Power Distribution Attitudes
Many of EnergyUK’s prospective internal network management issues, including leadership-related expectations, can be predicted by applying Hofstede’s 6D model. Brazil’s power distance index (PDI) of 69 is almost twice as large as the UK’s score of 35, implying a mismatch between the countries’ attitudes to professional subordination (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). With its orientedness toward equality, EnergyUK might find out that the Brazilian network downplays the effectiveness of democratic and servant leadership practices, expecting a more authoritarian perspective and unambiguous directions regarding the reporting structure and power/responsibility distribution patterns. For EnergyUK, the failure to structure the Brazilian branch hierarchically would result in delayed internal decision-making.
Employee Motivation and Attitudes to Competition
Differences in terms of individualism-collectivism and masculinity-femininity dyadic concepts might also create issues. The UK’s individualism score of 89 is incomparably large compared to Brazil’s 38 points (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). EnergyUK will probably face challenges if promoting reward/punishment practices focused on specific employees rather than teams in Brazil. Employee motivation practices stressing opportunities for individual accomplishment could also come in conflict with the Brazilian employees’ desire to feel that their achievements benefit the entire network and their society. Concerning masculinity, the UK outperforms Brazil by 17 points (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). Brazil’s more feminine culture might turn out to be resistant to EnergyUK’s competition-based philosophy of strategic development in Latin America’s energy sector, causing requests to align the network’s internal disciplinary practices with employees’ understanding of psychological comfort.
Supporting Strategic Flexibility, Change, and Innovation
The two nations’ uncertainty avoidance (UA) scores might represent a crucial concern for EnergyUK’s management. As a culture, the UK accepts the unpredictability of the future much more than Brazil (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). Therefore, if EnergyUK’s strategic planning practices are relatively flexible, transferring them to its Brazil-based network will be met with misunderstanding. Among local Brazilian managers, there will be resistance to the need to adapt to new energy development decisions rather than sticking to one general long-term strategy. Moreover, managing the internal network could be challenged by Brazilian department leaders’ intense need for very specific strategic guidance from UK-based companies and difficulty in monitoring the tiniest changes in the energy sector landscape and incorporating them into current strategies.
The Brazilian subsidiary can be expected to demonstrate certain negativity toward radical change to the country’s fuel processing traditions. Brazil’s internal resources for fostering renewable and sustainable energy are widely considered to be abundant, though some resistance to innovation hinders technological progress in the sector (Carvalho et al., 2020). With the UK’s 51 and Brazil’s 44 points, dissimilarities on the long-term orientation scale are relatively mild and might be expected to cause sporadic internal network management issues for the UK (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). These might include the subsidiary’s resistance to proposals that require a massive restructuring of the pre-existing energy infrastructures and subsequent education.
Corporate Culture
The indulgence concept might be problematic from the perspective of corporate culture management. On the indulgence scale, the UK and Brazil have 69 and 59 points, respectively, which implies EnergyUK’s need to adapt to the new team’s slightly higher degree of restraint (Hofstede Insights, n.d.). EnergyUK’s UK-based team might benefit from network management operations aimed at fostering optimistic and friendlier mindsets and incorporating unrestrained self-expression into team building. Bringing the same approaches to Brazil’s energy industry could result in Brazilian managers’ disappointment with EnergyUK’s insufficient focus on fostering restraint and accentuating the industry’s challenges.
Communication and Conflict Resolution
Hall’s context model reveals EnergyUK’s possible communication and conflict management issues in Brazil. Brazil is classified as a high-context society, implying its members’ reliance on non-verbal clues in information exchange (Kugler, 2022). As a low-context society, the UK emphasizes fact-based information delivery styles, clarity, and issue verbalization (Guilding et al., 2021). The Brazilian management will probably expect EnergyUK’s leaders to translate attitudes to disciplinary rules and strategic perspectives indirectly or will be prone to overanalyzing speech and deriving messages not intended by the UK-based team. High-context cultures prefer indirect conflict resolution strategies, including avoidance, which might make EnergyUK prone to a delayed realization of conflict in its Brazilian structure (Wu & Bertha, 2021). Moreover, the Brazilian network might perceive the UK team’s reliance on written communication as insufficient for building meaningful communication.
References
Carvalho, N. B., Viana, D. B., de Araújo, M. M., Lampreia, J., Gomes, M. S. P., & Freitas, M. A. V. (2020). How likely is Brazil to achieve its NDC commitments in the energy sector? A review on Brazilian low-carbon energy perspectives. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 133, 1-13. Web.
Guilding, C., Li Zhi, P. K., Mohana Krishnan, S., Hubbard, P. S., & McKeegan, K. S. (2021). Insights into delivering cross-cultural medical education in the UK and Malaysia. Medical Science Educator, 31(6), 2177-2188. Web.
Hofstede Insights. (n.d.). Country comparison. Web.
Kugler, L. (2022). The impact of virtual meetings. Communications of the ACM, 65(11), 19-21. Web.
Wu, L. Y., & Bertha, D. B. (2021). A comparative analysis of conflict management styles between local and expatriate managers in Hong Kong-based multinational corporations. Business Communication Research and Practice, 4(1), 14-27. Web.