectic Paradigm, a firm should take account of factors like ownership advantages (why), location (where) and internalization (how) advantages (Dunning 2015). It needs to address the why question for ownership, which takes in the firm detailed advantages, facilitating it for overcoming cost and other impediments factor of conducting operations in foreign land. The location factor takes in the where question, the firm needs to assess the location factor that would give it the maximum output through minimum investment. Land, labor and tax are certain factors that are looked after by companies in such matters. In case of internalization, it is mostly about how the company would be going abroad and the way it would be entering into the market. Companies should also consider the network model where organizations need to consider things like creating and maintaining relationships along with understanding their norms and cultures and the ways they do business (Mazanec et al. 2015). It is stated to be one of the database models that is being conceived in the flexible way of illustrating objects along with the relationships. Firms tend to make the best use of their network positions for extemalize the activities. Cultural Awareness: An increase in the inventory of cultural information, there is also an increase in the cross-cultural encounters. This would be assisting the business people in capturing the culture differences in quick fashion and acting accordingly. Adding to that would be the confidence of performing at an international level as cultural knowledge helps in offering customer service in more effective manner (Dabi?, Tipuri? and Podrug 2015). Knowing about other cultures provides an individual with competitive advantage in performing business across the borders. Developing a sense of cultural heterogeneity: Cultural heterogeneity can be defined as the belief in the factor of cultural pluralism. The primary building block of the cultural heterogeneity factor is that all people are not same, and that groups within the society do differ. A national culture might fluctuate based on the regional character, religious memberships and linguistic attachment. Hofstede in his explanation power distance in global context has generally grouped national cultures along with factors based on masculinity versus femininity, individualism versus collectivism and uncertainty avoidance dimensions (Pudelko, Tenzer and Harzing 2014). The bureaucratic and synergistic culture of the organizations presents a sense of heterogeneity that might be influential in maximizing the pros and minimization of the cons in the cross-cultural business encounters. Purpose and Task related focus: Once there has been an acknowledgement of the cultural diversity, business people would do well to focus on the purpose and the task of the business along with the subsidiary of the cultural differences. Averting of the ethnocentrism might be influential for subordinating the cultural divergences. Ethnocentric approach positions itself at the middle of judging others surrounding it. Apart from the factor of ethnocentrism, chauvinism might harm in the orientation of purpose and task in global operation as chauvinism imitate a negative outlook against certain other groups (Moran, Abramson and Moran 2014). Lack of ethnocentrism would result in an echelon playing field where everyone would be working in equal manner, for the purpose and task of the business. Create cultural synergy: Eastern cultures are quite different from the Western cultures. Despite of having these differences, both have been performing businesses successfully. The cultural synergy concept is one of the unique organizational concepts that determine the cultural assortment as a resource. Each culture has some uniqueness and in the perspective of multicultural, that uniqueness might end up yielding fresh solutions to the existing issues (Ferraro and Briody 2017). Several steps might be undertaken for using the better parts of other culture in solving the problems of business. Believing in win-win game: It is often being said that good businesses should enclose something for both the parties. Business people should generally stick to situations that are win-win in nature in negotiations taking place in global business. It is important in being empathic, trying to comprehend the expectation of the counterpart. It is indispensable in considering other aspects of the culture in negotiation, for instance, recognizing the decision maker, understanding the time concept and knowing time of doing the deals (Muzychenko and Liesch 2015). Conclusion: It can be concluded that as companies venture into regions having different culture it generally faces certain hurdles in the shape of various norms, beliefs and language. The organization needs to align itself with the culture that is prevailing for reaping the benefits of organizational expansion. The significance of understanding of culture as per the marketing strategies states the fact that marketing that are culturally irreconcilable can backfire and hamper the reputation of the organization in certain ways. 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