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Effect of culture on communication in multi-national corporation

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Sealwrap, a producer of plastics in the United States, is about to expand its business. As part of this expansion, they will begin to sell their products in Europe and Asia. In addition, they plan to open a plant in Asia. Jerry, the President and CEO, is concerned. He has heard many stories of companies that have tried to expand globally but operations either failed miserably or did not live up to expectations due to the cultural differences between workers and customers in each country.

Jerry has asked your group to research problems other companies have had with this issue and develop ways in which the errors those companies made can be avoided by Sealwrap.

Each individual in your group should select a multi-national corporation or international non-profit agency that has encountered these problems (this can be a previous or current employer of yours). Using the Internet and the Library, research that organization to discover any cultural barriers that organization encountered and what its managers did to try to overcome those barriers.

Group Portion: As a group, discuss the following points on the group discussion board:

Generate and evaluate reasons why people may not appreciate the cultural point of view of others. Use at least 10 references (including 3 from the textbook) as well as 3 sociologists' views.

Discuss how appreciating cultural diversity affects peoples' ability to communicate effectively in the context of a multi-national corporation or an international non-profit agency. Feel free to add your own experiences as well as quoting others.

Individual portion: Based on the group discussion, each individual in the group should create a report for the President of Sealwrap. Each individual in the group will submit their own 2-3 page report. The reports should be unique to each student in the group. This report should summarize the group discussions and provide suggestions regarding the steps which Sealwrap can take and policies that can be put in place to help ensure the expansion of Sealwrap is successful. Each report should contain discussion related to the 10 references and the 3 sociological references which were discussed as a group.

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Solution Summary

This solution offers articles and websites to get information on diversity issues concerning multi-national corporations entering international markets. The text contains 542 words.

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This site offers a look into the issues that Coca-Cola has encountered with a discrimination law suit, etc. and now they have a diversity program in place--it discusses how they turned things around in a globally diverse environment: http://www.georgiatrend.com/features-business-industry/2006-06-representationtoinclusion-business.shtml

Here is another article on Coca-Cola: http://www.udanium.com/udanium2003/papers/globo-final.pdf

This site: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_n12_v26/ai_18407141
This site has a bunch of articles on this issue, and talks about several companies that have gone through global expansion. These include XEROX, Amerada Hess Corp., DuPont, etc. It does not tell the issues they faced, but talks directly about their initiatives in diversity programming at each of these respective corporations. This should help you with number 2.

Here is another great resource out of Australia: ...

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