International Business Communications: Challenges and Solutions for AstraZeneca in China

This presentation explores the challenges and solutions for AstraZeneca in China, including the culture of China, success and failure factors of joint ventures, cultural sensitivity, Hofstede's cultural dimension theory, and intercultural communication theory. It provides recommendations for effective communication and business solutions, emphasizing the importance of respecting each culture and providing equal opportunities to work. The presentation concludes that effective communication is crucial for international business success.

International Business
Communications

Table of Content
◦ Introduction
◦ Introduction Chinese culture
◦ Success and Failure factors of joint ventures
◦ Cultural sensitivity in China
◦ Hofstede's cultural dimension theory
◦ Intercultural communication theory
◦ Recommendations and business communication solutions
◦ Conclusion
◦ References

Introduction
International business communication is defined as the process of sharing the information and
ideas in between individuals in order to connect with different organizations globally.
AstraZeneca is the chosen organization for this presentation. It is a British multinational
company headquartered in Cambridge, England. This report is about the culture of China, how
the company will enter in such a different culture, what are success and failure measures of joint
ventures and what challenges will it going to face while expanding globally.

Introduction of culture of China
Chinese culture is the East Asian dominant and
world's oldest culture originated thousands of
years ago. Music, art, religion, literatures and
many more are considered as important
components to this culture. The culture values
of honest, loyalty, wisdom and harmony

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If AstraZeneca wants to expand its business in China, it will face following major challenges:
•Language Barrier: It is important to consider the type of languages spoken in the country where
you are going to open your new branch.
•Culture Barrier: Each country have its own culture and rituals. China has Buddhism, Islam and
others as major religion whereas, British culture has Christian in majority

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•Managing Global Teams: This is a important factor for any company to maintain the
overall information of its employees and workers.
•Religion: This is the most challenging factor as it may be the reason of clash in between
countries.

Success and Failure factors of joint
ventures
Joint venture includes the combination of two or
more business entities for the creation of a new
enterprise to earn more profit. As it have benefits
such as shared expenses, earn more profit,
popularity in another country and many more, it
also have some risk factors as they combined their
businesses on the basis of legal agreement

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Success factors
•Plan carefully: The organizations working in a joint venture, should plan their operations very
carefully.
•Communicate: It is an essential key to build healthy relationship. It should be clear that everyone
would understand about the joint venture agreement.

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Failure factors
•Cultural clashes: It may be major reason for the failure of a joint venture as different company
have its own culture
•Failure of promises: As two or more companies are combining together, they have to follow
some rules and regulations, they have to make some promises by signing agreements.

Cultural sensitivity in China
China follows a hard-working culture with non socialistic nature. This is the major reason why it
will tough for any other country's company to adjust in China(Zhang and Xiang, 2021). Similarly,
culture of U.K. is very different from that of China.

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Some major differences of working culture in both countries are
following:
•Business language of China is Mandarin whereas English is
business language of U.K.
•Business meetings are compulsory and face to face in case of
China which should be in confident manner whereas in U.K.,
most of meetings are via phone calls or emails.

Hofstede's cultural dimension theory
This model will be helpful to understand how society culture will affect its members.
Organizations use this model to understand the cultural behaviour of employees within
organization.

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Hofstede's model in context to AstraZeneca is
following:
•Power distance index (PDI): It is the level of
power among individuals within an
organization. It is divided according to the
rules and regulations of company. AstraZeneca
follows low PDP

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•Individualism v/s Collectivism: If the company and
its workers are selfish and only take responsibilities
of there known then it is individualism and if the
company and its workers are helping and have
healthy relations between themselves then it is
collectivism. AstraZeneca follows Collectivism.

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•Masculinity v/s Femininity: In case of masculinity, the
company will believe in show off and is attention seeker,
have ego problems between top employees and lower one
and needs financial support, but in case of femininity the
workers are helping and caring towards each other, there is
no ego problem between them. AstraZeneca follows
femininity

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•Uncertainty avoidance index: It shows if the
company will able to solve or face the problems or
adverse conditions or not. Low index shows that the
company is able to cope up whereas in case of high
index, the company will not able to handle
situations. AstraZeneca have low uncertainty
avoidance index.

Intercultural communication theory
These theories are developed in order to understand the cultural differences when a company is
switching international business. It will be a major problem if there is lack of understanding of
culture in between countries.

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•Communication accommodation theory: This is a
communication theory which identify the
adjustments that people does while communicating.
AstraZeneca uses this theory to minimize social
difference with Walvax, as it is going to work in a
joint venture with the company. This theory will
allow the company to identify the behaviour and
culture of Walvax.

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•Face negotiation theory: This theory explains that
how facial expressions could also be the reason of
conflicts in between two countries. AstraZeneca
should analyse this theory as it is now going out of
boundaries and it should be aware of the things
which could be the reason of conflicts. If it is aware
that which facial expression may be the reason of
conflict then it will able to prevent them.

Recommendations and business
communication solutions
As it is known, effective communication is necessary to make any business successful.
Communication is important to deliver clear message about any policy, terms or conditions,
changes and others. It is necessary to have knowledge about customers and competitors.
•Communicate effectively
•Respect each culture
•Equal opportunity to work

Conclusion
From this presentation it could be concluded that communication is very important while a
company is growing internationally. China has an oldest culture with music, arts, religion and
many more as its major components. As the country's companies follows strict working culture
and have its own business language, AstraZeneca will face problems as it is a U.K. based
company.

References
Bolten, J., 2020. Intercultural business communication: An interactive approach. In Exploring the rhetoric of
international professional communication (pp. 139-155). Routledge.
Sundararajan, L., 2020. A history of the concepts of harmony in Chinese culture. In Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Psychology.

Thank You