International Management Case Study: Cross Cultural Management

This case study analyzes the challenges faced by John Thompson, a manager from Shonteur Inc. USA, when he is assigned to manage Shonteur France, a subsidiary with a diverse workforce. Thompson's initial participative management style leads to employee dissatisfaction and low morale due to cultural differences. The report explores the reasons for this issue, including differences in values, communication styles, and lack of cross-cultural management training. Using Hofstede's cultural dimensions, the study highlights the cultural nuances between the US and France, explaining why Thompson's approach was ineffective. The report suggests strategies for preventing such issues, such as effective communication, cultural awareness, employee retention, and tailored training programs. Key lessons learned emphasize the importance of cross-cultural experience, training, and understanding employee needs to foster a productive and satisfied workforce. Recommendations for Thompson include direct communication with his team, cultural education, and building trust to improve employee morale and overall performance. Desklib provides similar solved assignments for students.

Running Head: International Management
International Management
Cross Cultural Management Style

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International Management
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Background and Problem............................................................................................................................2
Problem...................................................................................................................................................2
Reason of the Issue Occurrence...................................................................................................................3
Is the issue typical across international borders?.........................................................................................4
Prevention of the Issues in Cross Cultural Management.............................................................................4
Lessons Learned..........................................................................................................................................6
Advice for the manager to solve the Issue...................................................................................................6
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................7
References...................................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
As the world is moving forward with the technologies and new strategies for making the firm
grow, there are new management styles also developing so that the management of the
employees can be done in the effective manner. Cross cultural management occurs when the
manager manages the employees from the foreign land from different cultures then his own
(Greblikaite & Daugeliene, 2010). It also happens when the staff members from the other
countries in the native land of the manager. It is very significant for the manager to have the right
experience for managing the cross culture employees in the firm. There are firms across the
world which operates in different countries and all the branches are managed by different
managers (Gerhart, 2008). For this management to be efficient, managers should be able to
identify and acknowledge the difference in the culture and new practices of the employees. This
report discusses about John Thomson who was earlier the manager in the Shonteur Inc. in USA.
Now he has to manage the firm in France where the employees are from France, German,
Portugal etc. Further this report analyzes the issue in the management style of Thompson and
talks about the prevention of such issues.
Background and Problem
John Thompson who an executive in the firm was named Shonteur Inc. USA was given the
chance to work in the France in Shonteur France which was the subsidiary firm of the same firm
in USA. The subsidiary was actually incepted for the procurement of the wines in Europe for the
US market. The firm has approximately 179 employees and there were people who were from
very different backgrounds like France, Portugal etc. But majorly there were people from France.
Thompson started his managerial style which was participative as he learnt that this style would
do wonders in the firm. He then started to work anticipatively with all the employees.
Problem

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While working with the employees of different cultures, Thompson thought that everything is
going well and he had this aim to grow fast in the company by increasing the productivity of the
employees. For increasing the productivity of the employees, he started including the employees
in taking any decision. He majorly left the decisions on the employees and in case of some
decision taken by him; he took advice from the employees. Due to managing the employees this
way, he thought that his employees would have high morale and hence, they would give good
productivity. Later down the road, he started understanding that his employees were not satisfied
and had low morale too.
The issue which generated low morale and dissatisfaction in the employees was related to his
management style. Thompson did not have any experiences in the field of managing the people
who are from different cultures (Andreassi, 2014). He took the job so that he would be able to
grow soon without thinking once about managing the people from the different cultures.
Reason of the Issue Occurrence
There are some of the reasons which could have been the issue in the ineffective management of
the employees from different cultures. They are as follows:
 Values: The behavior that the manager has is linked with the values and the beliefs that
he or she is brought up in. When a manager is working with the people from different
cultures, he comes across different norms and beliefs and hence different behaviors. For
example: a manager might react in a way having his own values in mind but it is
considered as being cruel in various cultures (EIloy & Smith, 2003).
 Performance as Manager: Most of the managers sometimes find it tough to manage the
cross management style as it sometimes becomes annoying to work with people of
different cultures. This can also hamper the decision making an issue as taking decision
in this management style takes more time than usual.
 Communication Style: When people are from different cultures, they definitely speak
various languages which might or might not be understood by the managers. Thompson
might not have had an effective communication style which is easy and flexible for the
employees to understand (Kawar, 2012).

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 Motivation: Not just the participative style is enough for the employee to feel good but all
the employees need motivation too. Thompson, no doubt used to include the employee in
his decisions but he never motivated the employees to work hard. Low motivation always
leads to job dissatisfaction in employees.
 No Training: Thompson took no training and no experience of how to manage the cross
cultural management team. Low experience and no training can lead to employee
dissatisfaction and low productivity. There are various different factors which are needed
to learn the management of cross culture.
Is the issue typical across international borders?
Comparison in US and France culture
Source: (Hofstede-Insights, 2018).
Power Distance: France has the culture of being dependent on other people. Here people might
not want to take their own decisions for the firm. Authoritative leadership style would have been
good in case of people who were French.
Individualism: People in France are brought up being independent when it comes to the groups
of community but they are getting equal respect as their parents. Hence, Thompson would have
been a little respectful with them by getting to know them, it would have also worked.
Masculinity: According to this point, French people are used to living a quality life. Taking
decisions in Shonteur Inc. would have demanded more hours of work and stress.

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Uncertainty Avoidance: According to this culture, French people do not like uncertainties and
surprises. When Thompson would have asked them to take the decision for him, these people
would have taken it as a surprise and they would not have liked it. This relates to the Power
Distance as well explained above.
Long Term Orientation: This culture depicts a very different from above points. According to
this French people adapt to new traditions easily and changed conditions as well. Hence, this
culture says that French people would have been motivated (Hofstedeinsights, 2018).
Therefore, by suing Hofstede culture model, we comes to know that French people’s culture
should be studies first before starting anything new with them. It is justified that those people did
not like the participative managerial style which Thompson was following with them.
Prevention of the Issues in Cross Cultural Management
The prevention of the issues in the cross cultural management is very necessary to be resolved as
it leads to demotivated employees and job dissatisfaction. There are some ways in which the firm
can mitigate or prevent these issues. They are:
Effective Communication: A communication done in an effective manner can be the major key
towards success in current world. The leaders and the managers must involve the partners and
the users to from across world and at the same time they need to effectively manage the
expectations of the employees in the firm (Franko, 2012).
Getting to know employees: Managers should get to know every member of the firm who comes
from a different country or culture. It becomes easy when the manager knows about every
employee. This also makes the employees open up with their manager and share their ideas or
feelings. Managers usually excel when they get to know the employees and excel in unique skills
due to the employees from different cultures.

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Retaining employees: The manager should be able to know about the inner feelings of the
employees who are from different cultures. This is really important for retaining these
employees.
Culture Difference: This is related to the getting to know the employees point. It is really vital
for the managers to take out some time and getting to know about different cultures his
employees are from. This might involve learning about different languages and also the fault
lines. Also learning about some miscommunication and misconception is good. For this an
implementation of the employee software self service would be apt. With the help of the
software, the manager and other people will get to know as to what exactly is going on with the
other person (Firkola & Lim, 2003).
New Norms: As discussed above that if there are different cultured people in the team, they
might feel different when it comes to the norms that the manager is following. Hence, when there
are people of multi culture present in the team, there must be new norms defined in the team or
the current norms should clearly be explained to all the team members so that there is no
confusion left (Tompos, 2016).
Training: The training and the certificates should be made necessary for the employees as well as
for the manager by every firm before taking any cross culture job. With no experience in
managing the team of different culture, a manager would never be able to handle the team well
and this situation is more prone to having dissatisfied and low morale employees. Hence, the
firm goes on with no or less productivity.
Lessons Learned
Form the above case study, there are some lessons which can be learnt. The lessons which are
learnt from are as follows:
1. John Thompson had no experience in handling the cross cultural management team in
France. He wanted to move ahead soon and that is the reason he said yes to this
opportunity. This should not be done by any manager (Fink, 2006).

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2. The firm gave no training to the manager before giving him this opportunity. Hence, the
employees became dissatisfied with him as well as the job they were doing. The firm
should always have the training done before doing anything of this sort.
3. The manager should be able to know all his employees. Thompson thought that by just
using the participative managerial style, his employees would have high productivity.
This was a wrong thought (Ao, 2016).
4. What Thompson learnt in various management seminars was not completely apt for cross
cultural management.
5. The manager should get to know about different cultures so that he can easily interact
with his team and members from different cultures (Kundu, 2001). For example: John
went to France but he was just doing his job and not interacting very much with his team
members (Gouda, 2015).
Advice for the manager to solve the Issue
John should have a meeting with his team members and straight forwardly ask him team
members as to what is going on. This should be done because he saw the employees showing
low morale none verbally but none of the employee said anything about the same. Then he
should learn their language a little so that he is able t o make the employees feel comfortable.
The manager should learn about the theories like Hofstede theory, cultural dimension theories
and implement them in this context so that he is also able to learn more about the location where
he is working. Once the employees become comfortable in talking to Job about their
misunderstandings or dissatisfaction or anything of that sort, then he should make them realize
that he is with them. He should be able to make them trust him and that he is there for them
whenever they want. Ultimately, the manager should be able to retain all the employees and for
that he needs to make them like their job and the process. He should involve himself more and
more with his team member and not just when he is there to make any decision.
Conclusion

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This report discusses about John Thompson who was an executive in Shonteur Inc. USA. Later,
when he got the chance to become the manager in Shonteur Inc. France, he took the chance
because of longer growth without having any experience in cross cultural management. This
report displays the issues that happened with the employees because of John’s participative style
that he followed. Job dissatisfaction and low morale etc kind of emotions are normal when there
is no experience of managing a cross cultural management in the manager. This report focuses
upon the issues and displays the ways as to how these issues can be prevented. Towards the
conclusion, there are recommendations for the manager given as to what he can do to aprevent
this issues in Shonteur Inc.

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References
Andreassi, J.K., 2014. Cross Cultural Management. Cross Cultural Management An
International Journal, 21(1), pp.57-79.
Ao, Y., 2016. he Impact of Cross-Cultural Communication on Foreign Managers’ Leadership
Style in China-Based International Organization. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4, pp. 99-118.
EIloy, D.F. & Smith, C.R., 2003. Cross Cultural Management. An International Journal, 10(1).
Fink, G., 2006. Understanding Cross-Cultural Management Interaction: Research into Cultural
Standards to Complement Cultural Value Dimensions and Personality Traits. International
Studies of Management and Organization , 36(4), pp.38-60.
Firkola, P. & Lim, L., 2003. Cross-Cultural Management Research Issues. Economic journal of
Hokkaido University, 32, pp.45-68.
Franko, K., 2012. Intercultural communication —the effect of cultural differences in everyday
working environment of companies (from germany, switzerland, austria) in hungary. [Online]
Available at: https://www.issbs.si/press/ISBN/978-961-6813-10-5/papers/ML12_144.pdf
[Accessed 11 October 2018].
Gerhart, B., 2008. Cross Cultural Management ResearchAssumptions, Evidence, and Suggested
Directions. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 8(3), pp.259-74.
Gouda, H., 2015. Intercultural management: theories, tools and factors of success. International
Journal of Management and Applied Science, 1(9).
Greblikaite, J. & Daugeliene, R., 2010. The growing need of cross-cultural management and
ethics in business. European Integration Studies, 4.
Kawar, T.I., 2012. Cross-cultural Differences in Management. International Journal of Business
and Social Science , 3(6).

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Kundu, S.C., 2001. Managing cross-cultural diversity: a challenge for present and future
organizations. Delhi Business Review , 2(2).
Romani, L., 2010. The hidden side of cross-cultural management. [Online] Available at:
https://www.wu.ac.at/fileadmin/wu/o/iaccm/Abstracts/2010_Romani__Laurence.pdf [Accessed
11 October 2018].
Singh, D., 2010. Managing Cross-cultural Diversity: Issues and Challenges in Global
Organizations. Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, 3, pp.43-50.
Tompos, A., 2016. Austrian and Hungarian values and norms in cross-cultural management
research. Electronic Journal of Management, 3.