Do Australians and New Zealanders Doing business with Indonesia?

Running Head: CROSS CULTURE MANAGEMENT
0
Australia and New
Zealand
Doing business with Indonesia
Student details:

CROSS CULTURE MANAGEMENT 1
The following essay is based on the managing the cultural differences faced by Australians and
New Zealanders if they will work as an expatriate in Indonesia. Herein, with the help of Hofstede
do Australians and New Zealanders face model an analysis is made over the challenges and
cultural differences. The essay also gives information about the pros and cons of cultural diverse
groups along with the suggestions of managing the prevailing situations. Later the essay includes
the cross culture behaviour, which should be adopted by Indonesians for building effective
working relationships with New Zealand and Australia.
In order to understand the national culture of different nations the Hofstede’s model is used for
the study. The expatriate who are supposed to move from Australia and New Zealand to
Indonesia because of their overseas assignments will go through the cultural challenges. Some of
these challenges are mentioned below which are explained with the help of graphical
representation. The blue, purple and green colour represents Australia, Indonesia and New
Zealand respectively.
Power distance- The dimension signifies the fact that not all individuals in the society are equal.
It can be observed that Australia holds a score of 36, which states that in Australia both the
managers and employees consult and inform each other while decision making. Similarly, in
New Zealand also score low on this dimension i.e. 22 that represents direct, informal and
participative form of communications between the employees and employers. Contradictory to
this, in Indonesia the relations between employees and employers are extremely formal. This is
clearly depicted in the score of 76. In Indonesia distribution of rights among people is unequal,
the organizations work as per the hierarchical structure of the company. Therefore, it will be
suggested to the people, who are moving to Indonesia regarding work, have to act flexibly with
the working conditions of that nation (Taras, et al., 2012).
Individualism- This dimension signifies the level of interdependence among people. With the
help of Hofstede’s model it is be observed that the score of Australia in term of individualism is
very high. The people of Australia are self- reliant and look after themselves and their closer
ones only. Similarly, in NZ also, people are self-centred and are rarely concerned about others.
NZ holds a score of 79, which depicts individualist culture whereas; in Indonesia, the score of
individualism is very low. People are concerned about each other and are ready to develop good

CROSS CULTURE MANAGEMENT 2
relations. It is suggested that the people who are moving to Indonesia should develop habit of
developing and maintaining relations with Indonesians ( MacIntosh & O'Gorman, 2015).
Masculinity- This dimension represents a preference in society for success, bravery, confidence,
and material rewards for success. The society is competitive in nature opposite of feminine
culture. As per Australian culture there, people are more into achieving and the prime goal is to
win and succeed. The Australian society is considered as masculine in nature. Similarly, in NZ
people avoid conflicts, in lieu of wasting their time they prefer to do something productive. The
score of masculinity is comparatively lesser in Indonesia as compared to other two nation’s
culture. Therefore, it is suggested that the expatriates who are moving to Indonesia should
develop a habit of making compromises because the culture in Indonesia is to invest time in
fruitful and productive activities. The free time and flexibility is not favoured in Indonesia
(Abraham & Dameyasani, 2013).
Uncertainty avoidance- The dimension of uncertainty avoidance deals with the ways regarding
which the members of culture feels threatened about. It also includes how they try to avoid these
unforeseen risks. The people of Australia scores very intermediate i.e. 51 similarly in NZ the
score diminishes to 49. This score reflects that people are equally concerned about the risks but
do not take extraordinary measures regarding them. In Indonesia, the uncertainty avoidance score
is 48, which reflects that people try to maintain harmony within organization and outside
organization as well. It is suggested that the expatriate who are moving to Indonesia should
develop the skills of maintain harmonious relations (Hwang & Lee, 2012).
Long-term orientation- This dimension defines how every society has to maintain some links
with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the future. Australia scores 21 on the
dimensions. This reflects people in Australia have fewer propensities to save for future. In NZ,
the score of long-term orientation is 33, which reflects that people holds normative approach
towards future, they have strong concern with forming utter truth. Indonesia is high on the score
of Long Term Orientation reflects the culture of adapting new traditions easily. Hence, it can be
suggested that people moving to Indonesia should become flexible in terms of adapting changes
(Minkov & Hofstede, 2012).