Millions of migrant workers may be out of a job and China’s once booming economy may be locked in a downward spiral as the global economic crisis bites, but for a particular Chinese brand of humor it’s been a boon.
Many of the jokes have been circulating online, or via text message in a country whose population is obsessed with their mobile phones.
A bank worker calls a colleague, goes one joke on the tiexue.net bulletin board.
“Hey, how’s it been going?”
“Not so bad.”
“Oh, sorry, I’ve definitely called the wrong number.”
Others adopt a similar tone, but riffing off Communist propaganda slogans.
“In the face of the financial crisis, I have bravely stood up and am marching forward! That’s because … I can’t pay back my loans and the bank has repossessed my car.”
Internet use has exploded in recent years, but the government keeps a close tab on what appears, removing offensive comments or detaining those who criticize too much on certain sensitive topics, such as human rights.
This hasn’t stopped people taking to the Internet to laugh about the crisis, or crack witticisms.
News in that For Chrysler has created an alliance with Fiat. The American car maker is under pressure by the U.S. government to restructure in order to save the company and jobs in the wake of the credit crunch. An alliance with Fiat holds the promise of more attractive small, fuel-efficient cars for Chrysler down the road as well as better access to important global markets. Up to now, Chrysler hasn’t been competitive in either area.
On Tuesday, the companies announced the basic terms of a tentative “global strategic alliance”: Fiat, Italy’s largest automaker, will provide no cash of its own to the struggling American automaker. Instead, in exchange for a 35% equity stake, Fiat will provide Chrysler with “technology,” including the engineering underlying some of Fiat’s small cars, which have proven popular in Europe.
“They’ve got some beautiful stuff over there,” said Magliano, “and a lot of these things can be sold in the U.S.”
Unlike Chrysler, Fiat is known to specialize in small, fuel-efficient cars that are popular in Europe. But the sort of “platform sharing” envisioned for Chrysler and Fiat takes years to bear fruit, so don’t expect to see a Dodge version of the Fiat Punto at your Chrysler dealer anytime soon, said Magliano.
“It’s difficult to have cross-cultural alliances like this,” Magliano said, adding that language and cultural differences, as much as anything else, can hamper progress.
As the credit crunch continues to bite with vengeance, business across the globe are assessing how to use 2009 in order to be prepared for a possible up-turn in 2010. For many the answer will lie in working more internationally. However, a survey released today shows that businesses not only need to pay attention to costs, business processes and the like but also to the cultural awareness of their personnel.
Most analysts and business leaders acknowledge that 2009 will be a difficult year. With the flow of credit at an all time low and government policies needing months in order to take any affect, people and businesses are gearing up for a rocky year. However, businesses worldwide are approaching the downturn with a strategic response and analysing how to consolidate market positions in order to take advantage of the awaited up-turn. One strategy being implemented is to look abroad.
Looking beyond national borders offers many advantages in terms of reducing costs, finding new revenue streams and increasing market coverage. However, although going global seems an attractive proposition businesses must be aware of potential pitfalls. Apart from red-tape, local business conditions and the complexities of setting up operations, cultural awareness is critical for personnel working in foreign countries.
A survey released to today by the cross-cultural communications consultancy Kwintessential reveals at a whopping 88% of their internationally-savvy respondents agreed that cultural awareness training would have been of benefit to them prior to doing business in a foreign country. The results clearly demonstrate that businesses and their decision makers are not considering the impact sending their personnel into different cultural climates can have on the success of their operations. It could be assumed that a “we all do business the same” mentality guides such decisions.
The survey asked visitors to the Kwintessential website: “If you have worked abroad before, do you think cultural training would have helped you?” The question was posed in a manner that would only elicit responses from people who had actually been abroad for work in the past, and now using hindsight understood whether or not cultural differences had an impact on their trip.
Cultural awareness (or intercultural) training at a personal level is about helping people understand how their own values, assumptions, perceptions and ways of working can be challenged when working in another culture. Cultures differ in many ways whether it is in communication styles, how trust is built, how meetings are conducted and how people are motivated. By helping people understand themselves better as well as appreciating the culture(s) they are about to work in/with the result is greater synergy, better success rates and stronger relationships.
Cultural awareness training is a simple, cost effective and long term solution and something businesses should invest in for 2009. As part of a properly prepared international business strategy the provision of such training to staff can reap excellent rewards.
“Now is the time to invest in a business and invest in its people. Looking internationally is vital now and we all need to make sure that cultural awareness is at the top of our list as this is what can really give you a competitive advantage as well as improve chances of success,” commented Neil Payne, the company’s Director.
In a recent Accenture study, cultural issues were listed as one of the main reasons for problems in offshore outsourcing deals and over half of National Outsourcing Association (NOA) members surveyed recently also said cultural differences are still an issue in offshore outsourcing deals.
Two factors that are rarely present in any domestic projects, but cannot be avoided when going offshore, are geographical distance and cultural differences.
Geographical distance might be a factor in terms of unfavorable time zone differences but today most of the offshore service providers ensure that their business hours are adjusted to ensure that you have several hours of overlap per day in common.
However the impact of cultural difference is something that should not be ignored when going offshore. Depending on the location you are offshore outsourcing to, cultural differences can vary from minor if you nearshore, for instance in Ireland or Eastern Europe to a real cultural clash if you offshore to low cost countries in Asia such as India or China.
The Warner Bros studio said on Wednesday it has canceled plans to release its blockbuster Batman movie “The Dark Knight” in China, citing “cultural sensitivities” surrounding the film.
The studio, a unit of Time Warner Inc, did not specify what Chinese audiences or censors might find objectionable about the movie.
“Based on a number of pre-release conditions that are being attached to ‘The Dark Knight,’ as well as cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film, we have opted to forego a theatrical release of the film in China,” Warner Bros said in a statement.
The film includes a sequence in which Batman, the movie’s comic book superhero played by Christian Bale, penetrates a criminal mastermind’s skyscraper redoubt in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.
The South West must meet global export challenges head on with improved world class communications using effective language and cultural awareness skills, warned two West Country experts at the International Trade Forum in Bristol today.
The prestigious event this week sought answers for increased business opportunities worldwide, notably China.
The event’s Question Time panel led by broadcaster Peter Sissons included Professor Peter Gold of the Regional Language Network South West (RLN SW) based at the University of the West of England. RLN SW helps businesses in the region overcome language and cultural barriers.
Effective intercultural communications are seen as a must to open doors to export opportunities for South West businesses wishing to succeed in overseas markets.
Lenovo Group, the world’s fourth-largest computer maker, has been lagging behind competitors.
Its acquisition of IBM’s personal-computer business catapulted Lenovo onto the world stage: Now about 60% of the company’s sales come from outside China, and it is the fourth-biggest computer maker by shipments.
Lenovo has filled its ranks with Westerners from IBM and Dell Inc., opened factories in Mexico and Poland, and gone on an Olympics-led marketing blitz. While Lenovo has fared better than other Chinese companies that have tried to become global players, it has fallen behind competitors in the PC industry.
In the early days after the IBM deal, cultural clashes and power struggles nearly derailed the Chinese computer maker’s aggressive strategy to become a world player, say current and former executives. Now the company’s global ambitions must confront the economic malaise in the U.S. and Europe — two markets that were key to its expansion plans.
Bill Amelio, a former Dell executive who became Lenovo’s CEO in late 2005, was sometimes frustrated by his Chinese colleagues’ reluctance to speak their minds. “You don’t want everyone saying ‘Yes, Yes, Yes’ all the time,” says Mr. Amelio, a brawny former college wrestler. “You want them to be able to smack you upside the head and say ‘Hey, I’ve got a better idea.’” Conference calls were difficult as Americans hogged the airtime. “The Americans would just talk and talk,” says Qiao Jian, a vice president of human resources. “Then they’d say ‘How come you don’t want to add value to this meeting?’”
A new study shows that where a customer comes from plays a big role in how services are evaluated.
The study, carried out by Martin Reimann of USC, Ulrich F. Luenemann of California State University Sacramento, and Richard B. Chase of USC Marshall School, examined the impact of uncertainty avoidance on how the perception of a service drives customer satisfaction.
“Uncertainty avoidance indicates the extent to which members of a culture feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. People in uncertainty avoiding cultures are less comfortable, while those from uncertainty accepting cultures are more tolerant of unexpected changes,” said Reimann, a USC researcher in marketing and psychology, who began the study while at Stanford University.
The study found that in cultures where uncertainty avoidance plays an important role (for example, where numerous rules and rituals are established to cope with uncertainty in the future), a service must be much closer to what customers expect than in more risk tolerant cultures. Indeed, even small deviations from expectations result in high dissatisfaction among such customers, as their large-scale empirical study revealed.
The authors emphasize that, “there is very little chance to prevent a service defect when the customer encounters a situation or behavior that does not conform to his or her cultural expectations.”
I’ve watching events unfold in the global financial markets with a mixture of incredulity and fear – like most other people I suppose. What has transpired in the last couple of weeks would have seemed unthinkable a month or two ago and nobody seems to be able to call the low point in this whole mess.
What strikes me about it is the way in which certain key cultural characteristics – especially in the USA – may have been to key contributory factors to the problems. Let me briefly explain what I mean by this:
• Individualism: A key US characteristic (seen as a virtue in the States) which leads employees to have less of a sense of responsibility to the company and more of a sense of responsibility to themselves. This is one of the great strengths of the US economy but is it possible that, if left unchallenged, it can have the consequence of people making short-term decisions to better themselves at the expense of a greater whole?
• Short-termism: One of the by-products of economies which are mainly equity financed (USA, UK etc.) is that people are driven by quarterly results. This again leads to people taking short-term decisions and looking for ‘quick wins’ at the expense of a more coherent long-term strategy. This short-term outlook is, of course, exacerbated by a bonus culture which rewards people for delivering results NOW.
Chrisoph Lymbersky of the Management Laboratory Press has recently published a new title focusing on market entry management. The book is aimed at students and business personnel interested in areas such as market entry and overseas product launches. As well as covering the basics of thinking internationally the book also emphasises global efficiencies and its components. A large section of the book covers the area of interculturalcommunication demonstrating the author’s belief that such competencies are integral to succeeding on the international stage.
The book is split into four parts as follows:
Part One: Introduction to International Strategy
This section introduces the idea of thinking through the essential components of having an international strategy. It explores different types of strategies, SWOT analysis, goals and potential problems.
Part Two: Strategies for Analysing and Entering Foreign Markets
Part two provides a thorough overview of how to analyse foreign markets in terms of market potential, competition, legal structures, politics, sociocultural factors and possible barriers.
Part Three: Market Entry Strategies
The third section offers more in-depth and specific information on how to get a product or service into a new market. Topics covered include mode of entry, exporting, government policies, distribution, using intermediaries, joint ventures and licensing. The section also provides useful case studies from companies such as Calvin Klein and Virgin.
Part Four: The Influence of Culture on Market Entries
The last section concerns culture and cross-cultural awareness. Initially introducing the basics of cultural differences via the models of Hofstede, the author then goes on to explore how culture can impact market entry through issues such as language, culture shock, negotiations and M&As.
Christoph Lymbersky is head of the Management Laboratory as well as a consultant to start-up companies. He has lived, worked and done research in Germany, France, Australia and the US. His experience covers companies such as IBM and Wal-Mart as well as founding businesses such as COMODEX Internet and B2B Network.
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