Impact of National Culture on the Business Strategies adopted by the MNCs

Running head: NATIONAL CULTURE AND BUSINESS STRATEGY
Impact of National Culture on the Business Strategies adopted by the MNCs
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1NATIONAL CULTURE AND BUSINESS STRATEGY
As opined by Moore (2016), national culture can be defined as the conglomeration
of all the essential attributes of the people of a particular nation like traditions, beliefs,
customs and other attributes. Liou, Chao and Yang (2016) are of the viewpoint that the notion
of national culture not only forms an integral element of the identity of the people of a
particular nation and also the manner in which they behave as well as perceive things. More
importantly, the entity of national culture also plays a pivotal role in the determining the
manner in which business is being conducted in the concerned nation (Harzing and Pudelko
2016). The net result of this is that the organizations are required to take into effective
consideration the entity of national culture not only for the kind of business practices that
they adopt but at the same time for the strategies that they choose to use (Kumar and Pansari
2016). The strategies that an MNC devises or uses in a particular nation need to be in
synchronicity with the national culture of the concerned nation for it to be success. This essay
will analyze the role that the element of national culture plays within the framework of the
strategies which are being used by the MNCs for the process of its business operations.
Hotho, Lyles and Easterby‐Smith (2015) have articulated the viewpoint that the term
‘strategy’ can be defined as a high level plan of action which is being adopted by an
organization to attain the objectives or the goals that it had outlined for itself. Moreover, as
opined by Rao-Nicholson and Khan (2017), the organizational mission strategy can best be
defined as the summary in which the concerned organization perceives its beliefs as well as
roles towards the attainment of the objectives or the organizational goals. On the other hand,
Halkos and Skouloudis (2017) have argued that the effective usage of the different kinds of
strategies often requires the organizations to undertake a thorough analysis of the business
market or environment in which they are operational but at the same time to take into
consideration the entity of culture of the people for whom their products or services are
intended. More importantly, in the contemporary times it is seen that the organizations are

2NATIONAL CULTURE AND BUSINESS STRATEGY
offering ‘behavior specific products or services’ so as to cater to the demands of the
increasingly diverse customer base that they focus on (Kostova, Nell and Hoenen 2016). This
is important from the perspective that if the products or services offered by an organization
are not in synchronicity with the demands or the needs of the customers then it is more likely
that they are not going to opt for it (Sampath and Rahman 2018). In this regard, mention
needs to be made of the organization McDonald’s which offers a menu in America that
comprises of different vegetarian and non-vegetarian food items and others. However, taking
the national culture of India into effective consideration, the organization have restricted
itself to vegetarian food items only and very few outlets of the same offer non-vegetarian
food (Kostova, Nell and Hoenen 2016).
According to Li et al. (2017), the ‘Hofstede’s model of national culture’ is one of
the most important tools which offer an insight to the different organizations regarding the
national culture of a particular nation. More importantly, as argued by Brannen, Piekkari and
Tietze (2017), the model under discussion by way of illustrating the elements of the national
culture of a particular nation also offers them an insight regarding the changes or
amendments that the organizations need to make within the framework of the business
strategies followed by them and also the kind of products or services that they are offering. In
this regard, it needs to be said that the notions of strategy and culture are greatly interrelated
and the entity of culture itself can be seen as a strategy which is being used by the individuals
to understand as well as solve issues or problems which have evolved over the years (White
et al. 2016). Furthermore, this enables the organizations to understand the manner in which
the people and the environment are correlated to each other and thereby helps them to use this
correlation for the growth as well as development of their business.
Novitskaya and Brewster (2016) are of the viewpoint that one of the major impacts of
the entity of national culture becomes apparent in the entry strategy which is being followed