Understanding cultural differences — страница 6

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American overseas business personnel today are much better educated and informed than their predecessors of thirty years ago and more competent and adaptable. For many years American business was not cognizant of the crucial importance of proper selection and training of overseas personnel. As a result they lost millions of dollars. In the past there was an unfortunate tendency to transfer problem employees abroad, and even today there are many Americans working overseas who should never have left the United States. You can usually spot them in restaurants and bars of clubs or international hotels, loudly voicing their frustrations with locals, arrogant and impatient. Despite these unfortunate errors in selection, there has been a noticeable improvement in the quality of American

business representation overseas. An executive who has been successful in the U. S. often has difficulty when transferred abroad because of her or his expectations of continued success. When those expectations are not met (because the techniques that were successful in the U. S. do not always work in foreign cultures), the result can be a devastating sense of failure. The ability to cope with failure is therefore a prime qualification for cross-cultural effectiveness, but is unfortunately not a quality highly prized in American business. It is our strong recommendation that only the best and most adaptable people be sent overseas and that their training in both language and cross-cultural effectiveness be extensive. A recent study for the Southern Governors' Association

concluded, "We have yet to learn a critical lesson: the language of trade is the language of the customer. " We would add that the language of the customer includes not only the spoken language but also the language of behavior, that is, the culture. Once the company has invested the time and money in training, it should leave the employees in the country long enough to reap the benefits (a minimum of five years). Several executives agreed with the highly experienced general manager of a German subsidiary, who said, "American companies make a big mistake by rotating their managers too often. " Companies should also develop long-term plans for utilizing the expertise of overseas employees once they return to headquarters. All too often their knowledge and

experience is ignored and lost. Even worse, their overseas experience may be a handicap to career advancement in the United States since they may be perceived as having been out of the mainstream. In our interviews overseas, almost all the directors of American compan ies overseas ranked the home office as their number one problem. Americans have a world-wide reputation for oversupervising their foreign operations. One top manager (a Swiss) with many years of experience working for American companies abroad had this to say: "American companies tend to keep you on a short leash. There are constant demands for reports and financial data. At headquarters you are smothered with staff who 'know better' about everything. Overseas you are alone but you are closely watched; whenever

there's a blip, you hear from headquarters and they hover and hover. " It is difficult for headquarters to understand what is happening i in a foreign operation. The people who are most likely to know f are those on the spot who are cognizant of the cultural differences involved. Thus, the best policy for the executives at the home office is to assign good people to foreign posts and then, listen to what they say. VII. Key Points for Foreigners to Keep in Mind There are several characteristics that flow from the massive size of the United States as well as from the great variety of cultural antecedents that distinguish American culture from all others. In spite of the numerous and visible inequities in the American system, there is still no society in the world that provides

both the freedom and the opportunity to become a success for anyone who has brains or talent and is willing to apply her- or himself. America is still the land of opportunity. Because of the way in which American business and marketing systems are organized, and possibly because of reinforcement from the extensive and ubiquitous television commercial, the tempo of American business interactions is unusually fast. Everything is faster and bigger in the United States. Keep this in mind: Americans tend to "tailgate" other people. In the U. S., there is no defined class system. People are constantly moving up and down in the social system because of variations in their financial and educational status. Americans are very status-conscious and place great emphasis on status