Case Ellen More
Case 1: Ellen Moore (A): Living and Working in Korea
1. CQ: Is what happened to Ellen a surprise? Why or why not? Do you think what happened to Ellen would have happened to people like yourself, and from your background? Why or why not?
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Considering the Korea’s cultural context it was not a surprise what happened to Ellen. First, the collective behavior is highly influenced by the country national religion, the Confucian. Which dictates several social norms of behavior, such as loyalty to hierarchical power, duty to parents, rules of behavior involving obedience and respectful behavior within superiors-subordinate relationship (Nicholls & Ellement, 1997, p. 6), that are very different from most cultures in Western countries.
There are expected general behaviors from a Korean leader that clashed to the American way of doing business. In Korea leaders are paternalistic, works and cares about team, although been hierarchal and independent, relying on status and position to make independent decisions. On the other hand the US leaders tend to be team-oriented, working collaborative with team members, motivating and envisioning, but also being autonomous and independent leaders. This presented a great challenge to combine such different cultures, especially considering the gender of the professional. Women played a specific role in Korean society, although it’s starting to change in Seoul.
Small differences on working routine were also a source of conflict. The high hierarchy client-supplier and manager-team, lead the team to never say they didn’t understand something, in order to avoid conflict with the boss, and the local team was reluctant to schedule meetings to interview the client’s management team, considering that they would be in some sort of way disturbing the client. On the other hand, the leader was supposed to give bad feedback in front of everybody and celebrating the victories was seen as
1. CQ: Is what happened to Ellen a surprise? Why or why not? Do you think what happened to Ellen would have happened to people like yourself, and from your background? Why or why not?
-------------------------------------------------
Considering the Korea’s cultural context it was not a surprise what happened to Ellen. First, the collective behavior is highly influenced by the country national religion, the Confucian. Which dictates several social norms of behavior, such as loyalty to hierarchical power, duty to parents, rules of behavior involving obedience and respectful behavior within superiors-subordinate relationship (Nicholls & Ellement, 1997, p. 6), that are very different from most cultures in Western countries.
There are expected general behaviors from a Korean leader that clashed to the American way of doing business. In Korea leaders are paternalistic, works and cares about team, although been hierarchal and independent, relying on status and position to make independent decisions. On the other hand the US leaders tend to be team-oriented, working collaborative with team members, motivating and envisioning, but also being autonomous and independent leaders. This presented a great challenge to combine such different cultures, especially considering the gender of the professional. Women played a specific role in Korean society, although it’s starting to change in Seoul.
Small differences on working routine were also a source of conflict. The high hierarchy client-supplier and manager-team, lead the team to never say they didn’t understand something, in order to avoid conflict with the boss, and the local team was reluctant to schedule meetings to interview the client’s management team, considering that they would be in some sort of way disturbing the client. On the other hand, the leader was supposed to give bad feedback in front of everybody and celebrating the victories was seen as