"Cultural, distance and language gaps create barriers, and these barriers have a negative impact on our business globally. Why does this happen?"
Overseas subsidiaries are under increasing pressure to perform to global expectations, yet managing national-cultural boundaries is unfamiliar territory for many corporate managers. This is partly because cultural issues, which arise from differences between groups and how the differences are managed, are difficult to separate from other issues. Also, the company may not have a clear message about where and how the business requires boundaries to be crossed for collaboration.
To people involved with them, barriers between cultures may seem to be unavoidable, not something that can be managed. In some cases companies downplay cultural barriers in order to maintain the internal harmony needed for basic business functions.
Local leadership may not be well developed if there is a lack of clear and consistent direction. Leadership also requires integrated management systems and positive communication. Developing these is more challenging in a cross-cultural situation with conflicting values and objectives.
A company strategy to reduce reliance on expatriates may help to improve consistency and cohesion locally. However, such a strategy may simply shift the barriers offshore, hampering efforts to create cross-border collaboration.
CCG specializes in providing the leadership perspectives and skills needed for addressing the challenges of global leadership and management and successfully implementing a global vision. We help clients create local unity with global processes and values to better meet the demands of the global and local organizations.
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