Cultural Analysis for Business in Different Country

Running head: CULTURAL ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRY
CULTURAL ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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CULTURAL ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRY
Culture can be defined as the set of learned behaviors as well as beliefs that mainly
characterizes a group of people or a society. Anthropologists mainly divide culture in three
different levels like the international culture, national culture as well as subculture. However,
another sublevel of culture has high significance in every corporate and professional business
environment. This is called the corporate culture (Jiang, Gollan and Brooks 2017). This is mainly
seen to refer to the different beliefs as well as behaviors that participate in determining the
procedures about how employees and management interact in the office environment and handle
outside business transactions. Researchers are of the opinion that corporate culture gradually
develops organically over time from the variety of the cumulative traits of the people hired by
the company (Kwek and Lee 2015). This assignment will help to show how Mary (the individual
in the case study) will utilize the Hofstede analysis and will learn about the corporate culture of
Chinese firms so that she can conduct effective business.
In order to conduct effective business, Mary, who is acquainted with the Australian
culture of business and management, needs to develop cultural knowledge about the different
attributes of corporate culture in China. She needs to take the help of Hofstede theory by which
she can develop good amount of knowledge of the culture of business in Mr. Lau’s organization
and engage into effective partnership.
The first important component that an individual should first focus is the power distance.
This can be defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of the institutions and
organizations within a particular nation expect as well as accept the fact that power is distributed
unequally. Australia has a very low score of power distance like 36 which signifies that the
leaders of Australian organizations encourage development of hierarchy for convenience where
the seniors are always accessible and approachable. Managers have huge dependency on the

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CULTURAL ANALYSIS FOR BUSINESS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRY
subordinates and both the stakeholders engage in transparent conversations where information is
shared and consulted frequently and actively (Manrai et al. 2018). Here, communication is found
to be direct, participative as well as informal. China, in this attribute score about 80 where the
society believes that inequalities are acceptable in people and subordinates do not aspire beyond
their rank. The relationship between the leaders and followers are polarized and subordinates are
influenced by formal authority and are accepting of the fact (Hong et al. 2018). While working
with the new people in the Chinese organization, she should be respectable of the relationships
shared by the seniors and juniors regarding power distance and should not try to be over friendly
or too informal with staffs. This may not be liked by the organization. She should maintain a
power distance with the subordinates so that the workers do not suffer from cultural shock and
get confused or perceive her in negative ways.
The second important fact is individualism. This dimension mainly explains the degree of
interdependence that a society is observed to maintain among the members. In societies which
are individualist, the professionals are mainly seen to be looking after their own self or their
families. However, in the collectivist society, people are seen to be belonging to group systems
where individuals take care of each other in exchange of loyalty. Australians are found to be
quite high in this attribute scoring a total around 90. In this corporate culture, employees are
expected to be self-reliant and display initiative. Hiring is entirely based on merit and evidence
about how one performs or the qualities he has. However, the score of china in this attribute is
quite low for about 20 where people act for the interest of the groups (Alexander, Thompson and
Murray 2017). Relationships are seen to be cooperative for the in-groups but they display hostile
behavior with the out groups. Personal relationships are given importance over task as well as
company (Armstrong et al. 2017). For example, while Mary will be conducting the cross-cultural