McDonald's & China: Understanding National Culture for Business

This report examines China's national culture through various models, focusing on how cultural effects differentiate Chinese employees and how McDonald's can leverage this culture for business. It highlights McDonald's entry strategy via franchising and the need to understand organizational culture, employee preferences, and customer expectations in the Chinese market. Using Hall's cross-cultural model, the report analyzes China as a high-context culture, emphasizing factors like overtness of messages, locus of control, non-verbal communication, group cohesion, and commitment to relationships. It concludes that the Chinese society values long-term relationships and process over product, influencing how McDonald's should adapt its business practices.

National Culture: China

National culture
 National culture of a country
involves its cultural
diversity, values, views,
understanding and
stereotypes of that
particular country.
 The aim of this report is to
discuss the national culture
of China from various
models and judge how the
cultural effect has
differentiated the Chinese
employees from the rest of
the world and how
MacDonald’s can use this
culture for business.

MacDonald’s view of Chinese culture
 In Chinese market MacDonald’s needs to enter the market through franchisee
method which it applies in entering every international market
(Corporate.mcdonalds.com 2018).
 It needs to be have to be well acquainted with the organisational culture of the
employees, their preferences and their values as well as expectations
 Fast-food culture is already present hence tough to introduce western food habit
 How the customers will like or whether they will like the western food need to be
judged
 To understand the employees and customers Hall’s cross-cultural model can help
Macdonald’s.

Hall’s cultural dimension
 Hall has classified diverse cultures
in three types.
 These are high, low and middle
context (Hall et al. 1968)
 It reflects few essential
differences among the diverse
cultural backgrounds.
 By using the generalization of the
high context culture, the role of
initialization in Chinese culture
can be explained.

National culture from Hall’s
perspective The national culture of China is mainly a high context one. In order to
understand features of the high context culture, there are various
factors associated which are needed to be discussed. These are
Overtness (obviousness) of messages
Locus (place) of control and attribution (reason) for failure
Use of non-verbal communication
Expression of reaction
Cohesion and separation of groups
People bonds
Level of commitment to relationships
Flexibility of time

High context culture of China
 China is high context culture
hence does not use any covert or
implicit messages in their
communication
 It has inner locus of control hence
a high personal acceptance for
own failure
 Reserved and inward reactions
are maintained by the people
 This culture shows a strong
distinction between in group and
out group

Contd.
 The Chines society is highly collective
hence it has a strong people bonds
was well as affiliation to their own
families and respective communities
 In maintaining these bond, the people
of China maintains high commitment
to a long-term relationship.
 Relationship am0ng the groups is
more important than accomplishment
of the tasks.
 To the Chinese, time is open as well
as flexible as the process is more
essential than the products.

References:
 Hall, E.T., Birdwhistell, R.L., Bock, B., Bohannan, P., Diebold Jr, A.R., Durbin, M.,
Edmonson, M.S., Fischer, J.L., Hymes, D., Kimball, S.T. and La Barre, W., 1968.
Proxemics [and comments and replies]. Current anthropology, 9(2/3), pp.83-108.
 Huarng, K.H. and Ribeiro-Soriano, D.E., 2014. Developmental management:
Theories, methods, and applications in entrepreneurship, innovation, and
sensemaking. Journal of Business Research, 67(5), pp.657-662.
 Igbaekemen, G.O., 2014. Impact of leadership style on organisation
performance: A strategic literature review. Public Policy and Administrafion
Research, 4(9), pp.126-135.
 Corporate.mcdonalds.com. (2018). Company Overview |
McDonald's. Corporate.mcdonalds.com. Retrieved 19 May 2018, from
http://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/investors-relations/company-
profile.html