Introduction
Following previous successful business endeavors, Disney Land ambitiously set to establish its business operations in various parts of the world. These establishments were in Japan, France, and Hong Kong, among many other destinations. Disney’s executives counted success upon success when they successfully established their business operations in Japan before moving on to France in 1986, Europe’s cultural center.
That was when Disney’s executives started experiencing a cultural Chernobyl, it was a cultural shock. An establishment on the French soil was seen as an affront on French culture. The Americans imported their culture and denying the cultural setting of the French, went ahead to serve the French based on the American culture.
This had disastrous effects leading to over 1000 employees leaving the resort, and several of their hotels always remaining almost half empty leading to a loss of over $ 2 billion in the first year. The management process was not intertwined with the effects of globalization and internalization of business characterized by the cross cultural management of diverse workforce and customers with different values, norms, and beliefs.
The need for management to identify dominating cross cultural issues at the workplace in the context of Disney’s workforce and customers was indispensable. To this end, an environment that fosters all parties participating in the new environment remains a core function of management. The effects of cultural dominance are likely to be experienced in the work place.
In that context, skilled management enforces universal norms and values in a company’s workforce to reflect multiculturalism. The company is therefore likely to be dominated by a single organizational culture in the face of a diversity of cultures. In addition to that, management is bound to come up with approaches and strategies of integrating different cultures in the working environment with innovative intelligence to achieve team cohesiveness and oneness of purpose in pursuing organizational goals.
Many theories and approaches to cross culture management have been put forward. The discussion below will focus on the problems with bad cross culture knowledge, what a manager should do and the models to adopt and a conclusion of what should be done and how these managers should learn on cross culture management.
Cross culture management
Cross Culture may be defined as an approach to managing and running business organizations in a multicultural environment. The hospitality industry is no longer restricted in offering services to people from one culture. In addition to that, companies have traversed national boundaries in service provisions spanning different cultures.
To that end, today’s managers find it a matter of importance to acquire skills and appropriate knowledge in cross cultural management to effectively lead a workforce and operate in an environment that is culturally diverse. One of these companies is Disney Land. Disney Land is a company that offers services to people from various cultural backgrounds.
Importance of Cross Culture Management at Disney Land Company
The Disney Land Company has encountered various problems and challenges in managing a multicultural workforce and customers. In addition to that, the company had aggressively expanded its operations in various Global destinations that called upon the managers to be culturally sensitive to ensure sustained profits, company growth, increased and sustained customer base, and a good image tailored towards the cultural settings of the current market.
and Sustainable development, cross cultural management, effective communication, marketing issues, globalization, and economic challenges call upon the important application of cross cultural knowledge, skills, and management styles at the management level.
Bryant and Josen (2008) argue that various problems and challenges that are encountered by this company call upon a discussion on the importance of cross culture management and emphasizes on the need for managers to be well knowledged and skilled to face the challenges and problems presented in this field as discussed below.
To pursue its business goals, management at national and international levels encounter various problems and challenges that need to be solved while an organization pursues its goals. One of these is empowering employees in the industry as a vital component for the industry’s growth and development. Empowered individuals have the freedom to use their talents, acquire skills, and resources to effectively and efficiently execute their duties in a timely version.
This allows them to make decisions on their own about their work, how best to achieve organizational goals and objectives under the leadership of a well skilled manager. This approach encourages growth, knowledge acquisition, and autonomy when working in such an environment (Bryant & Josen, 2008).
Management needs to identify dominant cross cultural issues at the workplace in the context of an organization’s workforce and customers. To that end, an environment that fosters all parties participating in the new environment remains a core function of management. The effects of cultural dominance are likely to be experienced in the work place. In that context, well skilled managers enforce universal norms and values in a company’s workforce to reflect multiculturalism.
The company is therefore likely to be dominated by a single organizational culture in the face of diverse cultures. In addition to that, management is bound to come up with approaches and strategies of integrating different cultures in the working environment with innovative intelligence to achieve team cohesiveness and oneness of purpose in pursuing organizational goals.
According to Bibikova and Kotelniko (n.d), cultural plurality is polycentric in nature and incorporates diverse cultural values and norms. Cross culture management is one of the underlying forces to the achievement of the uniformity of culture in the face of a multiculturally operating environment, thus the foundation of organizational culture. That enables companies to operate under different conditions and environments (Bibikova & Kotelniko, n.d).
According to Ford (2001), various benefits are likely to result from effective cross cultural management. Labor costs are likely to be low as employee performance and productivity are likely to increase, conflicts are likely to be solved amicably, amenities are likely to be blended in catering for the needs of a diverse cultural customer base, mythical issues associated with certain cultures such as straight looks at individuals are overcome and appropriate strategies of interactions sought making customers feel comfortable.
Problems with Cross Cultural Unawareness
After the establishment and success of Disney Land Company on the American soil, its expansion to other destinations was believed to be a resounding success. That was the plan until the establishment of its branches in various destinations among which France and in particular Paris was one of them.
The French establishment proved a cultural disaster contrary to successes in America and Japan that the company had had previously. In France, designed with a capacity of 50,000 visitors, and admission costs of 41$ and 27 $ for adults and children respectively, the company set to realize its financial goals.
However, problems started to surface when a proposal to incorporate the French’s cultural requirements in the design of the parks, eating habits such as serving wine on a meal, and grooming standards among others proposed by French intellectuals were not integrated to reflect the culture of the French. In addition to that, the dress code did not reflect the French culture, there was a housing shortage and the design of these houses did not reflect the French culture.
Other problems included the lack and disintegration of team cohesiveness within the employee workforce and management. It was realized that employees were leaving in large numbers, tourists could not reach their intended destination on time due to strikes by discontented employees, food and other services were served on inflated prices, and employee dissatisfaction led to employee rudeness.
Management decisions have adversely impacted on the productivity and performance of employees, customer retention, and the general functionality of the company. Other problems were related to the choice of food for the visitors that did not reflect the French culture.
The lack of cross cultural knowledge has made company managers focus on economic issues without incorporating cross cultural issues in their management approaches. This has adversely reduces employee efficiency and productivity while cross cultural conflict management has become increasingly difficulty. Managers are unable to deal with emotions and fear of the unknown. Their decisions do not arguer well with the managed workforce thus discrediting their leadership styles ( Ford, 2001).
A manager without sufficient cross cultural knowledge may demonstrate deficiency in skilsl and abilities by failing to integrate cross cultural issues in leadership performance. That was the case with Disney’s decisions with the French.
Disney’s entertainments elements were American and had no traditional French entertainment components, there were language barrier as managers did not incorporate Europe’s multilingual nature, cultural eating habits such as the use of alcohol were critically lacking, and sense of innovativeness and deep cultural insight were identified to be lacking within the company with undesirable consequences.
Other problems associated with the lack of cultural knowledge included a failure to incorporate a housing scheme for employees. Successful employee cooperation depends on the competency of a manager in cross cultural knowledge and concern for their welfare. Daily management tasks are not coordinated smoothly with the possibility of raising cultural conflicts. Experts and specialists in various fields have found impediments in their productivity in these teams as their managers are not knowledgeable in cross cultural issues.
A mutual understanding between different teams from different cultural backgrounds can not be met, since different nationalities emphasize different values and norms. Conflicts due to cultural differences has been a serious obstacle in the cooperation between teams, as ideas and attachments to different cultures vary widely. It was seen as an affront on the French culture.
Another problem presented due to bad cross cultural knowledge or a lack of it in the managerial level at the micro level is communication breakdown. Employees were required to communicate in English based on a requirement by Disney’s American managers to the chagrin of the French. Disney was an American symbol in the heart of France. Communication is the means through which all managerial interactions and activites are coordinated and achieved.
Communication helps managers and the workforce overcome cultural and structural issues and constraints that may impede active participation of members in a business organization and particularly if it has a global outlook.
Bad cross cultural management has resulted company underperformance, increases level of internal and external conflicts, low team cohesiveness, poor coordination of activities given the geographic distances covered, a poor approach to managing cultural diversity, lack of trust within team members and between teams, and lack of collectivism in the pursuit of organizational goals and objectives.
Other problems with bad cross culture management experience within the company include sustained fear and suspicion of the unknown. Working in an environment where the manager does not value or understand the cultural values of employees and customers has caused suspicion between the management and the workforce.
The resulting environment has generated distrust which has lead to discontent and leading to employee and expertise turnover. Consequently, organizational goals spelt in the mission statement of Disney Land Company has not been achieved and reduced productivity and lack of a good image has lead to loss of business and a bad image. A bad image may lead to the closure of a company as it may underperform leading to loss of revenue.
What Managers are Doing within the Company
Disney Land Company managers have realized the need for cross culture management due to the company’s cross cultural workforce and diverse customer backgrounds in relation to the performance and growth of the company. Among the approaches to solving problems and challenges they face, managers have undertaken to integrate various elements in the management of employees, expatriates and handling of customers. One approach is to incorporate a cross cultural framework in the management process (Vrajeev, n.d).
This framework is based on three models. These models include individual, national and corporate cultures. Individual or personal culture is characterized by one’s traits, skills and personality in the context of ethnic, educational, and family backgrounds. On the other hand, the company’s adopted national culture incorporates a diversity of beliefs from different backgrounds combined in the values and attitudes of the culture of a country.
Vrajeev (n.d) argues that when these elements are incorporated in the pursuit of organizational goals, a manager is likely to provide excellent ground for planning, organizing, directing, and controlling employees working in a multicultural environment. Add to that, corporate culture has also been identified to form the basis of harnessing the powerful element of cross cultural differences by combining various beliefs and values towards the Company’s vision stated in its mission statement.
To achieve all these, a fundamental element incorporated within the company is cross cultural communication. Managers have adopted a variety of communication methods that may be as diverse as the cultural elements being managed (McCann, n.d). Managers have acquired skills in different approaches towards resolving conflicts in such an environment.
In addition to that, different workers from different cultural backgrounds are assigned different tasks.Managers incorporate different task completion strategies with different decision making approaches and in different backgrounds. When integrating all these elements, managers exploit their newly acquired skills and knowledge about different cultural approaches with different methods of disclosing information and privacy.
Managers within the company identify and integrate the two essential elements of integrity and honesty based on the cultural norms and customs of an organization’s cross cultural operating environment. When operating in different cultural environments, managers learn to accept and integrate different viewpoints in the management process. The elements of fear and patronage are not induced and good communication strategies are owned by the manager.
Managers incorporate the learning process which calls upon them to understand the cross cultural dimension of the organizations they are leading. One of these is an understanding of the basic nature of human beings. Human beings can be classified as good where individuals act in a responsible and desirable manner, evil people who are basically untrustworthy, and a mixture of good and evil people.
Another aspect of the learning process for managers is the aspect of understanding and incorporating strategic methods of establishing good working relations both at the national and international levels as argued in the article (Team Building, 2009). One’s abilities are fundamental considerations for the building blocks of a group’s abilities.
However, it is vital for an individual and a manager to effectively identify methods of fitting into these groups. This is in addition to the hierarchical differences in an organization’s management levels that demand respect due to status.
Konecna (n.d) supports the argument that the learning process ends with a clear perspective of putting into practice these lessons by actively engaging them in the management process. The manager should skillfully relate these elements to nature in determining the kind of activities and approaches to doing these activities in the pursuit of an organization’s vision.
Good relationships with the environment ensure that people from different cultures live and work together harmoniously and are able to manipulate and dominate the environment and strategically control not only their destinies but also the destiny of the organization they are working for.
Thus, a manager should identify the historical process involved in a cultural dimension in the cross cultural management process. The historical perspective and knowledge, the current investments and tasks, and the pursuits of organizational goals and objectives should basically determine the manner of achieving them.
These lessons have impressed a cross cultural element in the management process within the Disney Land Company. The best approaches of leading the workforce in a multicultural environment have been integrated. One of these styles is the servant leadership style among many other approaches.
Servant leaderships approach is a functional leadership style characterized by elements of vision, employee empowerment, modeling, integrity, pioneering, influence, service, competence, honesty, active listening, stewardship, teaching, and visibility.
The leader gains power by incorporating all these elements by empowering individuals to act and exploit their talents and skills. Characteristics to incorporate in this leadership style include individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long term versus short term orientations.
While individualism as discussed above incorporates peer feedback and a joint approach to achieving organizational goals with the manager, focus is on individual cooperation, task achievements through employee development on a low and individualistic culture.
On the other hand, the power distance approach focuses on the extreme differences of inequality among a population or people of a nation. Disney Land Company was serving customers from different countries particularly the Japanese, Americans, and the French.
Based on this approach, the significant participation and interaction on the part of the manager with the workers makes them free in contributing their thoughts and recommendations on the course of action in conflict resolution and other decisions in their working environment. The manager must accept employee contributions by utilizing them in decision making.
Employees should be made to feel that their efforts and contributions are vital in decision making thus making them feel valued irrespective of their socio economic positions.
This implies that employees have become more empowered in a decentralized management and effective power sharing strategies have been accomplished. The manager benefits by personal growth, develops the strengths necessary to lead across cultures, and overcomes the weaknesses apparent in a manager without cross cultural knowledge. The attitude and behavior of the leaders becomes more refined though accurate feed back is unlikely in a high power distance country or relationship.
On the other hand, masculinity distinguishes specific roles prevalent among the females and males working at Disney’s multicultural environment. Male roles are identified to be assertive and more aggressive while female roles are associated with warm interpersonal relationships characterizing the servant-leader management style. It is important for the manager to nurture a relationship that distinguishes and accepts an individual rather than the performance of an individual.
Uncertainty avoidance is focused on prevalence of structured situations as opposed to unstructured relationships within the company. Employee empowerment and development are the hallmarks of this model. Employees are responsible for setting the rules of engagement in task execution, evaluation and completion. Employees become more and more goal specific by setting their goals in their professional growth and success.
New opportunities are identified in the process as employees embrace new leadership styles as they become more self-actualized in the process. In addition to all these approaches as discussed above, leaders within the company have the option of adopting long term versus short term approaches. This calls upon the manager to focus on both the long term and short term needs of an organization. This method has the benefit of better skills acquisition and employee competency.
A cross cultural managers are more assertive, incorporate value to task execution and planning activities, be performance oriented, have humane orientations, and develop gender differentiations within the Disney Land Company . Managers find it valuable to incorporate intercultural sensitivity in a cross cultural environment.
This element can be incorporated if the manager defines and learns about the elements of cultural sensitivity. A cross culturally sensitive manager positively evaluates different cultures, evaluates and accelerates feedback, is open minded, and easily adaptable.
The managers develop cross cultural sensitivity by acting aggressively to eliminate any persisting differences, accepting and minimizing cultural differences, adapting to these differences by integrating these differences in the management of the workforce.
This makes a competent leader on a global scale that will be characterized by intelligence, effective communication abilities, and diverse knowledge on cross cultural management strategies, good interpersonal relationships, and unique ability to motivate the workforce, a learning mind, conflict resolution abilities, and in-depth business skills.
This could be the case with Disney. The managers need to identify and incorporate French expectations and traditional culture to give the organization a cultural outlook, target a specific market with specific incentives such as reducing winter costs, and identify itself with other European cultures.
Leverage of cultural differences, social literacy, personal literacy, and value for others are vital components a manager integrates to enhance managerial effectiveness. That equips a manager with the seven competencies necessary for a global manager. The managers become culturally sensitive, resilient, resourceful, skilled in dealing with complex situations, and honest ( Dickson, Hartog, & Mitchelson, 2006).
The Lessons Learnt
Various lessons have been learnt including the effects of attitudes and beliefs, effects of knowledge, skills, and strategic approaches in integrating cross culture knowledge in the management of the company. The following discussion broadly explores the effects of attitudes and belief and other elements and how a manager should go about integrating them in the management process and what one should do in the process.
The gap between a customers’s expected service and the perceived service should be bridged. On the other hand, the gap between a company’s service delivery and customer driven standards should be bridged while a company’s perceptions about customer needs and expectations should be analyzed and bridged towards achieving customer based standards in a customer’s cultural settings discussed below.
Attitudes and Beliefs
Cultural integration in leadership aims at valuing differences that exist between cultures, the effect of a leader’s cultural background in influencing their behavior and attitude in managing culturally diverse workgroups, asses and evaluate expertise and knowledge limitations and be open minded in embracing the differences in terms of ethnicity, values, and norms.
Knowledge
According to Dickson, Hartog, and Mitchelson (2006), culturally sensitive and skilled leader have the critical ability to identify cultural normality in the face of racial and cultural differences that exist in a multicultural environment. In addition to that, the leader should be culturally rich in identifying the impact of their decisions in the society and the workforce they are leading.
Skills
Training and skills development form part of the elements that characterize managers in a multicultural environment. Training, experience, and education are indispensable elements for an effective leader. Disney has established a University to equip employees with appropriate skills to work in a multicultural environment.
Strategies
The manager should critically develop a cross cultural strategy to be an effective manager in a cross cultural environment. This starts with developing an awareness of cultural differences, planning cultural interactions, and evaluating one’s assumptions and plans for appropriateness with the effect discuseed below.
The manager becomes more aware of internal and external cultural activities by reflecting on management activities in the specific leadership environment, evaluating their abilities and activities for appropriateness, and discerning between the three levels spanning personal, cultural, and universal contexts.
This awareness leads to improved productivity and overall management and organizational performance. A self aware manager is characterized by an understanding of the effects of culture on the behavior of employees and the perception of others on their cultural background, leading to effective time management when working on a multicultural environment enabling a manager to clearly comprehend and interpret others and their situational needs.
To become fully aware of others, a manager ought to be an active listener, be attentive and proactive with a deep insight in listening to others, and collect statistical information about product and services sales, gather information from the media about various products and where they sale most, and keep track of the new trends in the business industry.
That was what managers at Disney Company did. By listening to the concerns of the customers against their cultural backgrounds, they changed the name of the company to Disneyland Paris. Then they changed the dress code and the taste of foods served to the customers. In addition to that, they priced their products downwards to reflect the market needs. A surprising visitor upsurge was experienced with resulting increasing profitability.
In addition to all these, the manager should plan cross cultural interactions by creating plans on how to work in the context of a multicultural environment.
Cross cultural interactions call upon managers to be aware of the kind of talks appropriate for people from different cultural settings, strategies for initiating talks from small to global business approaches, and the approaches to initiating this talk and the leadership approach for to adapt.
In addition to that, the manager should continuously check to ensure the plans go on well by evaluating their appropriateness, monitoring the degree of appropriateness of the plans, and checking to confirm the consistence and appropriateness of the plans and course of action.
To achieve all these, the manager should seek and incorporate cultural guides, be actively involved in planning, evaluate cross cultural situations, chronicle cross cultural reflections and observations, and integrate the why strategy component. These could lead the manager to identify appropriate action to take given different situational challenges.
Action
On the other hand, the manager will take action by defining a communication strategy that clearly directs the leader in the different environments for reflections and the behavioral approach to adopt at this stage. An effective manager will be specific about the words, verbal and non-verbal actions, and the mode of delivering and exchanging ideas, the rate or speed of speaking especially for non English speakers, clarity of speech, making short clear sentences, use of visual representations, and summarizing of various points in written.
On the other hand non-verbal action calls upon the manager to maintain an appropriate eye contact that is relevant to the cultural settings. Touching others should be spare depending on the prevalent culture, facial expressions, and eye contact should reflect the current cultural setting. Effective behavior forms the core of an effective leader through different timings, style, flexibility, and integrity.
Grishma (2006) assets that an effective leader should actively know the core values of the people to work with, identify key CQ management hires, be specific in dealing with inappropriate jokes and language in a multi cultural environment, evaluate feedbacks, and work as a team.
The leader may also endeavor to create collectivism by encouraging team integration, encouraging emotional interdependencies, creating good interpersonal relationships to incorporate trust and cultivate it among team members, cerate a quality culture in the employees, and improve team performance by meeting regularly to evaluate their achievements and in laying new strategies.
In addition to that, company expectations about the intended market should be identified, company communication standards redefined, exhaustive research on their intended market done, and strong interpersonal employee relationships created by identifying inherent problems and solving them as a team.
Conclusion
Bad cross cultural management, poor management perspectives about different cultures, lack of appreciation of other cultures and specifically the hosting country and city, failure to bridge the gap between customer needs and expectations, and ineffective research prior to the establishment of Disney came with a series of adverse effects on the management of employees and employee productivity.
It has been established that bad cross cultural governance leads to poor employee and team cohesiveness, reduced employee productivity and performance. Emotional attachments at team and individual levels become destroyed and in place distrust takes over.
Fear and poor decision making as the manager owns the decision making process without the need to take in the views of others results. Discomfort at the workplace, lack of appreciation and employee innovativeness results in cultural conflicts. Norms and values of different cultural settings and communication breakdown is the result.
To address these issues, a manager should create a cross cultural framework based on the three cultural models of individual, national, and corporate culture. The manager should be critically skilled in conflict resolution in a multicultural environment, specify tasks for specific employees based on their cultural backgrounds, integrate honesty and integrity in decision making while taking different viewpoints from different employees.
In addition to that, the manager should learn and understand the basic nature of human beings, identify historical cross cultural processes, empower employees in decision making processes, and be culturally sensitive. Addition to that, the manager should value employee attitudes and beliefs, be culturally knowledgeable with appropriate skills, and develop a cross cultural strategy in taking action by identifying and effecting an appropriate communication strategy that can be verbal or non verbal and that which is audience specific.
Culturally sensitive and skilled leader have the critical ability to identify cultural normality in the face of racial and cultural differences that exist in a multicultural environment. Training, experience, and education are indispensable elements for an effective leader. The manager should critically develop a cross cultural strategy to be an effective manager in a cross cultural environment.
This starts with developing an awareness of cultural differences, planning cultural interactions, and evaluating one’s assumptions and plans for appropriateness. An effective manager will be specific about the words, verbal and non-verbal actions, and the mode of delivering and exchanging ideas, the rate or speed of speaking especially for non English speakers, clarity of speech, making short clear sentences, use of visual representations, and summarizing of various points in written.
Effectiveness Of Cross Cultural Management
An effective strategy could help the company design its service industry products tailored towards meeting customer needs and expectations. A case in point could be for Disney to realize customer satisfaction and a strong appetite for their services if the cultural element and appreciation were factored from the start when the company was set up on the French soil. The increasing global nature of the hospitality industry reinforces the need and importance of cross cultural management on a global scale.
An organization that is led by managers who are well skilled and trained in cross cultural management are likely to cause team cohesion, oneness of purpose in the pursuit of organizational goals and objectives as spelt in an organization’s mission statement. Cross cultural knowledge makes strong leaders who meticulously recruit their team and add value to a team and the organization in general, empowers organizational employees to own the process of organizational management and decision making.
Cross cultural management emphasizes on servant leadership and inspires management with honesty, stewardship, integrity, credibility, and vision. Effective communication and coordination of management activities and an appreciation of diversity among employees and the management becomes essential.
A manager becomes conscious of diversity, takes those options that are likely to result for the common good of the employee, the customer and the organization in general. In addition to that, managers are able to implement the diversity aspect by identifying the diversity of imperatives and interfaces. It creates in the employee and the management the diversity consciousness.
Cross cultural management becomes effective as it creates trust among employees, the management, and customers. Trust is a fundamental component in a multicultural environment.
A trustworthy leader finds it easy to communicate effectively and reliably and makes the leaders adapt a behavioral approach that makes the led comfortable. In addition to that, effective cross cultural leadership identifies and integrates the importance of language in at group and individual level, enables the development of good relationships, creates good attitudes towards others, a positive attitude towards work, and effective time management.
Cultural interdependencies at individual and group levels become more effective, effective conflict resolutions between cultures takes course, and a looser protocol in conflict resolution in decision making takes credibility.
Leaders are able to model behavior, public confrontations can be avoided and arguments are critically evaluated before they are communicated particularly when interacting with superiors in public, enables communication be task and not individual specific, and enables leaders determine the cultural contents in a multicultural environment.
Developing Cross culture skills
In my opinions there are other approaches that managers should incorporate in acquiring and developing cross cultural skills. One such approach is collecting diversification information on diverse cultural components.
Each culture has unique values, norms, and beliefs. These managers should learn new mechanism for decision making and the ability to identify the impact of their decisions in such an environment. Each manager should learn the responsibilities that come with their position and learn cross cultural industry cooperation. Managers should develop control structures to implement their knowledge and skills.
Managers should examine the people with whom they work and the connection between the people and what they do. This could enable them focus in developing their skills and enhancing them specifically for the situation they are in. in addition to that, learning managers should identify tasks and goals to be accomplished and each of these tasks should be scheduled.
Learning managers should be logical and focus on factual evidence in achieving a specific goal. These managers should incorporate a cultural view of time in the learning process. They should determine the time required to achieve specific tasks, learn on the speed making process, and conduct meetings through which issues can be discussed in the open.
The learning process should incorporate language specific lessons, individual against collectivism approaches, levels of cooperation, and knowledge on how to avoid risks and uncertainties, and masculinity issues. Managers should learn to identify workgroup characteristics by comparing different cultural perspectives and implications, learn to understand cross culture motivations. Motivations may include an understanding of the degree of interdependence between groups, and distinguish the differences between different cultures.
References
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