Cross Cultural

MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES, CROSS-CULTURAL MANAGEMENT ISSUES AND THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS

by

Laurent Billon

A project study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration

Examination Committee:

Dr. Fredric W. Swierczek (Chairman) Dr. Nicolas J. Dimmitt Dr. Willi Zimmermann

Nationality: Previous Degree:

French Bachelor of Arts Ceram Sophia-Antipolis, France CERAM-AIT

Scholarship Donor:

Asian Institute of Technology School of Management Thailand May 2005

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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my research supervisor, Dr. Fredric Swierczek, for his interest and advised approach of the subject. I would also like to thank my examination committee members, Dr. Willi Zimmermann and Dr. Nicholas Dimmitt, for taking interest in and time for my research study. I would like to thank all the people at AIT and more generally of Thailand for smiling every day. They have been so nice with me that I decided to stay in Thailand, and to focus my work on cross-cultural management in order to work with them. I would like to thank my parents who supported me when I decided to study abroad and when I decided to stay in Thailand. It is thanks to them that I left my country to discover another culture, and that I had my first real “culture” shock. In many aspects, this paper is the result of this shock.

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Abstract
How to deal with cross-cultural issues has been the subject of intense debates and researches for about three decades. This cross-cultural dimension is very important for global firms, especially multinational companies (MNCs), which have to deal daily with cross-cultural issues between the different corporate cultures of their numerous subsidiaries as well as the different national cultures inside the same entity. Cultural diversity creates conflicts due mainly to miscommunication and uncertainty brought by a new culture. However training and experience can... [continues]

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