Business and Culture
Business and Culture Essay
“With increased globalization, economies have become more interdependent, making internationalization of operations critical for a company’s success in today’s competitive environment”. This essay will examine problems that Air New Zealand and Jet Star deal with whilst working internationally in a multi-cultural environment. Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions will help illustrate on an organizational level the importance for survival of these two companies when faced with their challenges in foreign markets.
It becomes a critical matter for such large corporations to understand their foreign markets well, as a huge financial loss can occur if their understanding is not efficient enough. Brand image can also become a loss if cultural differences are not taken into account when entering new markets. Working across foreign markets and integrating business operations, both factors become co-linked for a corporation to be successful in foreign waters. Hofstede states that national culture is a collective occurrence and is learned from one’s social environment, it is a set of values, norms, practices, symbols of communication and rituals shared and recognized only by a group of people or society that share that culture. (Hofstede & Minkov, 2010).
Taking into account cultural differences has become a side issue for businesses, the highly advanced growth of technology and communication has left businesses to undermine the importance that all cultures are different and need to be familiarized with if successful business practices and customer base will be formed. “As national borders become porous and nations become multi ethnical, researchers should expect to find segments of society who were born in one national culture, reside in another, and perhaps hold citizenship in yet another. The concepts of acculturalization and deculturalization becomes apparent as to their affects on unconscious thought and ultimately behavior.” (Arch,
“With increased globalization, economies have become more interdependent, making internationalization of operations critical for a company’s success in today’s competitive environment”. This essay will examine problems that Air New Zealand and Jet Star deal with whilst working internationally in a multi-cultural environment. Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions will help illustrate on an organizational level the importance for survival of these two companies when faced with their challenges in foreign markets.
It becomes a critical matter for such large corporations to understand their foreign markets well, as a huge financial loss can occur if their understanding is not efficient enough. Brand image can also become a loss if cultural differences are not taken into account when entering new markets. Working across foreign markets and integrating business operations, both factors become co-linked for a corporation to be successful in foreign waters. Hofstede states that national culture is a collective occurrence and is learned from one’s social environment, it is a set of values, norms, practices, symbols of communication and rituals shared and recognized only by a group of people or society that share that culture. (Hofstede & Minkov, 2010).
Taking into account cultural differences has become a side issue for businesses, the highly advanced growth of technology and communication has left businesses to undermine the importance that all cultures are different and need to be familiarized with if successful business practices and customer base will be formed. “As national borders become porous and nations become multi ethnical, researchers should expect to find segments of society who were born in one national culture, reside in another, and perhaps hold citizenship in yet another. The concepts of acculturalization and deculturalization becomes apparent as to their affects on unconscious thought and ultimately behavior.” (Arch,