CULTURE

Internationalization and Cross Cultural Management

Introduction2

About TESCO3

Cross cultural management3

Implications of management style3

Decision making processes5

Communication issues6

Motivation6

Performance management7

Team work versus individual working preferences8

Recommendations8

References10

Internationalization and Cross Cultural Management

Introduction

Internationalization is one of the most crucial aspects of competitive organizations today. In spite of the many reasons why companies chose going international, there are certain problems that are inherent in it. These include knowledge and resource barriers. These barriers also differ with the level of internationalization that is taking place and what is the motive behind this internationalization. For instance, an export company will consider the lack of incentives and the strict laws and regulations of the host country to be the barriers for internationalization. For another company these laws and regulations pertaining to their business may be very favourable. There are four stages of internationalization. These are,

Domestic - all activities are conducted with home country

International - international marketing function and exports

Multinational - Manufacturing and other facilities are established in various countries.

Transitional or Global - Global location and sourcing of functions

Culture is one of the major issued that Western companies have faced when expanding into Asian markets (West 2003, p. 203). The problems faced by Nike, McDonalds' are few of the prominent ones. National culture is defined as the set of characteristics, norms, beliefs and values commonly held by a society. Any practice or procedures, which are against the national culture of the host country, will result in failure for Tesco.

The paper discusses the implications of the cultural difference in the home and host country for human resource managers. For this paper, the international business manager has chosen to take Tesco to Pakistan.

About TESCO

Tesco, the brain child of Jack Cohen came into existence in the year 1919. Tesco is involved in grocery and general merchandising retailing. In terms of revenue, Tesco ranks as the third largest retailer in the world. Palmer (2005) says today, Tesco has a very strong brand value. It is the value of the brand Tesco that enables it to gain competitive advantage over others. Tesco has maintained its brand value by providing customers the opportunity to indulge in some exceptional shopping experience. Moreover, Tesco has maintained its name in retaining customer satisfaction by providing affordable products. Affordability and outclass shopping experience are the unique selling propositions for Tesco. It is because of this reason that Tesco claims every little helps. In line with this, Tesco plans to diversify and ensure its presence in many countries around the world. Today, it employs around 440,000 people for more than 3700 stores spread across the globe. Besides the UK, it has stores in U.S, South Korea, Turkey, Poland, China, Thailand, India, Japan, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, and in Slovakia (Sheard & Kakabadse 2004, p. 7).

Cross cultural management

The cross cultural management on the part of the manager requires that the manager pays attention to many concepts in people management. These are discussed hereunder:

Implications of management style

There are five styles of leadership. These are Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez-faire, Impoverished, and Task ...