Geographic dispersion & cultural diversity

As economic borders come down, cultural barriers will most likely go up and present new challenges and opportunities for business.
As global restructuring takes place within the company, Koch leads a geographically dispersed project team (i.e. Germans and Chinese members ) to standardize its personnel selection methods in the APAC region for staffing 25 new middle management positions. The HR executive encounters problems when leading across cultural differences in work behaviors that arise within his multinational team. He fails to respect and understand his team members’ cultural diversity (Chinese behaviors and values), or bond his team together, which is essential to form such a team. Also, conflicting goals confront the HR executive: design a personnel selection system that is valid across different countries, yet adapted for each country taking into consideration the cultural diversity consisted of: country’s unique economic, educational, and cultural contexts. And this process is undoubtedly costly.
Jollibee’s international expansion. Tony Kitchner was hired to build the global Jollibee brand. Although Kitchner hoped to leverage Jollibee’s competitive advantage by entering new geographic markets, his rapid expansion strategy was unfocused and poorly executed. Lack of considerations on cultural diversity, “Planting the flag” only showed that Jollibee knew how to repeat its success. Kitchner’s decision to “plant the flag” reflected a desire to build an empire under his leadership, rather than a strategically sound decision for the firm. In order to compete on the level with multinationals, Jollibee would have to take considerations of learning about targeted countries’culture differences to build its competitive advantage. Such as whether to be flexible with its menu, whether to have local staffs and where to build the stores.
By divided the company into two parts: the International department and the Domestic, Jollibee is having geographically dispersed teams to structure the company.
Operational Impact
Koch and Kitchner both failed to pay enough attention to culture diversity whether in their own teams or when they made strategic plans for the companies. ComInTec
Employees suffer from ignorance and misunderstanding. In the case ,the team lost all the meeting time on meaningless discussions due to differences in cultures and values. As a leader of multinational team, Koch was not willing to learn of real meaning underneath the behaviors due to cultural diversity, (i.e. Chinese are just being polite and trying to show confidence by never saying no )which made the whole team not effective at all and their plan unsuccessful. The Breakdown of Jollibee
Although Tony Kitchner was hired to bring more structure to the International Division, he failed to learn about the people’s culture and values from Domestic department or build the rapport needed to push forward the division’s initiatives. . Kitchner should have recognized that the hostility coming from Domestic was underscored by a fear that their division would be eclipsed by International. Rather than cultivate this fear, Kitchner should have made it explicit that the International Division’s success would have reflected on the company as a whole. By simply increasing communication, Kitchner could have enlisted Domestic’s support in his endeavors.
Difference
In ComInTec , they still use the same internal human resources people to deal with the problems, which are not solved or improved yet. The team faces a tense and dissent ambient with respect to sharing the workload.
In Jollibee
TTC dismissed Kichner and brought Noli Tingzon on board. Tingzon had learned the importance of selecting a collaborative operating partner, choosing good locations, remaining flexible to address cultural distance issues, and the need for profitability. And these changes helped Jollibee conquer some problems during global expansion.

Conclusion
Indeed, managing cultural differences—i.e., managing differences in groups’ shared values, beliefs, meaning systems2, patterned ways of thinking3, unstated ways of doing things4 etc.—is a critical skill for managers working in today’s global business setting. This human side to managing across cultures is just as important as the technical aspect, and if not understood and managed well, cultural differences can pose significant barriers to the implementation of a business venture—and ultimately its performance.
Each foreign expansion opportunity must be thoroughly evaluated to ensure a high likelihood of market and financial success