Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Introduction

In this paper, an organization whose origin is United States and has global ranking and is engaged in the operations for the related product or services it provides globally are discussed with keeping in mind any ethical problem that the organization might have to face when crossing the boundaries of United States of America. For this purpose, world renowned organization, Microsoft, has been selected and a comprehensive study has been performed in order to see what were the ethical problems faced by the corporation when entering into new countries and facing new cultures. Also the social responsibilities that the corporation has in engaging with people belonging to different cultures are also discussed in this paper. The major ethical problem that the corporation had to face was having control over the selling of pirated versions of Microsoft products that had been selling at a very minimum amount in other countries that was greatly affecting the corporation's reputation.

Discussion

Microsoft Corporation is among the largest corporations of the world and is also ranked on 120th number in the list of biggest global corporations by fortune 500 in the year 2011 (Fortune Global 500, 2011). Microsoft Corporation was founded in the late nineties by one of the greatest names today, Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen. The corporation sowed great success and reached to the list of top corporations within a short time. The corporation employed around 90,000 employees while generating a little more than $60 billion of revenues and established its offices around the globe by the end of 2011 (Fortune Global 500, 2011). Establishing new branches in the foreign countries was a big challenge for the corporation as it needed to cope up with different lifestyles, languages and cultures of the people. A detailed research was needed to be conducted in order to amalgamate within these cultures and handle any ethical problem related to this situation.

The homepage of Microsoft corporation sum ups the complete adaptation of their cultural approach. Microsoft Corporation (2011) believes in valuing honesty, reliability, personal excellence, openness, continuity in self improvement and having mutual respect for others. The corporation has also keen interest in maintaining their official responsibilities as a portion of their ethical commitments. When any organization makes an effort to enter into a new country having a different culture, along with the corporation, it is equally important for the employees to have a proper understanding ...