Global Business Environment - Sample Applied Theory Question

<< Previous Page

1. Escon Electronics Ltd., an electronics company based in Holland, wants to set up subsidiaries in USA and Japan. For this purpose, it planned to recruit people for its new subsidiaries in USA and Japan. The managing director of the company, Michael Vaughan learned that some societies emphasize individualism, while others favor group performance. Therefore, he wants to know the behavioral patterns of the people in these two countries. Help Michael to analyze the behavioral patterns in the USA and Japan.

Answer:

People from different countries exhibit markedly different patterns of behavior based on their cultural conditioning. In some societies, individualism is encouraged, while in others, group performance rather than individual performance is judged. Most western societies emphasize individual performance to a greater extent than Asian countries like Japan, China and India, which emphasize group/team performance.

The US is a highly individualistic society. Individualism has both positive and negative aspects. The merits of individualism are that it encourages entrepreneurship and high mobility between firms. Mobility exposes employees to different styles of conducting business in different firms. However, employees are committed to their individual careers. Therefore, they tend to switch companies in search of better opportunities for themselves.

On the positive side, this provides an opportunity for employees to apply the new and innovative businesses practices in the companies in which they are currently employed. The drawbacks of individualism are that the concept of loyalty towards the firm among employees is virtually absent. Sometimes, constant changing of jobs results in employees failing to gain and consolidate knowledge and skills in various aspects of a particular business.

Individualism also tends to make people self-centered, thus hampering teamwork. In some societies, great importance is attached to group performance. The social status of a person is determined by the group to which he belongs. Lifetime employment is the norm in such societies. For instance, the high productivity and loyalty of the Japanese worker has been attributed to the strong socialization of employees within their organizations.