Businesses routinely meet cultural variations in today’s multicultural global world, which affect management practices. Diversity in attitudes, actions, customs, and values among individuals living or working together are examples of cultural differences affecting international businesses. Entrepreneurs need to incorporate different management styles depending on the cultures that make up a company’s employees. Understanding the cultural perspectives of staff is critical to developing successful business interactions as the wide cultural differences affect how a company does business. Entrepreneurs assess factors including communication protocols, employees’ view of time and deadlines, the staff’s likeliness of highlighting issues, response to authority, acceptance of non-verbal communication, and their decision-making process as they choose the preferred management style. These factors impact vital business areas, including marketing, finance, sales, and distribution.
There is a need for entrepreneurs to balance standardization and adaptation management practices. According to Apetrei et al. (2015), there are four primary management strategies used by multinational businesses to assimilate cultural differences: adaptation by indifference, adaptation by submission, standardization by superiority, and disputable standardization. Entrepreneurs should study a country’s cultural perspectives to help choose the most viable strategy. However, businesses should limit the adaptation strategies where they modify the firm’s method of operation.
Communication provides a vital strategy for firms to bridge cultural differences with operations. Entrepreneurs need to understand the target market communication protocols and integrate them into the firm’s strategy. Modifying a company strategy to incorporate cultural perspectives of the local market provides insights to overcome business-related issues. In addition, it helps the business cope with potential interaction barriers regarding international business, including workplace etiquette, organizational hierarchy, and negotiation styles (Tuleja, 2022). The choice of management strategy and communication protocol relies on customer relations. Customer relations emanate from the convergence of host country and entrepreneur cultural insights; thus, businesses need to integrate the best strategies from the opposing cultures.
References
Apetrei, A., Kureshi, N. I., & Horodnic, I. A. (2015). When culture shapes international business. Journal of Business Research, 68(7), 1519-1521.
Tuleja, E. A. (2022). Intercultural communication for global business: How leaders communicate for success. (2nd ed.). Routledge.