The importance of cross cultural management

Introduction (Review what cross cultural management is by including information from other researchers and why is this article relevant on the basis of what you’ve learned so far)

Cross cultural management is to adopt inclusive management method to the culture of subsidiaries’ nations, which have different human races, different cultural types and different development stages of culture in the international business. It is one of the management methods in order to embrace the local culture. The purpose of cross cultural management is to design feasible organization structures and management mechanisms in various forms of cultural atmosphere. I think Black and Porter’s paper is tightly related to cross cultural management, which can give lots of lessons to managers. Cross cultural management is also the result of generation development. The globalization economy calls on the individuals and communities from different human races and cultures to work and study together, and then it makes the products accepted and used by people from different human races, cultures and consuetudes. Further research should be done about cross cultural management in order to improve multinational enterprises. A significant relationship between typical managerial behaviors and performances for the expatriates needs to be studied in depth. Moreover, more factors that impact cross cultural management of expatriates should be studied deeply. On the other hand, a means of obtaining more effective accommodation of managerial behaviors and more effective performance in overseas is cross-cultural training before departure.

Main section (Review the article in detail by answering the questions provided below)

What is the article about and why did the authors think it is important?

With an increasing number of foreign enterprises operating all over the world, cross cultural management of expatriates is very important. The article writtened by Black and Porter gives us some demographic information of samples in its study. The article examines the impact of cultural differences about the cross cultural adjustment of expatriates and discussed the reasons why the researchers hold this study deeply. In the article, it discusses a lot of demographic information of many samples, and the results can be understood easily through the means, standard deviations and correlations for the variables in many tables. In addition, both theoretical and practical implications of cross cultural management of expatriates are discussed. As we know, there are different cultures in different countries and different management problems in different multinational enterprises, so to solve the different management problems we should learn and use lots of measures. The article gives us a discussion of cross cultural management, and discusses about cross cultural management of expatriates, and examines the impact of cultural differences about the cross cultural adjustment of expatriates. The article is tells us that managerial behaviors effective in one type of culture are not necessarily effective in another type of culture, and the article gets the results by using important empirical data. In the article, it discusses profoundly the relationship between managerial behaviors and performances in cross cultural business. From the relationship, we learn that the authors get two general schools of thought.

The reasons why the authors thought it is important are chiefly as follows.

Now, American firms are facing growing international competition, which has improved their cross cultural management and also has made the companies become more competitive. And many American firms have not been successful in developing effective managers in cross cultural management. Unluckily, it is not easy to select, retain, and develop effective managers for assignments requiring cross cultural management. The costs of maintaining a manager in an overseas post average about $250,000 and the estimated costs for premature returns range from $50,000 to $200,000 per early return, so the problems can be quite significant to a single firm and to American business in general.

What’s worse, whether or not American managers manage in foreign countries are effective has not been examined enough.

In addition, with an increasing number of foreign enterprises operating all over the world, cross cultural management of expatriates is very important, the article should give some demographic information of samples.

In this article, it studies American expatriate managers in Hong Kong. This article compares the managerial behaviors of American managers in the U.S.to those in an overseas location. And it also compares the relationship between managerial behaviors and job performances in two different cultures.

What do the authors say about the two schools of thought?

One is termed as the cross-cultural school of thought. And in this thought, interpersonal and communication skills of expatriates were related to performance.

The other thought is concerning managerial behaviors and it is termed as the practical school of thought. The authors thinks that a majority of American expatriates sent on assignments to Pacific Rim countries are socialized to believe that their managerial behaviors are appropriate for the overseas assignment. The authors make a deep discussion and comparison about whether or not managerial behaviors which are effective in the U.S. will be effective in another culture.

What do the authors predict will happen?

With the increase in globalization and diversity in the workplace, cross cultural management will become more and more important in organizational life in the future. By improving the cross cultural management of their businesses, more and more firms will become more competitive. The authors predict that a successful manager in a place may not succeed in another place.

How did the authors test their predictions?

In the article, Black and Porter give us some demographic information of samples during the study. And we can learn the results which can be understood easily through the means, standard deviations and correlations for the variables in many tables. Black and Porter examine the impact of cultural differences about the cross cultural adjustment of expatriates and discuss the reasons why the researchers hold this study deeply.

In your own words, not quoting statistics, what did the authors find?

In my own words, the authors find that cross cultural management is different in different countries. For exmaple, in American and HongKong, the same manager may have different performances.

What are the practical implications for managers? How can they use this information?

The article provides helpful knowledge of cross cultural management for managers. Using this information, managers are able to get ready for expatriate employees that adjusting to multiple aspects of their host country cultures. We can get any practical implications for managers from this article. In a word, it can give very useful knowledge to lots of managers.

Conclusion/Discussion (What did you think of the article? What can be concluded in relation to other reading that you’ve done?)

From the discussion, we can learn that a successful manager in a country may not succeed in another country. Black and Porter’s article discusses the cross cultural adjustment of expatriates deeply and give lots of lessons to managers. From the article, we can learn the impact of cultural differences of expatriates. Using the theoretical and practical implications of cross cultural management of expatriates, managers may be able to better prepare expatriate employees for adjusting to multiple aspects of their host country cultures. As far as I’m concerned, Black and Porter’s article is academically good for expatriate employees. The article discusses cross cultural management of expatriates. In this article, the relationship between managerial behaviors and job performances is compared deeply, which makes us learn more about cross cultural management of expatriates. To sum up, effective leadership is a key factor in successful international joint ventures and we can use what we have learned from the article in cross cultural management. Based on the information in the article, we can do more research easily.