Cross Cultural Management Case Study: Hydro Generation in Tanzania

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes a cross-cultural management case study.

CROSS CULTURAL MANAGEMENT
0

Table of Contents
Task 1: Podcast Script.....................................................................................................................2
Task 2: Reflective Report................................................................................................................3
References........................................................................................................................................7
1

Task 1: Podcast Script
In the provided case study, a US based organization Hydro Generation (HG) faced several
problems. Organizational culture of HG was hampered as Jones was adopting Tanzanian culture
at work. Clan culture is a familiar approach that enables employees to be more collaborative and
employers to commit to the workers. Following this model can help HG maintaining its unique
organizational culture. The life style of Jones was different from other managers caused lack of
communication and interactions with them. So, his responsibility toward motivating and making
the other foreign personnel comfortable in new environment was lagging. As per Maslow’s
motivational theory, Self actualization needs, esteem needs, belonging needs, safety needs and
physiological needs are needs of the employees that should be met so to motivate them at work.
Following this theory, HG can make its employees motivated at workplace. Jones spent much to
install technologies without communicating his decisions with others. This kind of leadership
may cause loss in business. Democratic Leadership model where each and every employee is
requested to give their decision can help HG to achieve its goal. Jones used to interview and hire
the suggested relatives of local people. Such recruitment practice increases threats. The CSR of
HG included resettlement package through renovation of health centers and schools. Ethical
issues came in the path and due to Jones’s activities, HG has to spend much and the reputation of
the company was hampered. As per data protection act 1998, the personal data must be
maintained so that safety of any organization is not disturbed, which will be helpful for HG. The
Communication among the different personnel in the organization was seemed to be less. Lack
of communication may create misunderstandings at workplace. So, maintenance of proper
organizational structure is essential to develop a proper working environment in the organization.
2

Task 2: Reflective Report
The case study “Brett Jones in Tanzania - what to do when a manager “goes native”?” highlights
the different management practices followed by Brett Jones, the project liaison specialist of
Hydro Generation (HG), an US based company, in a major dam project in Tanzania. I have
identified the various problems that relates to the organizational culture, Leadership,
Organizational Structure, Motivation and Human Resource Management and Ethics and
Corporate social Responsibilities that serve as the backbone of any business organization. The
serious problems that have been identified force the organization to rethink about hiring some
other American managers having good knowledge of Tanzanian culture.
In the given case study, different issues have come up that were resulted by the action of Brett
Jones, the project liaison specialist of US based Hydro Generation (HG), in a dam project at
Tanzania. To run a business in a foreign country, several factors should be addressed. After
analyzing the provided case study I have found that the organization is going through some
major problems. According to me the problems can be related to various aspects of the business.
Those aspects are listed below.
Organizational Culture: It can be defined by the behaviours, values, assumptions and
interaction procedures that are the major contributors of unique psychological and social
environment of a business organization (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015). From the case study,
I have seen that in HG, Jones was not properly maintaining the own culture of his organization.
According to him, accommodating the Tanzanian work culture was the biggest priority. I think
that the major components of organizational culture are the experiences, expectations,
philosophy and the values of the organization that influence the behaviour, interaction of its
members. As every organization has developed its own unique culture, I think changes in the
culture may invite several problems in the organizational growth and work environment because
the process of changing the organizational culture is also a difficult process. According to me, as
business growth promotes the strengthening of cultural values with time and the initial values of
a business organization’s culture influences its future values. In my opinion, hiring people
depending on organizational culture is essential. In my view, the culture of any new employee
3

must be analyzed and reported to the Human resource department in the initial period. So, I think
certain rules and policy should be developed to maintain the culture of a business.
Leadership: There are several Leadership models that can be defined by particular
leadership behaviors that are conducted in a particular situation or environment. In my
view, Democratic Leadership model could be beneficial for HG. Democratic leadership
model can be defined by a leadership model where the managers ask the team leaders or the
individual employees before taking any major decision (Antonakis and Day, 2017). As Brett
Jones gave more attention to work through an autocratic leadership model, where the manager
does not take other’s decision, the organization faced trouble. Installation of different
technologies is important but these were time consuming procedures. In my opinion, spending
extra money in order to decrease the time consumption was a critical decision. I think before
taking such decision it was important to discuss with others. In my view, Transformational
Leadership Model can be another option for HG where the leaders are thoughtful thinkers,
inspiring and risk takers.
Organizational Structure: For achieving the aims, every business organization maintains a
system to maintain the activities, coordination in it. This is known as the Organizational structure
(Brescia et al., 2016). It determines the flow of information through different levels of the
organization. I agree that, at HG lack of communication in different levels of the organization is
clear. I believe that this may have occurred due to lack of properly arranged structure of the
organization. The proper division of responsibilities is not maintained. According to me, the
responsibilities of hiring people must be a responsibility of the HRM, and the management must
communicate with the employees on different issues including their problems, their feedback
about the organization. So, I think HG must look at its organizational structure and modify it
through proper rules, policies and responsibility divisions.
Motivation and HRM: One of the major functions of the organization is to maintain the will of
the employees to give their best performance in their workplaces. So, motivating all the workers
in the organization is the responsibility of the leaders or the human resource executives on duty.
The Human resource management manages the recruitment and selection, benefits,
compensations, training and development of the new and existing employees (Noe et al., 2017). I
4

think that there is a lack of motivation at HG as the leader Brett Jones follows a different kind of
life style it is difficult for him to motivate his juniors at a new workplace. In my opinion, he used
to isolate himself in a place far from other managers and employees that did not allow other
employees to interact with him. A communication gap was growing. So in my view, proper
training programme must be offered to a new employee. The job responsibilities must be clear to
each and every employee from the first day of their job. In my opinion, regular tracking of
employee behaviour must be essential policy for the Human Resource management of HG. The
recruitment style followed by Jones is questionable, as it may create major threats to the
organization. I think taking the suggestions from the local people was not a good idea for
searching people that are going to take major organizational responsibilities. Believing people
without knowing their family background, history and giving them major responsibilities is very
risky for any organization especially for HG because it is working in a foreign environment. So, I
think proper job advertisement and recruitment and selection procedure must be done through
the HRM.
Ethics and CSR: Business ethics is referred to the study of business practices and policies that
relates to controversial cases like bribery, corporate governance, corporate social responsibilities
etc. CSR may be defined as the philosophy that guides and organization to act as good corporate
citizen (Spence, 2016). Business organizations have to behave in a manner so that it can fulfill
the social responsibilities. In my opinion, the responsibilities that HG has taken, to renovate the
schools and the health centres at new locations, are good approaches to retain CSR. But the
leakage of information regarding the ethical issues led to the involvement of religious caretakers.
This caused a great economical loss to the organization. I believe that not participating in the
rituals suggested by the caretakers was one of the biggest mistakes of Jones. I think as he isolated
himself from the other employees of HG, it was difficult for him to be present on the day of the
ritual and the organization has to arrange for it once again. I think as per data protection act
1998, the personal data of the organization through computers will be helpful.
5

I am pleased to appreciate that while conducting this task, several aspects like my writing skill,
research skill, observational skills are improved. At the same time, I faced many problems during
this task such as lack of coordination between the team members and the entire process was
really Time consuming. So, in future if I given a similar kind of task, I must improve those
aspects where I have faced problems. Improvement of the coordination among the team members
and decreasing the time consumption would be the goal.
6

References
Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change
work in progress. Routledge.
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017. The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Brescia, F., Colombo, G. and Landoni, P., 2016. Organizational structures of Knowledge
Transfer Offices: an analysis of the world’s top-ranked universities. The Journal of Technology
Transfer, 41(1), pp.132-151.
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management:
Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Spence, L.J., 2016. Small business social responsibility: Expanding core CSR theory. Business &
Society, 55(1), pp.23-55.
7