Different countries have different cultures. Sometimes it is very difficult to be adapted to other culture. The problem appears frequently in the business companies who work with foreign partners or who want to hire a foreign specialist. Different countries, besides customs and traditions, have different understanding and vision of business etiquette. Every head of the company, which wants to work with foreign specialists, should take in mind that the specialist will have to go through the adaptation stage and there are some ways to help him/her with it.
Globalization and internationalization is one of the main features of modern business. There are countries which consider some foreign partnership companies impropriate for business relations and in order to continue these relations they decide to adapt this country to local requirements (Pagell 2001). We are going to consider the example of how to adapt foreign company to United Kingdom business culture. Business Companies from different countries should adapt to each other in order to achieve success (Lampel, Shamsie & Lant 2006).
To run business successfully, companies should build partnerships while establishing a common business culture (Marks 2002). Cultural shock is a very complicated part of people’s behavior when they come to another country. Cultural shock may be one of the reasons which may preve3nt running business. The company has to do as much as possible to soften the effects from this shock (Ward 2001).
Culture became to play one of the most important parts in business. “Business studies views culture as a solidary, unified property belonging to a group – a property which is manufactured, and changed at will, by the group collectively or by powerful individuals within it” (Moore 2005). To adapt different business partners to United Kingdom business culture, the United Kingdom Company should give as much as possible information about the history and development of United Kingdom business (Harper 2000).
The foreign company should be informed about innovative ways of running business in order to give some specific issues why this foreign company should adapt to United Kingdom economy culture (Mclagan 2003). The motivation is very important in this case.
Scholars give some recommendations to firms which want to incorporate some foreign companies to their local cultures. They say that companies should be flexible and adaptive, they should be able to adapt where it is “essential to do” and “standardize” where possible” (Mercado, Welford & Prescott 2001).
The globalization of business requires the adaptation of business of small countries to business of lager ones (Buckley & Hashai 2004). There are cases when small countries understand that the business system of some global countries are much better and more profitable, so they try to adapt to that business culture and to percept some standards of running business (Yelpaala 2001). Before beginning adaptation of the company to UK business culture, we should consider the time frames which come out of our purposes: “immediate horizon” and “long-term horizon” (Blythe & Zimmerman 2005).
“There is the aspect of a personal ability to make one’s way into other cultures, through listening, looking interesting” (Hannerz 2000). The same concerns business and UK company is going to use this method to adapt foreign company to its business culture.
To manage a good adaptation, the adapting country (UK in our case) should create some training programs to give an opportunity to foreign country to understand what exactly business cultural incorporation means (Briscoe & Schuler 2004). Business culture adaptation is often understood wrong, as a copying of other countries customs and traditions in business (Casson 2001).
The best way to incorporate foreign company to UK business culture is present the etiquette of running business to other foreign culture, its norms and values (Baker & Jones 2000). To incorporate other company culture to local, UK Company should emphasize goals which they will be able to achieve together (Ledgerwood 2006). To incorporate other company culture to UK, lots of specialists should work hard and “require little conscious adaptation beyond their corporate culture” (Herrmann 2006).
So, UK Company should do lots of changes and attempts to provide a successful adaptation and further business running. The main aim is not to destroy the foreign company’s culture but to create a new more advanced model, scheme of running business.
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