Caracterización de la Empresa Cervecería “Antonio Díaz Santana’’

The impact of multi cultural differences on organisational issues have been

studied for a number of decades since globalization started sweeping across the world.

Statistics on international business indicate that IJVs are the most preferred mode of

international business, driven by choice as well as legislature (Beamish & Lupton,

2009). However, this form of foreign business is also the one that experiences the

most complex problems of multi cultural differences (Lu, 2006). The dissimilar

national cultures within an IJV lead to differences between management styles which

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ventures and other forms of multi cultural collaborations have their advantages, many

of these collaboration attempts end up in failures or continue to perform at subpar

standards due to many operational issues surrounding the management of such

collaborations.

International joint ventures are particularly susceptible to suffer from

differences in organisational behaviour issues arising from cultural variations between

the multi cultural members of the organisation. According to Faulkner (1995), cultural

characteristics of the partners and their representative workforce tend to influence

strategic business approaches to profits, learning and information sharing, their

commitment orientations to their organisation or career, as well as other managerial

and employee behaviours.

Given the implications of national culture on employee and business partner

behaviour, the international joint ventures (IJVs) are heavily influenced by the

national cultures of the partners and its multi cultural workforce. These firms face

increased levels of internal conflicts due to diversity in their work force (Horowitz &

Boradman, 1994; Piturro & Mahoney, 1992). As per Schomer (2008), “in overt and

subtle ways, the deep elements of national culture influence every area of business relationships, systems, processes and work interactions across cultural boundaries”. This creates the deep-seated differences of work values in multi cultural employees.

Due to such differences, issues related to cultural gaps, varying cultural orientations

lending to different work values and cultural insensitivity can crop up, hindering the

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AlRasheedi (2006) considers the implications of national culture for the work-

related values and attitudes of multi-cultural workforces in his dissertation research

study “International Collaboration In The Development Of Hybrid Vehicle Technologies In The Automotive Industry”. AlRasheedi attempts to identify the success and failure factors relating to the potential challenges and conflicts in

collaborative relationships. Also, he also investigates the various ways in which firms

are collaborating internationally and dealing with the resulting challenges. In his

research methodology, a number of case studies have been analysed, not only in the

Hybrid Vehicle Technologies but also, for comparison purposes, in other industries

facing similar challenges. Cases selected for research are identified to reflect the

presence of the effects of critical factors such as political pressures, cultural diversity,

technology facilitations, compensation diversity, trust, loyalty dilemma, and

intellectual property issues. From the analysis of these case studies, many different

potential areas of conflict have been observed between the collaborative partners.

These involve cultural, human resource, intellectual property, and compatibility

issues. The resulting challenges can be divided into “A”, or external factors, which are

mainly political factors, and “B”, or ground level factors such as HRM, social, and

technology factors. Based on the various case studies, it is concluded that the “B”

ground level factors are the most critical for any collaboration to be successful

because the quicker the reduction in conflicts in these factors, the quicker the

cohesiveness of the partners can be achieved. Also, the most failure factors that led to

dissolving of the IJV’s were ignoring the “B” factors improvement by the

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The most significant challenge within multi cultural organisations lies in

creating a cohesive and integrated team regardless of cultural distance between the

employees from different cultures (Potthukitchi et al., 2002). The fact that differences

in dimensions of culture affects the same aspects of organisational behaviour

differently paves the way for many misunderstandings, unless people are aware of the

implications of such cultural differences. With such conflicts within the organisation,

the resulting disruption in communication, decision-making and operations leads to

inefficiencies and failures of the venture in worst-case situations. Furthermore, the

success of the venture will depend largely on how successful the expatriate

management is in establishing good interpersonal relationships with the workforce

and their ability to manage the human resource in an effective manner (Ding, 1997;

Fischer, 1992).

According to Child & Markoczy (1993), managing IJVs are made more

complicated by cultural differences in work values that affect communication,

commitment orientations, decision making, conflict resolution and other HRM

management approaches. As Hofstede (2007) noted, since values influence people’s

behaviour, and are embedded in culture, each society has its own management process

(Hofstede, 2007). Therefore, the knowledge of the workforce’s values and attitudes

plays a key role in facilitating a proper understanding and creating empathy and

cultural sensitivity. One of the key success factors of international business lies in the

effective management of the human resource. Human Resource Management refers to

“the activities an organisation carries out to use its human resources effectively”

(Dowling & Schuler, 1990). The strategic importance of human resource is

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As multi cultural organizations as IJVs are staffed with management and

personnel drawn from both parent countries or from many nations, issues and

conflicts tend to occur due to different value systems. While differences are

acceptable, and even useful at times, if they are mismanaged with lack of cultural

insight and sensitivity, it can cause misunderstandings, conflicts and rifts within the

workforce. In some cases, the multi cultural staff with low cultural tolerance may act

arrogantly and narrow-mindedly, thereby widening rifts (Miller and lee, 2001).