Management in the Global Environment

Running head: MANAGEMENT IN THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Management in the Global Environment
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1MANAGEMENT IN THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Business culture of a country is defined as the style of business operations within
companies in a particular country (Schmiedel, vom Brocke and Recker 2015). It is the culture
of the business in a country that will determine how employees should interact with each
other, along with how these same employees will interact with the customers or clients.
Culture differences are able influence international business proceedings in three areas, which
are, communication, etiquette and the hierarchy in the organization. This paper will be
analysing the difference in business culture in Australia and the China using Hofstede’s six
dimensions of culture. This method will be able to identify the differences that lie in the
business culture of both countries. The six cultural dimensions are power distance,
individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance
index, long-term versus short-term orientation and finally, indulgence versus restraint
(Beugelsdijk, Kostova and Roth 2017). This paper will first look at the business culture
present in Australia.
It will be useful to remember that Australians usually possess a strong sense of self-
reliance and their business culture accurately reflects this characteristic. Australian businesses
have increasingly been trying to adopt a more international outlook both economically and
politically. This is because there is a great lacking of demand from the domestic markets
along with an overall geographical isolation that Australia is experiencing (Nordstrom et al.
2017). Using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the first dimension that will be focused on is
the power distance present in Australian businesses. It has been found that the power distance
in Australia is considered very low. A low power distance indicates that the power is very
spread out in businesses in Australia instead of it only being assigned to a selective few
people (Burson et al. 2017). This means that the Australian people believe that hierarchy
shows an inequality of roles which are only established for convenience. Using Hofstede’s
analysis, Australia has reflected very high levels of individuality, which is deeply rooted in its