Business Across Cultures

A specifical part of developing of the culture in general, seen as something extensive is the level on each bussines relationships are situated. In our country one of the most interesting rule on which are made bussines relationships is the neccesity of respecting of “good faith”.

Our world is changing. Due to globalization, multinational companies are meeting fiercer competition and the pressure to be competitive and successful is increasing. The characteristics of the companies seem to be more in focus now and ever since the eighties the concept of organizational culture has been a much-discussed topic. Companies expanding abroad face national cultures that may differ from their own. In order to create a common ground and strive towards common goals there is a need for common values and a favourable culture. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the employees in a subsidiary of a successful company perceive their own organizational culture and its connection to the organizational culture of the foreign parent company. This is also our research question. The company we have chosen to perform a case study at is BMW Group Gothenburg, subsidiary to BMW AG Germany. Method: This is a qualitative study, and in order to investigate the attitudes of the employees we have performed interviews with employees of different levels and departments at BMW Gothenburg. As a complement to the data collected during the interviews we have made observations outside and inside the facility in Gothenburg in order to broaden the impression of the culture. Analysis: Our study shows that the employees at BMW in Gothenburg perceive their culture as unique due to its cheerful and friendly atmosphere where everybody feels at ease with their work. The relationship between different organizational levels and departments is good and has developed in this direction during recent years. The employees have fun working and this is, according to them, the biggest motivating factor. Important symbols stressed are the meetings where they feel they get the opportunity to express their opinion and have discussions, events and activities outside the formal working facility and the home-baked cake made by the sales manager to reward any salesman who sells more than 30 cars in a month. The employees’ perceptions of organizational culture at the parent company are vague, but a hierarchical structure is something all respondents agree characterize German organizational culture in general and therefore also ought to be present at BMW in Germany. Conclusions: The connections in organizational culture between the subsidiary in Gothenburg and the parent company in Germany are mainly materialistic. The employees do not consider the fact that BMW is a German company as something they reflect about or that affects them in their daily work. In other words, BMW show that a company can be successful worldwide without having a strong common corporate culture, something many researchers consider to be of great importance. A strong product, material control that makes BMW-facilities all over the world recognizable to the customer as well as liberties for the local managers are possible factors behind the success of BMW.

Multinational business strategy research has long acknowledged the importance of national cultural characteristics as determinants of management behavior. Further, research has linked strategy, market entry modes and culture. Kogut and Singh noted that cultural distance, or the degree to which cultural norms in one country differ from those in another country, may affect the success of business. Further, international joint venture longevity decreases with the cultural distance between partners. Park and Ungson stress the criticality of relationships for overcoming cultural distance in joint ventures. And, culture may be a behavioral determinant which affects the capability of would-be international joint venture partners to work together cooperatively.

Culture underpins business and we adopt Hofstede's (1991) notion of culture as "mental programming patterns of thinking and feeling, and potential acting" All people are socialized into many different cultures, for example, national culture, business/ professional culture, and organizational/ corporate culture. Many companies, however, fail to incorporate a cultural learning curve along with experience and efficiency curves into their thinking. Effective strategy implementation across borders requires something more than simply gathering recipes for dealing with various country business practices. A number of cultural typologies exist.

At the Management we utilize the Hofstede dimensions as the most widely accepted basis for understanding national culture (noting also that there are regional, ethnic, language and other variations) and seek broad guidelines for improving understanding of a cultural learning curve as it affects strategy. The dimensions of culture that may affect generic strategies are: power distance; individualist/ collectivist; masculinity/ femininity; uncertainty avoidance; and long-term / short-term orientation. As an illustration, we develop arguments that focus on the role of each variable as it encourages or discourages the generic cost leadership strategy. Our assumption is that these dimensions, singly or in combination, may explain multinational managers' proclivities toward one or another generic strategy, as industry and market forces are held constant. The dimensions are: power distance, individualist/collectivist,, masculinity/ femininity, uncertainty avoidance and, long-term orientation. The designations reference relevant locations within the range of values for the twenty three CVS countries, for a specific dimension