Cultural Awareness Essay

elaboration and the environment affect a business in worldy ways. Culture is not simply a different language, a different shade of skin, or different styles of food. Culture, and the environment in which you atomic number 18 a part of, affect the running of day to day business operations of all companies day in and day out. This paper depart assess how Linda Myers, from the article, The would-be pioneer, (Green, S. , 2011) was affected by the huge culture jar of working for a global conglomerate from Seoul, South Korea. We will discuss what went wrong with Ms.Myers approach to business, Hofstedes five dimensions of culture as it pertains to the article, and make some recommendations based on the authors thoughts. permits first start by discussing how culture and environment affect management in an institution. A culture and its environment affect the operations of a business because that culture generates practices based on its environment. To clarify, how a business sets its policies is based on cultural exceptions, desire politics, points of view, whatever is considered the norm for that environment.In many cultures, it is in any case safe to assume that women do not have the same storm as a man in charge. An example of how women argon belittled can be women in Middle eastern countries that are forced to wear veils to cover their faces and walk behind their husbands, not hand in hand like in Western cultures. Politics plays a huge part in how a company runs as healthy. If a country is firm in the belief that men are the only way to go through goals and run the government, then companies under that government will more than likely have the same approach. many another(prenominal) countries still believe that men are superior and dont quite believe that women should be in the piece of work. We have seen American culture change to where women successfully run businesses. These gender based assumptions are inadequate to reality, however, some countrie s still hold on to those beliefs. For Ms. Myers, being successful in America, did not fork out to being successful in South Korea. Although she was an executive, she had many barriers that hindered her from adequately helping the company in the ways that she wanted.Hofstedes Five Dimensions of CultureDr. Geert Hofstede created the first four dimensions of culture in the 1970s later analyzing statistical data from IBM over the course of many years. In the 1990s he created the fifth dimension after noticing specific cultural differences in Asian countries and their ties to Confucian philosophy. (www. mindtools. com) The five dimensions are as follows Power/ outgo (PD), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Uncertainty/Avoidance Index (UAI), and Long enclosure Orientation (LTO). I will only discuss a few of these as they seem more prominent to this case.First, lets talk about the Power/ outer space (PD) dimension as it pertains to Ms. Myers in South Korea. Power/Distance (PD), ref ers to the degree of inequality that exists- and is accepted- among people with and without power. A high PD score indicates that society accepts an unequal dispersion of power, and that people comprehend their place in the system. Low PD means that power is shared and well dispersed. (www. mindtools. com) As an example from the article, Myers goes on to judge, there were basically four levels VP, director, manager, and worker bee. You only talked to people at your level. SK Telecom boasted that they were one of the first Korean cultures to rid themselves of a strictly hierarchal form of running.However, Myers maxim that although they tell that, they did not embrace that to the fullest. Merely putting something on paper does not constitute practicing the said task. In order for the company to have abolished the hierarchal form of leadership, they would have needed to instill dampen practices and allow more input from all levels of the company. Masculinity (MAS) refers to how a society views/values the traditional aspects of manful versus female roles.This dimension ascertains that men are in the positions of power and women are to be in the home, or hold less valuable roles in the workplace. This example is considered a workplace with high MAS. A workplace with low MAS is considered to have male and female positions however, those positions work closely to bum aroundher and do not get in the way of the work environment. This traditional view was another obstacle in Ms. Myers venture in Korea. The company brought her in to fix their issues with cultural growth, but did not utilize her to the best of her ability.She failed to recognize that the Eastern culture she was working for, did not allow her to have a longer leash like the American/Western companies she had worked for in the past. Uncertainty/Avoidance Index shows how anxiety of workers affects the workplace. High UAI is considered looking for observes and regulations for all situations. on that point is no grey area and everyone is to operate exactly the same. Low UAI refers to there being less rule writing and more personal growth and interpretation of the conflict or decision.In this article, I would say that SK Telecom had a high UAI however Ms.Myers herself was a person working with low UAI. Her anxiety and how she approached situations was not in-tune with the policies and procedures of the company. There were cultural boundaries such as language and expectations that she did not know how to confront. Although she was qualified for the position, she really was not prepared well enough to meet the tasks and policies of the company based on her experiences. The last dimension that really applies to this case is Long Term Orientation or LTO. This refers to how a company values a parts loyalty/seniority in the company.Men and long time employees have more pull in the workplace. I feel as though SK Telecom valued the opinions of those members who had been with the compan y for a substantive amount of time. Bringing an outsider in to work, did not work with how the company operated internally. SK Telecom had high LTO and once more Myers internal operation was with low LTO, a promotion of equality, creativity and individualism. Conclusion In this paper I discussed, The Would-Be Pioneer by Green. We discussed how the cultural differences affected Ms.Myers and how different South Korea is compared to Western culture. We also cover the four of five Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions that applied to the article. We discussed Power/Distance, Masculinity, Uncertainty/Avoidance Index, and Long Term Orientation, all of the factors that played a part in Myers failure as a consultant with SK Telecom. In the future, for those who look to work abroad, we should study as much about the culture as possible. We need to understand as much as possible about the work environment in which we work, if we wish to gain in a foreign government.