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Case Study - Lajolla Inc. Essay

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Case Study: LaJolla Software, Inc. LaJolla Inc. is a young business information software company based in California outside the Silicon Valley. The company is interested in forming an alliance with a Japanese firm and has for the last several months been negotiating with several firms in Japan to realize their goals of distributing their product in Asia. The owners have finally found a Japanese firm that will create an alliance with them. The firm is now sending a contingent of managers to evaluate the company and work out the details of the merger. LaJolla owners now need to learn how to work with managers from another culture. They have biases that the Japanese do not know anything about California. To make matters worse, the …show more content…

Doing this he will be better prepared for the Japanese managers when they arrive. Lucas and Flynn want him to set up activities to teach them more about the company, California and the United States. His research should give him some better ideas on what they might want to experience while they are here. Lucas and Flynn are operating on cultural biases, and Batey needs to look past this. Understanding the basics of the Japanese culture will help alleviate the nervousness they all feel about the Japanese managers coming to set up the merger (Martinko & Douglas, p. 3). They need to learn to set their judgments aside and open themselves up to new experiences (O’Rourke, p. 289). When Batey researches the Japanese culture he might find that they would actually like to see a Padres game and go to the zoo. These are both popular activities in Japan as well. After his research is complete, his next step should be to set up a short training session for the company employees. Giving the employees some information will help alleviate the ethnocentrism, or the evaluation of a foreigner’s behavior on his own culture and the belief that his culture is superior (O’Rourke, p. 288). This is common in any intercultural setting. The employees will know a little more of what to expect and not be as anxious about the meeting. Finally, Batey needs to

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