The Content For Elearning Environments

Culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. “Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well-being and success” (One Page, n.d.).

It is no longer feasible that a corporation can successfully move through the global marketplace without learning to recognize the cultural norms of each country. It falls to the executives and managers to implement these changes and to ensure that their companies are working to move towards a more inclusive, and ultimately, more profitable way of doing business that appreciates and respects all cultures and work

2. From the course home page in LoudCloud, click on the “Resources” tab and then click on “Classroom Policies." What do you need to do to make sure you are properly participating in the online classroom?

All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.

Cultural differences between nations often require a company to have multiple marketing strategies. What may be acceptable in on country may not be acceptable in another country. The cultural differences require companies to develop marketing plans that are suitable for each individual culture. Not being aware of and understanding the cultural differences can create costly and embarrassing errors that may actually offend those in other countries. Cultural differences can affect the colors of products, the graphics used on packaging, and how the product is communicated to the foreign target market.

Superior Supermarkets (SS) is a division of Hall Consolidated, a privately owned wholesale and retail food distributor. SS is the smallest of three chains which caters to the South Central United States and is ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in each of its markets. SS has been considering an ‘Everyday Low Prices’ strategy for many years. It is felt by due lower than expected sales based on budget targets, that revisiting the issue of a new pricing strategy is warranted. A management meeting is scheduled to discuss this matter and a decision is expected on this topic.

Globalization and technological advancement have dictated the need for managers to deal with multiple ethnic groups with different culture in their day to day interactions. According to Kulkarni (2012), cultures play critical roles in individuals, including values, beliefs, humor, worries, fears, hopes, opinions, attachments, and anxieties.

Given this, the main target of this essay is to analyse the main approaches to understanding national culture and how relevant is such an understanding to an internationalising firm.

With the unstoppable trend of globalisation, it becomes extremely significant for international businesses to have a thorough understanding of different cultures. Hofstede (1980, pp. 21-23) defines culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from another’. This essay examines Hofstede’s cultural framework and suggests that Hofstede’s cultural framework is an outstanding and authoritative tool to analyze culture differences. In this essay, cultural frameworks will be discussed firstly, following by a discussion of my cultural scores and background. Finally, recommendations on cross-cultural management between China and Australia will be provided.

Hofstede had analyzed data, which he collected from more than 117,000 IBM employees working in 40 different countries, and had found out that there were four statistically independent dimensions that examined the inter-country variation through his survey questionnaires (Drogendijk, and Slangen, 2006). His value of dimension was accepted by studies and had proven to be of help to understand the difference in cultures (e.g., Silverthorne, 2005) suggesting that Hofstede dimension of culture categorizes is elevated and it has given important steps to improve theoretical basis of understanding culture and also its effect on organization. We could see that people appreciated his work and his understanding of culture helped many in their own flied of work but they were researchers who had criticized his dimension (e.g., Schwartz, 1994; steenkamp, 2001; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, and Gupta, 2004).

Culture and the environment affect a business in many ways. Culture is not simply a different language, a different shade of skin, or different styles of food. Culture, and the environment in which you are a part of, affect the running of day to day business operations of all companies’ day in and day out. This paper will assess how Linda Myers, from the article, “The would-be pioneer,” (Green, S., 2011) was affected by the huge culture shock of working for a global conglomerate from Seoul, South Korea. We will discuss what went wrong with Ms. Myers approach to business, Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture as it

The United States and China boast the two largest economies in the world but, despite this fact, these two countries have very little in common. At first glance, this may seem very obvious to most people but, what exactly is it that makes these two countries so different? How is it that such different perspectives and approaches can both lead to great success? Hofstede’s six dimensions of culture are an attempt to answer these questions and more. Dr. Geert Hofstede, studied employees of the computer firm IBM in over fifty different countries. When he examined his findings he found “clear patterns of similarity and difference along the four dimensions” (Manktelow, Jackson Edwards, Eyre, Cook and Khan, n.d.). The fact that he focused his research on solely IBM employees allowed him to eliminate company culture as a differentiating factor and “attribute those patterns to national and social differences” (n.d.). He used his findings to originally identify four dimensions, later expanded to six, that could “distinguish one culture from another” (n.d.). The six dimensions all on a scale from 0 to 100 are:

Whenever a company is entering a new market it has to take into consideration the cultural differences between countries. Based on the case study analysis, the difference between the two countries in terms of eating out habits and eating preferences seem not to be understood by the Denver headquarter. Denver headquarter believes that it can enforce the same business model applied in the U.S to its stores in China, regardless of local preference. In addition, Foster seems to lack knowledge about the Chinese culture because she was not familiar with the market in China, as she had no experience working internationally. There was a lack of cross-cultural communication between Chen and Foster; even though, Chen had experienced both cultures while studying abroad in the U.S.

The most challenging decision that a company may face in internationalization is the degree of standardization or adaptation in its operations. The question of standardization or adaptation affects all avenues of a business’ operations, such as R&D, finance, production, organizational structure, procurement, and the marketing mix. Whether a company chooses to standardize or adapt its operations depends on its attitudes toward different cultures. These attitudes are defined by three orientations toward foreign culture: ethnocentric, polycentric, and geocentric.

The purpose of studying cultures and their differences is to guide and teach us how to successfully communicate with people from different countries and also how to learn and benefit from their cultures and ways of thinking. The publishers classified their work according to their studies, analysis, and