ASSIGNMENT 8

Module 8 – Changing Corporate Behaviour to Respond to Changing National Cultures

• Objectives
• Instructor Comments
• Assignment

Module 8 – Changing Corporate Behaviour to Respond to Changing National Cultures

Objectives

The aim of this assignment is to assess how a change in the national culture of a company’s operating environment alters how a company conducts business.

Instructor Comments

Just as different demographic profiles can lead to changes in how a company operates and organizes itself so to can operating in locations with different national cultures. This exercise introduces you to three useful online sources of information regarding different national cultures. Each allows users to sort by country and within each country explore different aspects or features of that culture. One important sources of comparative information is hosted on a website titled Geert Hostede.com which is named after the researcher who developed the dataset. A second data source is hosted by the Centre for Intercultural Learning of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Government of Canada. A third source is the website of a U.K. based company, Kwintessential.com. This assignment helps learners understand how a company’s practices will need to change depending upon the country within which it operates.

Assignment

You should base your responses to the following questions on the insight found on the following websites.

• Newfoundland Capital Corporation http://www.ncc.ca.
• Centre for Cross Cultural Learning http://www.intercultures.ca.
• Geert Hostede.com http://www.geert-hostede.com.
• Kwintessential http://www.kwintessential.co.uk.

In this situation, Newfoundland Capital Corporation has decided to expand from its home market of St. John’s, Newfoundland. It is opening an office in Mexico City, Mexico and Dusseldorf, Germany.

Please answer the following questions:

• How might the training of the company’s sales force need to change in order to conduct business in these two new markets?
• How might the company alter its negotiation practices for each market?
• How would business communications practices need to change for each market?
• How will decision making and the use of hierarchy need to change for the company’s offices in these two markets assuming that local staff be hired to run the offices?

Please limit your response to this assignment to three single spaced, typed pages. Please cite your sources in the text and please reference them at the end of your assignment. Please end your write-up with one paragraph that summarizes what you think is the importance of this assignment.