Case Study on Intercultural Management

This article presents two case studies on intercultural management. The first case study discusses the challenges faced by an expatriate in Japan due to cultural differences. The second case study highlights the issues faced by a global team at Sun Microsystems, Inc. due to cultural diversity. The article also provides insights on cultural dimensions and their impact on employee behavior.

Running Head: CASE STUDY ON INTERCULTURAL MANAGEMENT
Case Study on Intercultural Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1CASE STUDY ON INTERCULTURAL MANAGEMENT
Case Study 1. Kelly’s assignment in Japan
Qs 1) In the current case study Kelly faced various difficulties due to cultural,
environmental and traditional differences between two countries. In this case the difference is
between the European culture where Kelly was born and brought up and the Japanese culture she
knows less than enough about. She came to Japan with high ambitions and expectations as a
representative of her company. Her husband and children also came along with her to a new
country only to face problems, imbalance, language clashes and above all, cultural clashes. She
was not properly welcome by the Japanese colleagues, their silent response and not agreeing to
do individual presentation disrupted her expectations and mindset. In this respect professor Geert
Hofstede presented few dimensions of cultural diversity which affect employee behavior. The
power distance index, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity, indulgence vs
restraint, uncertainty avoidance index is important (Saleem and Larimo 2017). Employees get
affected by the unequal distribution of power, the entire workforce gets affected due to the
individual –minded workers and team-focused workers which happened with the Japanese
employees who preferred team work and Kelly asked them to do individual presentation. The
clash started from this difference.
Qs 2) The management of the company in which Kelly works in Boston, should have
trained her before sending her on such a serious project. According to Pakdil and Leonard
(2015), it is the primary responsibility of any business organization to train the expatriate for a
long time regarding the customs, backgrounds, culture, language, behaviors and standards of the
new country. They must have made her familiar with the business cultures in Japan, regarding

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what they prefer to do, how they prefer to work, how they will respond to a woman program
manager, their dining habits, Japanese road guides and many other minor concepts which made
the life of Kelly and her family difficult in Japan.
Qs 3) Since Kelly landed in Japan without any proper training from the part of the
company, Kelly should have first navigated the new office terrain, tried to observe her Japanese
colleague because the Japanese culture does not allow to question colleagues or senior managers
in a team meeting. As a senior and experienced program manager she should have researched a
bit on the internet regarding the basic Japanese work culture and etiquettes according to the
views of Chatman and O’Reilly (2016). She lost the contract because she committed the mistake
of putting the business card given by the client CEO without even giving a glance at him. In the
Japanese business culture, this is highly disrespectful. She could have succeeded in making the
deal for which she had come all along from Boston, had she made herself culturally intelligent
beforehand.
Qs 4) The first decision I would have taken if I were at the place of Kelly is not to leave
the country out of desperation. It is true that the situation was high for Kelly and her family and
without proper training it was becoming depressing to even communicate with the Japanese
people, leave aside the business project development. Caught in this situation firstly I would
have tried to rebuild my distorted confidence and adopted every measure to know the country
culture where I was sent as an expatriate. Keeping in mind that cultural differences are an
integral part of any organization, I would have focused on starting from the beginning to know
what the business people want, how they want and how I can develop my cultural competency,
inclusiveness and cultural intelligence.

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Case Study 2) Managing a global team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc.
(A)
Qs 1) In the case of Greg James, and his experience in the Sun Microsystems, it is
apparent that there is one major issue that has posed greater impact on the company operation
and productivity as well as impacted the career of Greg because he was the one who had
accepted the program on the organization without anticipating the negative impacts it can leave
on the company. It is the issue of open work system. The program enabled the employees to
work from anywhere and anytime supporting them with appropriate tools and techniques. James
realized the need of flexible place and timing for the workforce and submitted the application on
behalf of the entire workforce. He had expected to use this program to globally advance the
team. Surprisingly the idea did not work successfully.
The second issue that has been detected in the case study is the issue of managing time
zone and work. Since the motto of the company is to encourage global talents, they have
established virtual teams all around the globe including India, France ,America and many other
countries. the time difference in the associate countries disrupt the work flow. Apart from these
there is another minor issue that is with the compensation mismatch. The cultural difference and
the subsequent difference in opinions and philosophy create problem in the workforce. Hence the
issues according to their order of priority are thus –
 open work program (highest)
 Time zone and work management (lowest)
 Compensation mismatch (lowest)
Qs 2) The resulting impact of the issues on the overall group is thus –

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Impact of issue 1- The open work program only succeeds when there is a strong
communication between the employees and the leaders or among the employees suggests Binder
(2016). According to Greg James the communication was constantly being interrupted which is
really important and there were misunderstanding and the team failed to respond promptly to the
customer with whom they were in a service contract agreement. The server failure at the most
important moment also disturbed the flow of communication (Bondi et al. 2016).
Impact of issue 2- The next issue is the time zone management of all the countries.
James had informed the team of 45 that they would conduct a weekly conference calls positively.
Keeping in mind the fact that the time zones are different, he tried to start and end the calls on
time since the employees might have other constraints and the work time of an Indian worker
might not match with a worker staying at France. Still the program faced problems. Although
James had set the meeting time according to the pacific standard time the Indian team faced
issues. They had excessively long days and started working early in the morning to get the
meeting information but got unhappy about the fact that they are bereft of the interesting work
which other teams receive.
Impact of issue 3- The third issue is regarding the compensation mismatch. The Indians
complained that they are always left behind and do not get interesting works to do like other
teams. The French on the other hand expressed their displeasure regarding the unequal
distribution of salaries between them and the American employees. This initiated an environment
of conflict within the workforce. The salaries were based on the local markets and this was the
reason behind why the Americans were getting 30% more. This scenario highly disturbed the
organizational connection
Qs) Cultural dimensions behind these issues –

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The biggest reasons behind the entire issue is the cultural diversity within the workforce.
According to Anicich et al. (2015) diversity in the organizational culture should promote respect,
acceptance, trust and honesty regardless of difference in race language, gender, religion, beliefs
and style of communications. The people staying in France, America or India have different
work cultures and beliefs which highly impacts their work behaviors and incur a rebellious
attitude towards other culture (according to this case). It’s the nature of human race to think best
of own culture but this should be changed in the organizational context at least so that their
cultural diversity does not initiate any communal or national conflict within the workforce. The
managers and the leaders have to be agile enough to alleviate such cultural dysfunctions.

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