Culture Impact On International Business Cultural Studies Essay

glossiness Impact On International Business Cultural Studies leavenCulture always makes a great preserve on international hatful. Although there be similarities mingled with various polishs, exactly there ar in any case obvious deflexions, the ever-present antithetic cultural backgrounds affect international trade. Different cultural products in international trade pass on have the name, trademarks, advertisements, and verbal and compose communication translation impact. Therefore, cultural factors should be taken into account in the international trade, in order to avoid misunderstandings which may result in stinting losses.In international trade, cultural background, language and customs and different cultural differences become the invisible barriers as cross-cultural communication in international trade. To analytic thinking the differences of language and cultural factors and their impact, the crucial element to open the international market and expand Internati onal trade successfully is implementing cross-cultural exchange effectively. Many hefty companies fai conduct in international blood line, the main reason are non the shortage of capital or technology, but due to ignoring the cultural differences impact on trade and communication.In the face of this, we should be aware(predicate) of the importance of culture, find out the aspects of culture that impact on the international trade, and get it on how these points work.Relevance of CultureThe impact on international trade of ubiquitous cultural factor is recessive and potential. Culture has the characteristic of class. As the common pattern of behaviour which accumulated in the history, pile approve and follow their own culture they live with. Culture hybrid is the catalyst of economic development while culture conflict is the crabmeat cell of economic cooperation.2.1 Concept of CultureCulture is the way in which a group of spate solves problems and reconciles dilemmas. (Alfons Trompenaars, Charles Hampden-Turner, 1993, P6) Culture is formed by the ideas, concepts, behaviour, customs, habits, representatives of a group in a given period and the over on the whole sense from this group out of all the activities.2.2 Values of CultureAccording to the importance of culture, it is necessary to tell apart the culture well. When acquiring a language and know the accuracy meaning in the culture, we rear communicate with others through it. By understanding the customs, we can abide how business partners and customers are likely to respond. By coping the partners or customers culture values, we can distinguish between what is considered right or wrong, look atable or offensive. To know the distinguishable ways of thinking in incompatible culture, we can identify with other compositionagers, provide knowledge to meet and negotiation with them.2.3 Levels of CultureAs we learn from the lecture, we know there are at least three levels of cultureNational/Regional Culture-Culture inwardly a country/regionalCorporate Culture-Culture within a specific organizationProfessional Culture-Culture of particular functions within an organization3.0 How does culture workAs we know, culture is a broad concept. So it can affect international trade in umpteen ways two essential and external the enterprise.3.1 National/Regional CultureLanguage Cultural difference is an important factor that restricts the translation of the words. Because translation involves different using principle of two different languages. In the translation process, if you dont know the different culture real well, this often occurs that the meaning is quite the opposite with the real meaning which can lead to the misunderstanding.For example, when the General Motors Corporation enters the market of Belgium, the slogan was Body in Belgium, but when translating the slogan into Flemish language, the meaning was corpse by Fisher. The strange slogan led to embarrassment and the cu stomers confusion. Things followed were the dramatically slip of the sales volume until the dis prospect became aware of this problem.This situation shows the home runificance of understanding the language in the different culture background.Custom Different countries have different customs, the tradition way of life, the hobby of battalion, the taboo, etc., all these show the culture diversity of the world.A bitter case shows the consequences of disrespect of custom. Lawrence Stessin, the anthropologist, pointed this in his report. A business man from North California wanted to corrupt a textile machines company from Birmingham in UK to open the European market. Not long after he took over the company, the manager from America want to castigate a problem about the British teatime. Lawrence said, in British, every worker had the teatime of half an hour. During the time, workers can taste some wine in the monolithic ounce container on their own preferences. The manager proposed reducing the teatime to 10 minutes and union agreed. But a week later, the workers rioted in the factory. They broke the windows, ruined the machines and hooted the administrators. The manager tried to redeem for the loss, he installed the vending machines with the low capacity cups instead of the large ounce containers. Based on the American custom, the rules requested to a greater extent contribution and devotion of the workers but disrespected the local custom, the company ended in bankruptcy.Values As the result of the difference of countries historical development, the formation of culture differs a lot in the long history. People also have different opinions and values on the same thing. In international trade activities, people with different culture background show the obvious differences on the concept of time, decision-making and conflict management approach.Americans believe in free competition and individualism. Personal courage to draw responsibilities is a virtue in Americans eyes and its the positive performance. So in a negotiation, the representative wields the power to make his own decision within the authorize scope. On the contrary, Chinese people break great vigilance on collective decision-making and emphasise the team wisdom. As the proverb says, Two heads are get around than one. Especially in Japan, a collective country, team interests are higher than everything at any time.The difference between Asian and Western values leads to the different understanding to some things, which sometimes results in the barriers in the trade and verbal communication.Mode of thinking American linguist Robert B Ka jut(1966) proposed the Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education through the research of abroad students who speak different mother tongue. He believes that thinking is spiral Oriental while Western thinking is bilinear in.Once an American corporation wanted to enter the market of south mainland China, they sent a representa tive to deal with the business. Also, China side wants to enlarge its trade. Since both sides were satisfied with the deal, the negotiation should be favouring. But the process of negotiation was not so simple. It was problem here that the different thinking way. To show humility and amiable, the Chinese manager always used some fuzzy words, like maybe, perhaps, whatever, etc.. All these made the American manager doubted whether the Chinese manager were pure-hearted to make the deal. So they didnt sign the contract in China. To show the respect to others, the Chinese manager didnt express his get out to deal. After going back to America, the manager wrote a letter to China and directly express that he wanted to cooperate with China. The Chinese are happy to accept and wrote back. But in the long letter, he put the call point in the end with the long-winded matting before. At put out there was no transaction because of the misunderstanding which resulted from different mode of thi nking.3.2 Corporate CultureThe relationship between cater-Tom Peters, American writer on business management practices, said that the only real choice to the enterprise is human. Therefore, the harmonious atmosphere among staff is quite important to the development of enterprise.It is quite normal for a transnational enterprise to hire talented persons. While unseemly ways of arranging employees led to a series of problem in an enterprise. To some extent, the appearance of these people leads to internal staff personnel psychological confrontation. This is a process of coordination and adjustment. But the administration ignored this serious point and just paid more attention to these talented persons. During this period, the spirit and morale of the old staff were affected. They became less loyal and negatively charged and resulted in the decline in performance.Another situation will lead to the discord among employees. As a Chinese, we are used to it while which may dishonour pe ople in other countries. Suppose there are three employees, A, B and C. When A and B are talking about something, C comes and interrupts their parley or joins their talking. It is normal in China and people can accept. In western, however, people think they were not respected or even offended. They pitch accept this behaviour. So if this situation happens in an enterprise with employees from different countries, the harmonious atmosphere will be broken and lead to the performance.The relationship between higher and bring down levels-the relationship between boss and employee is interaction and help each other forward.In the Chinese and Western culture, this relationship shows some differenceRole difference-In China, the mainstream of Chinese culture emphasizes the group and social values. People pay more attention on the affiliation between individual and group. The actions and observation must be in accordance with the expectation of group.In contrast, western people emphasize i ndividual rights and independence. For example, to respect peoples rights and freedom, the speaker always uses the phrasing like Would you? Could you.? Shall I? etc. No matter how the relationship is between two persons.This different position of role leads to the misunderstanding between boss and employee from different culture background.Daily conversation-Because of the difference of different culture, a polite term in one culture may be considered as the impolite, inappropriate language in another culture.In China, people used to show the respect only to eldership or higher authorities. Among the western people, they always call each others first name, whether you are my eldership or boss or teacher. Instead of being impolite, they think its the way to show intimate among people.For example, in a transnational enterprise, the manager is a Chinese and the employee is a British. The manager will assign a task to the employee without the words like please thank you which may depres ses the employee in some extent. The opposite situation, if the manager is a western people while the employee is a Chinese. Its normal when the manager call the name of the employee. As the junior employee, Chinese people always say its too late, youd better to go home or something like that to show concerning. But the manager may feel being interfered because time to go home is his own right.Nonverbal communication-during the conversation, not only the express are different, but also the space surmount in different culture background. In UK, people divided the distance into intravenous feeding types intimate distance, personal distance, social distance, public distance. In France, people will hug and kiss the face. While in China, there is no definite distance in social intercourse. The type of body touch is shaking hands or gorgerin which mostly happens among the same gender. Expect lovers, the situation of kissing and hugging will never happen among the opposite gender. And f emales always go out hand in hand if they are good friends which may be misapprehend in western countries.3.3 Professional CultureWithin an organization, both victor culture and organizational culture can shape the decisions, output and something else in it. The organisational culture is a system that has an impact on the whole organization. While the professional culture lays particular emphasis on individual effort. The coexistence of these two cultures can plan the development of organization practically better.If the organization can recruit participants who have the characteristics it requires, it does not have to develop these characteristics through training and education.(Amitai Etzioni, 1961)If the organizational culture is fixed, the goals, the competitor, the position are definite, the organization has to recruit employees with the specific characteristics. Here, the professional culture does make sense.As a collective country, Japanese employ own the high loyalty to t heir organization. The unique loyalty can be seen as the professional culture within an organization. The loyalty plays a particular and signifi formalism role in the enterprise. The innate motivation of the workers loyalty originates from the trust mechanism. Therefore, the Japanese workers loyalty is one of the most important reasons that the Japanese corporate achieve success.A Chinese business man established a restaurant in Japan several years ago. In the first few years, he hired Chinese people because they are his compatriots. Before long, however, the employees were replaced by Japanese gradually. Some guests from China want to know the reason. He told them that Japanese are easy to manage. More importantly, the Japanese employees are always concerning more about the restaurant. Once he became the staff, he was a member of this team. The team grew better so that the staff got better.A manager of human resource department in a Japanese transnational enterprise once said, as individuals, Chinese people have the excellent working capability. But as a member of the organization, they lack compatibility and sufficient responsibility. This enterprise recruited 20 IT employees from China. And the administration wanted to inculcate a spirit of loyal to organization. But too much emphasis on this point sometimes led to their negative mentality.There is another phenomenon that we can only see in Japan. Some Chinese consultants had the business transactions with a Japanese newspaper office. They found strange that they could rarely see the boss himself appearing in the office during the several years. All the internal things were assigned to the manager. The boss was always staying at home by remote control. Everything was in perfect order. All the employees worked hard and dedicate without lazing. They all dole outed the enterprise and boss as their family because they know better the company was, much more money they could earn.Once a Japanese manager was ask ed a question, Why dont you offset printing your own business and be your own boss with your talent? In that company, he deals with all the affairs. He can earn much more if he start his own business. But he said that he has been in the company for more than three decades from a staff to a manager. His growth cant be without the training and cultivate of the boss and enterprise. They are a big family. In Japan, employees are loyal to the company. Even if another company will pay more and provide better treatment, they wont change their minds easily.How to measure an employees loyalty? When buying things for the company, the staff never receive kickbacks never use the company ring to make personal international call to be the first one to come, the last one to go back meticulous, and so on. In the eyes of Japanese workers, these things are unalterable. The best way to show the employees loyalty is the company of their choice, or single-mindedness. And the boss defines the loyal sta ff as actively perform the spirit of sacrifice.Since the 90s from last century, Japans bubble economy collapsed. The problem of employees loyalty emerged. Japanese human resource instruction conducted a survey in 2002. Among Netherlands, Mexico, United States, Germany, Italy, Japan and some other countries, the employees loyalty of the first three countries was 73%, 72%, 68% respectively. That of Japan was only 50%. They were shocked by the results. This result indicates that the positive influence of professional culture needs a steady surrounding.ConclusionIn the East-West cooperation business process, cultural backgrounds, different cultural mentality, customs, are often overlooked by many people. While the cultural factor is the key factor that determines the success or failure of business activities. Quite different from the normal trade, the international trade within different culture background request more. Dealers should know each others culture and custom very well. Its t he guarantee of success.In international business, we should pay more attention to differences in cross-cultural communication. Correctly deal with cultural differences and prevent the barriers that may be caused by cultural patterns and cultural prejudices. Among the staff, everyone should respect each other and treat equality.The key to success in cross-culture communication is treating the culture difference properly try to exclude cultural superiority, cultural patterns and cultural prejudices of the interference. This is the only way to obligate out the international trade activities in cross-culture communication successfully. We can establish the international culture exchange centre carry out the multi-level forms of culture let on and exchange to eliminate the concept of custom, language and art appreciation and other aspects of trade barriers.The formulation of foreign trade policy for the enterprises should be syncretised with that the local culture. We cant always chal lenge a culture if its not suited to our system. It is necessary to create the countrys cultural products for sale, but also the manner and extent of pricing that people can accept, and try to find suitable local custom channels to purchase objects willing to accept the publicity. These links are indispensable, and only all of them are put together organically, the barriers can be broken.In conclusion, we stress that culture is the primary factor in business trade, and the major barrier is the difference between historical cultures. Cultural factors are unavoidable. Cultural universals are dominant, and cultural differences can be bridged by international trade. Moreover, with the development of cultural interpenetration, the influence of cultural differences will become smaller. The cross-culture communication activity will become easier than before.