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027

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Date / / Time: Total Mark:

15

Student’s Name

Student’s ID

Course Name Cross Cultural Management

Course Code BUS311

Semester Fall 2020

Instructor’s Name Dr. Imen Gharbi

Questions 1 2 3 Total
Point 5 5 5
Student
Mark

Note: This Assignment accounts for 15% of the student’s final grade.
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Case study:

A French friend of mine had finished her studies in the most famous grande école of commerce in
France. She did both her undergraduate and her MBA studies there and then she was hired by a well-
known consulting firm in Paris. She worked there for four years and reached the level of senior
consultant by the age of thirty three. She was then given an assignment with an oil company based in
Venezuela. Until then she had had no problems in communicating with the client’s team members
and had always produced successful results. However, with this particular client, she had enormous
difficulties. She worked as hard as she could to figure out the structure of the company, its problems
and possible solutions. Despite her efforts, however, she could feel that her opinions were not being
taken seriously, and that senior managers of the client usually tried to avoid discussing issues with
her. Moreover, she had difficulty in getting vital information from employees lower down in the
hierarchy, so she was unable to come up with the analyses she wanted. Although she felt she could
really help the company with her knowledge and experience, she found it difficult to persuade he
client to put her ideas into practice. In fact, the better and more innovative her ideas were, the more
difficult it was to get them over to the managers in Venezuela.

Questions

What are the challenges faced by the French employee in her job?
In this specific case, the main challenges faced by the French employee working for the consulting
firm in Paris are mostly affiliated to communication difficulties evidently attributable to cultural
differences between France and Venezuela. As a French women and like her other clients, she had
attempted utmost to communicate with the Venezuelan client in a way which she usually uses.
However, she faced a major problem understanding the organizational structure and the pertinent
problems of the Venezuelan company which is the client of the consulting firm, in this case.
Moreover, despite utmost attempts to convey her thoughts and opinions in order to provide ideal
solutions to the main issues faced by the company, those opinions and thoughts were fully ignored
and not taken into consideration by the company management which further contributed to various
operational problems and challenges that she faced in this regard. Moreover, she also met major
difficulties communicating with the employees lower down the organizational rank and failed to
understand their problems and impediments which significantly hamper her situational or
circumstantial analysis of the concerned organizational problems or issues that she was facing with as
part of her professional assignment.

How can this situation be analyzed using one of Hofstede’s dimensions?

Hofstede's cultural dimension theory primarily sets up a conceptual framework to recognize and
analyze cross-cultural communication which was developed by Geert Hofstede. It essentially
highlights the effects of a particular society's cultural attributes and characteristics on the values and
principle of its members which are conveyed to and reflected by the general cultural behaviors and
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conducts of the members of the society. Now, in this context, based on the information presented in
this brief case study, it can be rationally supposed that there are considerable cultural differences
between the French and Venezuelan society which have been reflected in the cultural behaviors and
thought processes of people in these two countries.
For example, in this regard, it can be conclude that in the French culture the opinions and
perceptions of women are given much more priority and importance in the professional settings at
least on the opposite to the Venezuelan culture, in which mostly male opinions and thoughts are
given relatively more priority and consideration under a professional setting implying that from a
commercial and occupational standpoint, Venezuelan culture might be comparatively more male-
dominated than the same in French culture. This is one of the features of the cultural and perceptual
differences between the two cultures which possibly contributed to the communication difficulties
met by the French employee in this instance. This also absolutely points out the limited social ability
of women to influence the higher authority or administration in any business organization or
company in Venezuela compared to their male counterparts clearly marking the gender differences in
the power structure in the society which is inclined towards more equality and social power balance
in the French society. This can be reflected by the fact the ideas and opinions of the French employee
have been visibly ignored and maimed by the higher management of the Venezuelan company which
was very much unknown and unintelligible to the French employee. Moreover, note that the French
employee also tried to suggest some innovative and creative ideas and thoughts to the company
management with the aim to resolve the various organizational issues and problems that company
has been facing which were not convincing to the higher management of the Venezuelan company.
This obviously implicit that the Venezuelan culture might be comparatively more uncertainty and
avoidance driven as compared to the French culture as people in Venezuelan culture or society might
be more anxious or resistive towards any change or anomaly in their regular lifestyle or way of
thinking and in operational or functional aspects of professional life relative to the French society,
based on Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory.

How do you think the consultant could try to improve her situation?
In view of the cultural differences between the French and the Venezuelan society, the French
employee or consultant could have changed her professional and behavioral approach to some level
in accordance with the mindset and discrimination of the company management and employees in
this instance. Now, admitting the fact she had been working with a Venezuelan client for the very first
time and initially faced major communication difficulties while interrelate with the company
management and employees, she could have moderately changed her operational thinking and
communication mode. In this respect, it would be practically advisable to convey her ideas, ideas and
opinions to the company management through a cultural male interpreter or even a male translator
which perhaps would have been relatively more acceptable to the company management and
employees. Any local professional interpreter or translator could have used the indication, body
language, and emotional and facial expressions while meeting with the clients which would have
been much more familiar and acceptable to the company management and employees resulting in a
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higher probability of recognition and acceptance of the consultant's thoughts and opinion. Therefore,
a professional communication mediator would have been beneficially helpful to remove the
communications difficulties that the consultant had been facing in this instance. Therefore, based on
the supposition drawn about the cultural differences between the French society and the Venezuelan
society from the given case study and the unfamiliarity of the consultant with the mindset and
thought process of the Venezuelan people, she could have concentrated more on eliminating the
communication obstacles and difficulties that she had been meeting initially considering her
professional priorities and aim rather than trying utmost to convince the company managers and
administration, pertaining to this particular assignment.