Introduction
Internationalisation is a new concept that has increasingly taken centre stage in the recent times, particularly among firms. The advancement in technology is the core reason why globalisation has become popular and real. Companies are seeking to expand beyond their national borders and venture into foreign markets as a way of tackling the issue of competition and market saturation. Companies can now communicate in real time between the headquarters and subsidiaries using the new advanced technologies. Managers can even control operations taking place in a different continent from the home continent.
However, even as global operations become easy for organisations, one challenging factor that threatens to limit the activities of the multinational corporations (MNC) is the challenge of culture. Each society in the world practices a unique culture, including the languages used in the day-to-day communication. Firms are, therefore, finding it difficult to integrate these alien cultures into their operations. This report highlights some of the benefits and limitations for firms in terms of adopting the use of English as their official language. The report will focus on Japan and Germany, issuing effective advice and recommendations to MNC managers operating in these countries.
Japan General Culture
Power Distance
According to Hofstede, Japan registers a score of 54 with regard to this cultural dimension. In other words, it implies that the Japanese mildly expect and accept societal inequalities. This mainly affects their decision making process in the sense that final judgements in the society do not happen all at once, but it is a process that involves many other people to give their various inputs.
Individualism
Individualism refers to the tendency of members in a society to either rely upon themselves while leading their daily lives, or depend on communal support. Japan has a score of 46 on this dimension, implying that it is a collectivist society. Individuals consider group harmony as weightier than individual opinions (Schumacher 220).
Masculinity/Femininity
Japan is mainly a masculine society, with its respective score on this dimension being 95. There is severe competition among the groups formed in society, with the basis of competition being to achieve the highest results. Characteristically, the Japanese are workaholics and they work to achieve both excellence and perfection in whatever they do. It is not easy for Japanese women to ascend the corporate ladder mainly because of the masculine nature of the society.
Uncertainty Avoidance
The Japanese are among the leading global societies that work towards averting uncertainty. With an uncertainty avoidance index of 92, the Japanese strongly believe that the future remains largely unpredictable. The Japanese are mainly negative about the future because they are often hit by natural calamities. Earthquakes and tsunamis are commonplace in Japan. This has also affected almost every aspect of life that touch on the Japanese, with rituals being practised almost on all occasions.
Corporate bodies in the country value feasibility studies a lot as they consider the studies to be a perfect way of protecting related programs and plans from any unfortunate occurrences. Generally, it is difficult to plan or institute any new changes in the country because of the high level of uncertainty avoidance in the country. The society tends to presume the fact that their traditional practices are the best in cushioning the country against the unfortunate occurrences.
Long Term Orientation
Japan is rated highly as a country that has “long term orientation” because it has a rating of 80. The Japanese are comparatively non believers and people hold the idea that they are the owners of their own destiny and not some other powerful being like God. Organisations in the country set aside a higher scale of investment to cater for research and development activities. Priority is mainly given to the steady development of the market shares as compared to achieving quarterly profits. In essence, these are plans that are pursued with a view of ensuring organisation’s durability. The companies exist to serve both the markets and the shareholders not only for shorter periods, but also for many generations in the future.
Germany General Culture
Power Distance
Hofstede’s cultural studies and findings ascribe a lower score of 35 to reflect Germany’s culture with respect to power dimension. This depicts a society that is highly decentralised, where the middle class is very strong. Decisions are determined by the input of other workers in the firm. Germans value direct, as well as participative kinds of communication, including during meetings (Deissler 112). However, control is mainly disliked, while leaders have to prepare to be challenged by others, including their followers. There is pressure on leaders to show great expertise because it is highly valued and best accepted amongst the members of the society.
Individualism
Germany is individualistic in nature, with the country’s respective score on this dimension being 67. The family units are maintained as small as possible, where the nuclear family is given a lot of attention and priority. Self-actualization is pursued by most Germans. Moreover, Germans are generally devoted to their duties.
Masculinity/Femininity
Germany’s score on this cultural dimension is reflected as 66, which means the country is masculine. Performance is given much emphasis and attention such that German children begin to be categorised early in their education basing on their academic performance in class. Managers are required to show high skills in decision making. They also have to be assertive in their management. People love to work and they put a lot of effort to achieve self-esteem (Deissler 112).
Uncertainty Avoidance
The society works towards avoiding uncertainty as reflected by the score of 65 that is ascribed to the country. Germans consider details with high regard because they consider it to be the perfect mechanism through which uncertainty can be reduced or avoided altogether. Like in Japan, the Germans strongly rely upon expertise because it helps in compensating against higher uncertainty.
Long Term Orientation
Germany scores lowly on this dimension, 31, which means it is generally a short term oriented culture (Deissler 112). The society greatly considers traditions and is mainly normative in nature with regard to establishing the truth.
Adopting English as the Official Company Language
Benefits
On the average, the Japanese score mildly on the aspect of power distance. Their relative readiness to accept inequality makes it possible for the MNC subsidiary in the country to use English as the official corporate language. It is an obvious thing that the Japanese do not speak English as their first language; therefore, trying to introduce English in a company that is located in the country would appear to many as though their language, and by extension the society at large, is less equal to English (Ralston 35).
In other words, this is a form of inequality that is captured in the power distance dimension of Hofstede’s model. People would still accept the alien language and make an effort to learn it so that it can make their communication easy. Many MNCs throughout the world are adopting the use of English as their official language. It would, therefore, be beneficial to the company, especially with regard to Japan. To the company, retaining one language as the official means of communication makes it easy to organise and conduct planning and general operations as a whole.
By succeeding to introduce English in Japan, it also makes it possible for the company to transfer workers from one country subsidiary to another without having to deal with the challenge of language barrier. A Japanese expert can be transferred to Britain, for example, while an American expert can move to Japan with a lot of ease. These transferred workers will not need to undergo language training to make them understand the new language that is used as the official language in a specific country branch or subsidiary (Andersson and Holm 203).
Considering the high score of 80 on the long term orientation, the Japanese are highly likely to adopt and accept the use of English in case a subsidiary of the MNC was established in the country. Priority among the Japanese is often aimed at achieving or expanding the market. In essence, it means there would be no harm for the Japanese workers to learn English, even if it was not their first language, provided it would enable them to expand their productivity and markets.
This is beneficial for the management because maintaining English as the single official language across the MNC would make overall communication and conduction of operations easier. Managers at the headquarters can easily reach their colleagues in Japan and make enquiries or give instructions without difficulty in the language used. This would reduce complications within the firm.
Germany is a highly competitive country because of the high score in terms of the masculinity/femininity dimension. People’s actions are driven by the urge to perform and build their self-esteem. This makes it possible for the workers in the country to easily adopt English and use it as their main language of communication, particularly where they associate such a move with achieving great results. This is advantageous to the MNC subsidiary in the country because it will enable the company save a lot of costs in its operations (Andersson and Holm 210).
Only a single batch of products will be purchased during the acquisition of company equipment and machines. For instance, there would be no need of buying specialised machines programmed in German and English separately. Instead, the company will buy only English-programmed machines. The MNC will have benefitted from this move because of the economies of scale advantage that is often achieved when large quantities are bought all at once.
Difficulties
It is not possible for the company to use English in its German subsidiary. The German society is less likely to accept and expect inequality because of its low power distance of 35. Thus, attempting to force German workers to learn and use English will appear to them as an injustice and inequality. They consider their language to be of the same value and ability as English, thus most workers would feel demoralised. It may result in high turnover rates because the workers would not feel comfortable working for an employer whom they consider to be unjust. Such high turnover rates, in turn, would result into high costs and expenditure in terms of undertaking repeated recruitments and trainings.
Using a single official language is likely to affect an MNC’s market performance. While it may be possible to train the workers to learn and understand English even when it is not their first language, the same cannot be said of the local consumers (Carter 10). Often, the aim of any MNC when venturing into a new country is to expand its market.
Even where a multinational corporation enters a particular country in search of labour, it would ultimately also target the native buyers. In this regard, if the MNC moves to Germany with English being its official language, then the company may fail to market its finished products in the country. This would be different in a scenario where the company uses multiple languages such that it would easily conduct marketing activities after the production exercise (Carter 16).
Both Japan and Germany score highly in terms of uncertainty avoidance. The countries hold the general belief that the future is highly indeterminable, thus every measure has to be undertaken to ensure that the ambiguity is reduced or eliminated. Enforcing the use of English in a subsidiary based in these countries, therefore, makes it complicated and difficult for the workers (Haghiria 112).
English is not a first language in either of the countries, thus workers will not be well versed with it. This makes it difficult even for the local management to attempt to plan and implement feasibility studies before they embark on any projects. The amount of details and facts required in any feasibility study has often been very elaborate, thus attempting to do it in an alien language would make it more difficult.
Decision making in Japan generally takes longer because of the society’s inclination towards hierarchies. People do not consider making decisions as individuals. Instead, they consider involving teams before eventually arriving at acceptable conclusions (Ford and Chan 56). This slow process in decision making is likely to be exacerbated when the individuals have to use English, a foreign language, as their official communication means. The MNC would definitely suffer a lot of consequences because of the slowness. Decisions will come in later than expected, which will definitely affect the competitive power of the firm. In instances where immediate action is required to achieve a positive result, the company will always fail to achieve a positive target.
The workers in Germany value their traditions more and it is very difficult to convince them otherwise. Introducing English in this culture, therefore, is like expecting the workers to shun their own tradition and adopt somebody else’s tradition. This will be difficult to implement because the workers will be unwilling to take instructions and act as required of them. The MNC will definitely have to spend more resources and take more time in attempting to persuade the workers to learn the new language.
Expenditures incurred will mainly be in the form of continuous training of the workers, provision of incentives to speed up learning, and possibly arranging for workers to visit other subsidiaries in English-speaking countries to enhance their learning (Haghiria 36). The huge expenditures culminating from these activities will affect the MNC and its entire operations mainly by reducing its profit margins, as well as lowering its competitive advantage.
Recommendations
The company should work towards having different languages for purposes of communication and other guidelines across the MNC. Societies differ in terms of how they perceive the whole idea of adopting someone else’s language and making it official during operations. Countries with low scores of power distance and high individualism scores will most definitely prefer retaining their own language for official use, rather than adopting an alien language. This has a direct impact on the workers as well because often MNC’s employ native workers in their subsidiaries. Thus, the workers will be less motivated and are likely to lower the production of the company in case they feel that a foreign language has been forced on them at the expense of their native language.
Replicating company procedures and processes into many other languages will help the company to maintain low operating costs. There would be no need for training workers to learn the alien language before employing them. For instance, when the company ventures into the German market, it will not be required to train its local workers English to understand the procedures and process of the company. Instead, it will save resources that would have otherwise been spent on training the workers to learn English. The time spent on training the workers a new language also slows down the general working of the company because it means the company halts its operations until the workers master English language.
However, the company can still maintain use of English as its official language in countries that score highly in both the power distance and individualism dimensions. This would mean that workers in these countries readily accept inequality in society, thus introducing a new language that is alien will be looked at as a normal and acceptable thing. On the other hand, high individualism would mean that workers in the country are not loyal to groupings that demand they act in specific ways. Such workers, therefore, would be willing to learn English and work hard in the company to attain their objectives. Given that they look at themselves with high-esteem, the individual workers will go to any length to learn any new thing if at all that is what is needed to achieve a competitive edge over others.
Maintaining the use of English as the official language in other countries that score highly in power dimension and individualism would help the company to maintain easy operations. Thus, while it is important that the company adopts other languages to be used specifically for certain countries, it is important that the number is maintained as low as possible. Adopting many official languages all at once could easily complicate the operations of the company because not all managers and supervisors at the company headquarters will be able to grasp the languages with the needed perfection. If such managers give instructions to Japanese workers and they are not fluent, then there is a possibility of the workers getting confused and doing the wrong thing.
Conclusion
Globalisation is a growing phenomenon because of the availability of perfect technology that supports high integration. As a result, companies are expanding their boundaries to venture into new foreign markets as they seek to maximise their profits and general business performance. However, the issue of culture remains a great challenge, especially with regard to the use of language. Japan has a mild power distance score and a low individualism score as well. It is possible and easier for an MNC using English as its official language to extend the same in its Japanese subsidiary because the local population expects and accepts inequality to some significant degree. Introducing an alien language and requiring the locals to use it in their operations is itself a societal inequality.
The same cannot be said of Germany because the country scores lowly in terms of power distance, meaning that people are not ready to accept and expect inequality easily. In such an instance, such an MNC has to consider adopting the use of the local language as the official language. Using a single official language is beneficial for any MNC because it reduces the probability of replicating work. Machines and other important equipment, such as computers, are only bought once without having to look for different versions of languages. However, using a single company language is likely to raise the costs of operations because of replicating procedures and processes.
Works Cited
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