Assignment

14.10.2015
Since globalization have forced global companies work and cooperate across geographical borders, their employees must travel and work in different countries and therefore have to deal with variety of cultural differences. Ellen Moore, an experienced consultant from Systems Consulting Group despite some warnings that woman is not prefered as manager only if she is high qualified, was sent to Korea to work as a manager of korean consultants. Ellen's advantage why she was elected for this position was her experience in project management and her international experience from work in Bahrein.
As Ellen arrived in Korea, she takes every possibility to learn language and to understand local culture, lifestyle and values and soon she realized that there are remarkable differences from Western countries in the everyday live and also business environment, mainly based on historical evolution and impact of Confucianism which properties were affecting and reflecting in social and work environment:
Complete loyalty to structure
Duty to parents expressed in loyalty, love and gratitude
Very strict rules of conduct (parents / children; old / young; male / female ; teacher / student)
In Western countries good manager and leader has to express positive emotions public and some negative remarks are prefered to announce in private in order not to reduce person's public confidence. In Korea manager should express disappointment about person’s performance public, compliments are not welcomed and they can indicate manager’s weakness.

These cultural differences reflects on how team members react on Ellen’s instructions and her co-worker Jack’s instructions - and therefore the project fall behind schedule. Ellen’s and Jack’s responsibilities overlapped Another problem was that Korean consultants, as Ellen soon discovered, were not appropriate skilled to perform duties they were asked to do and again cultural barrier was playing role - Koreans did not asked questions even if they did not understood the task; questions from a lower ranked person in hierarchy could be considered as impoliteness. This led to situation when information had no feedback and managers could not evaluate employee's comprehension of situation and task.

Another cultural difference was in the approach how konsultant reacts or leads the client - in Western countries consultant advises the client, in Korea the client is the boss and therefore implementation of some new communication models is impossible.

In order to bring the project in line with time frame a leader - men could be the solution because in Korea mens are higher evaluated and respected. But at the same time Ellen has to stay in position and further leading can be executed in tandem with Jack. Ellen has to respect and open-minded approach to Korean managers. Andrew’s return in Korea could also make the necessary link between Ellen and Jack and between government and consultants.
Ellen has to arrange informal meeting with Jack and to apologize for the situation when employee refused to fulfill Jack’s task. After that she has to explain to Jack how the project is planned to realized and what is the Jack’s tas in it. They bough have to make strategy in discussion respecting tasks and local properties. If she can agree with Jack how to cooperate so the interests of bough sides are taken into account, they have to make another meeting with consultants, explaining their mission and value in project. Also in this meeting they have to agree on further communication style, team’s structure, power distribution and project development evaluation.

Cultural differences can not be underestimated in international companies. Foreign managers have to understand how their cultural background influences behavior and perception and the same as for others perspective - how it can be interpreted from the point of other cultural values and traits. The main goal has to be cooperation by respecting another culture.