Everyday life exists of meeting familiar and unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar faces, habits, beliefs and cultures are what constitutes ‘The Other’. Travelling and working abroad makes us much more aware of ‘The Other’. In the ‘Understanding the Other’ series of blogposts you learn more about the deeper, underlying layers of other cultures. In the process you become more aware of your own culture and life choices, opening the door for personal development and improving your social interactions with other cultures and lifestyles, either at home or abroad. This is part 1: The challenge of cultural differences. Image by Wikimedia Commons.
Cultural differences
Cultural differences can be found in three types of operational spheres: (a) employee collaboration, (b) interactions with consumers and (c) external stakeholder management.
Employee collaboration
Many employees working for multinational companies have to cope with a range of cross-cultural issues that arise from the staff’s multicultural backgrounds Although corporate culture, functional disciplines (e.g. finance, logistics) and regulations provide employees with a sense of common understanding, projects can be severely negatively affected by a lack of skills for dealing with cultural misunderstandings. A lack of insight into the diversity of values and demeanors can bring about interpersonal distrust and slow down the coordination of tasks, in particular in an international context.
Interactions with consumers
From a marketing perspective, various elements of culture (e.g. religious beliefs, materialism, language, education, the family structure, gender role, manners, customs, and time orientation) can have a significant impact on the acceptability and adoption pattern of innovative products and services among consumers.
External stakeholder management
From a stakeholder perspective, international corporate scandals related to work conditions and the environment, and the increased political capacity of local residents have encouraged international managers to improve their skills in cross-cultural conflict resolution and enter into strategic dialogues with a broader range of stakeholders.
Go to part 2: What is culture?
Related books (which include all references)
