Promoting Cultural Integration and Mindset Research Paper

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Cross Cultural Interaction Between Corporations

As per CEO of Finisar, Jerry Rawls, 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast'.

During a panel discussion revolving around authentic leadership, Jerry Rawls said this famous line to signify the influence culture can have on best of strategic plans which companies fail to oversee and implement at around 70% of the time (Charan & Colvin, 1999). All small, medium and large enterprises are held responsible for this strategic implementation failure as global trends affects business strategy increasingly. The leaders need to assess the challenges arising whilst working in a worldwide marketplace relying on information, goods and services changing borders quickly which have transformed the landscape for competitive edge for most companies (Clapp-Smith, 2009)

In this modern era, communication takes place regularly between international suppliers, consumers, moderators and workers in a real time or a virtual time environment. The changes coming with globalization had compelled organization's top tier to communicate with people hailing from diverse cultures, but new tools have enabled workers and leaders alike to have face-to-face interaction with people from countries they didn't know existed in the first place (Thomas & Inkson, 2004).

Since communication across borders and culture takes place more often, there is an ardent need to understand its meaning and integrate the understandings of the globalizing environment where we dwell is now crystal clear to all the management scholars and professionals. In the present business environment, companies are working towards developing a certain mindset for their leaders. In order to become successful in this present marketplace, the leaders should be well versed in maneuvering multiple cultural groups as they please with relative ease. A global mindset allows the leaders to assess the situation of a particular culture and have a far sight on impact of global trends on local strategies (Clapp-Smith, 2009)

How to integrate varied perspectives in dynamic environments in order to lead successfully in a culturally diverse society

Researchers with prime interest in demography's impact on companies and their employees have devised multiple strategies; two of them are applicable in our field. The first one discusses how the comparative representation of specific demographic groups affects those observed in minority. The second one explores the outcome of different work composition group and its effectiveness (Ely & Thomas, 2001)

The opposite case of racial diversity in organizations is primitive at best. It is primarily based on studies which focus on cultural dissimilarities between blacks and whites in terms of communication style. Certain researchers deem that some black cultural norms for instance, blunt, confidence, language patterns and verbal creativity can boost an office place communication and have positive outcomes instead of creating shortcomings needed to be fulfilled (Foeman and Pressley, 1987). Yet, no research has explored this unchartered territory deeply. With more skepticism and mixed results about diverse work group differences in organizational capacity lessens the prospect of researching this aspect for clarifying the relationship between work group efficacy and cultural diversity. Colored people and women stem different notions and styles in a workplace, but research needs to work out in which conditions this happened and what outcomes are associated to it (Ely & Thomas, 2001)

The power distribution in a company either fortifies or challenges the racial disparity of power in any society, which can have noteworthy outcomes for certain employees and work groups. In our case, we aspired to prevent the power differential model between colored people and white people in the company. It was necessary in our case that among all three companies, colored people were assigned both positions of formal and informal nature. Most have deemed that this move will be beneficial for the work groups to contain the diversity effectively (Ely & Thomas, 2001)

Integration-and-Learning Perspective

As per the integration-and-learning's angle with respect to insights, skills, diversity and experience which employees have accumulated during their stint in different cultural groups are a potentially viable asset. A work group can strategize its job description and build on it further by expanding products, markets, strategies and business methods for furthering its aims. This experience can be factored in work processes of how people work in different environments and make diversity a tool for valuable learning and necessary change. The integration-and-learning angle and the corresponding results were apparent in case of law firm's program operation, which consisted of attorneys and policy experts in the firm and lastly in managing committee of the financial services firm. In view of this perspective, the progress is estimated for diversifying the willingness of the groups to change the organization as well the inclination of represented groups to change (Ely & Thomas, 2001).

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Negotiation strategies the inclusive leader could apply to craft a common cultural mindset

O'Rourke (2010) has detected certain common elements which contribute in case of manager's failure of working proficiently in international business projects due to the lack of understanding and adjusting to a new way of thinking and behavior rather than lacking technical expertise or professional inability. With the rise of competition in global marketplace, it's a prerequisite for the managers to be aware of new cultures and be wary of differences of people. Adding on further are Bovee and Thill (2011) who conclude that supervisors are faced with trouble of being aware of anticipated behaviors of different employees, multinational teams have trouble working collaboratively and companies have trouble concluding negotiations peacefully with their foreign counterparts. Hence, for implementing a strategic globalization process for international reach requires certain amount of research and application (Okoro, 2013). As per Deresky (2006), the emphasis on cross cultural negotiations can't be underestimated, which puts great responsibility on global managers to become well versed in learning cultural norms and values (Okoro, 2013)

Intercultural communication and compromise

As per studies, international managers play a pivotal role in cross cultural negotiation with new business alliances. According to Movius, Matsuura, Yan, and Kim (2006), it's unnecessary to presume that a given person arriving for a negotiation meeting shows a singular cultural behavior because they could have cross cultural experience as well owing to their work experience, education and multicultural background for that matter. For attaining a positive international negotiations result, global managers must be well versed in cross cultural interaction and deal-making. They must know their goals during a negotiation and realize the constraints in a decision making process (Okoro, 2013)

Tolerate ambiguity and a reasonable level of inconsistency

Apart from that, they also need to realize that information could appear in different forms, so they should be ready to stomach certain amount of incompetency, inconsistency and ambiguity. According to Chaney and Martin (2011), in case of Japan (a high context culture), body language plays a huge role in negotiation meetings whilst in case of a United States negotiation meeting, message is sent using words. In case of cross cultural negotiations, spoken and body language both plays a role in communication and can affect the climate of conversations. Correspondingly, cryptic messages can instill uncomfortable feelings for international managers, since they might be adjusting with the variation. In America for example, eye contact is certifiable of reliance, trustworthiness and honesty.

Similarly in case of Africa and China, eye contact is deemed rude and uncivilized. Adding on further, this practice of maintaining eye contact is deemed disrespectful, rude and hostile in India. Hence having cross cultural skills is important for closing deals with international collaborators. As evidenced, with the passage of time, managers with different backgrounds failed to deliver the expected results due to their tone, face expressions and body language. Hence, international managers must have proper knowledge and practice to fix situations where necessary (Okoro, 2013)

Communication methods appropriate for culturally diverse recipients that could be applied to models of cross-cultural mergers, joint ventures, and acquisitions

New global trends and events are taking business etiquette and cross cultural communication in terms of critical management issues due to rising amount of business prospects which incorporate strategic alliance, multinational venture and joint ventures. Due to the rise of globalization, more and more corporations from around the world are now attempting to become a brand name and tap the consumer markets for gaining the competitive edge. Moreover, business is now more complex and complicated due to cross cultural interaction, varying standards, anticipations and lastly the management ethics issues involved (Okoro, 2013)

The stress on diversified workforce has increased during the last few years compelling the national and international managers to invest more time in learning proper communication tactics, particularly for a diversified organization. Constant interaction is manager's obvious duty and since it takes most of his/her time engaged with his employees. Competitive intercultural communication is the deciding factor in concluding international deals / performance and productivity of culturally diversified employees (Barmeyer & Mayrhofer, 2008)

The integration process in international M&As and Joint Ventures

A merger / acquisition's general success lies on presence of a collaborative project and adequate management of human resources. Hence, it's important for the companies aligned to comprehend the benefits of a merger in order to attain the agreed upon objectives.….....

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