The so-called cultural conflict is not a word that only appears after cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Cultural conflicts will also occur between enterprises in different regions within a country, even between different departments of the same enterprise, and also in various fields outside the enterprise.
The essence of cultural conflict is the collision of values. There is no right or wrong to compare the values of different enterprises or even different countries horizontally. The way to reduce conflicts is communication. The efficiency of communication can improve the efficiency of management and reduce misunderstandings. Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge has become the root cause of the failure after cross-border mergers and acquisitions.
There is a famous saying in Sun Tzu's Art of War that those who want the same things win, which shows the importance of * * * knowledge between superiors and subordinates. With the globalization of enterprises, cross-cultural management has been paid more and more attention by enterprises.
Cross-cultural management refers to remolding the unique culture of enterprises by overcoming the differences between different heterogeneous cultures, and finally creating excellent management behavior. That is to say, in the global operation, we should adopt an inclusive management method for the culture of the country where the subsidiary is located, overcome any conflict between different cultures under cross-cultural conditions, and create a unique culture of the enterprise accordingly, thus forming an effective management process.
The purpose of cross-cultural management is to design feasible organizational structure and management mechanism in different forms of cultural atmosphere, to find enterprise goals beyond cultural conflicts in the management process, to make employees with different cultural backgrounds maintain the same code of conduct, and to control and utilize the potential and value of enterprises to the maximum extent. Only by successful cross-cultural management can global enterprises operate smoothly, enhance their competitiveness and expand their market share.
Cross-cultural management needs to effectively manage the following issues:
1. How to clearly advocate the cultural value of this enterprise?
2. How to avoid cultural departmentalism?
3. How to determine the cross-cultural management strategy of this enterprise?
4. How to train talents locally?
First of all, enterprises engaged in global management must recognize and understand the objective existence of cultural differences among countries and attach importance to learning and understanding the languages and cultures of other countries, which is a necessary condition for enhancing cross-cultural management capabilities.
Understanding cultural differences has two meanings: one is to understand how the culture of the host country affects the behavior of local employees; The second is to understand how the culture of the home country affects the behavior of managers sent by enterprises to the local area, and different measures need to be taken to overcome different types of cultural differences.
For example, conflicts arising from different management styles, methods or skills can be overcome through mutual teaching and learning; Conflicts arising from different living habits and ways can be solved through cultural exchanges. Only by mastering different types of cultural differences can we find appropriate methods to solve cultural conflicts.
Secondly, we should treat cultural differences dialectically, see their advantages as well as their disadvantages, and make full use of the differences expressed by different cultures to create opportunities for the business development of enterprises.
As the general manager of Guangzhou Honda Motor Company said: "There are many internal contradictions in our enterprise, but there are also good aspects. When we choose partners in China, we always like to choose some partners who have different ideas from ours, which makes us often collide with each other, so that the collision of different ideas will produce new ideas, thus creating a new corporate culture of Honda. " According to the general manager's experience, as long as we can correctly treat the contradictions and conflicts between different cultures, it will not only become an obstacle to enterprise management, but will become the driving force for enterprise development and the source of innovation.
In addition, we should fully realize that the key to cross-cultural management is the management of people, and we should implement cross-cultural management for all employees.
On the one hand, the purpose of cross-cultural management is to integrate different cultures and form a new culture, and this new culture can only be realized through the thoughts, values and behaviors of all members of the enterprise, otherwise cross-cultural management will become a mere formality.
On the other hand, in a global enterprise, the corporate culture of the parent company can be transmitted to foreign branches through the products and business models of the enterprise, but more often it is transmitted to foreign branches through managers who are familiar with the corporate culture.
Therefore, in cross-cultural management, global management enterprises must emphasize the management of people, not only let managers deeply understand the corporate culture of the parent company, but also choose managers with cultural integration ability to undertake the important responsibility of cross-cultural management of foreign branches, and at the same time strengthen the cultural management of all members of the enterprise, so that the new culture can really play its important role in management and make the global management enterprises in a favorable position in the competition with foreign enterprises.
Here are some cross-cultural management methods to provide reference for enterprises:
Localization strategy
That is, cross-cultural management is carried out according to the principle of "globalization of thinking and localization of action". Global enterprises need to hire a considerable number of local employees abroad, because local employees are familiar with local customs, market dynamics and various laws and regulations of the host government, and they can easily reach an understanding with local consumers. Hiring local employees can not only save some expenses, but also help them to expand the market and gain a foothold in the local area.