Culture, Strategy, and Behavior (1)

Culture, Strategy, and Behavior

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Globalization has created universal standards for business conduct which have become very rigorous. As most organizations adapt to these standards, it is very important for them to ensure they establish companywide measures of behaviour, core values as well as the relevant policies which are in line with the universal ethics as well as the compliance environments (Aerni, 2018). The globally ethical companies are the ones which are able to maintain a very strong reputation in their target markets, experience an increase in employee loyalty and commitment, are able to attract and retain their customers and at the same time generating superior levels of success and performance.

According to (Aerni, 2018), the multinational companies have three challenges: how to ensure they abide by the ethical conduct of the country of operation, how to ensure its entire workforce understands and adopts to its corporate values and finally, how to abide by the complex legal and the compliance obligations which are present in every of their locations. While each of these can be handled independently, the solutions need to be systematic and holistic.

First of all, the MNE’s can work on ensuring that they promote a sustainable global corporate culture (Luthans & Doh, 2018). This can be attained by implementing global principles which are based on the corporate values while at the same time give an allowance for the local policies which are based on their cultural traditions. This will help an organization promote its corporate culture thus instilling universal standards in their business conduct. The local policies on the other hand show respect for the differences in culture in the global workforce. This can be put in place better by use of a code of conduct used within the entire corporate with guiding principles as well as the involvement of the local offices in the development of the local policies.

Secondly, the MNE’s can engage the employees in the ethics and compliance practices. This is by ensuring the establishment of the local presence, development of the local compliance and ethics leadership, educating all the employees and as well building reporting systems which are culturally responsive. Finally, they can establish the local presence by formation of corporate-wide compliance and ethics committee (Luthans & Doh, 2018). The companies can put in place local approaches when putting across the importance of compliance and ethics. This can be best accomplished by the establishment of a presence in every location, by installation of satellite compliance and ethics offices or making the general managers or local VPs in charge of the compliance and ethics initiatives that are in their locations.

There are several decisions that MNE’s might need to make. They majorly need to make marketing decisions and product inclusion decisions. There is mostly no bias in these decisions as they just need to be made to be in line with the cultural practices of the country or region in which they operate. For instance, a decision can be made to change the name of the merchandise depending on the location as the meaning in that region wouldn’t be favorable. Secondly, for the food and beverage companies, they would be forced to make a decision of adapting their menu according to the region. McDonald’s for instance had to change their menu in India to exclude beef and pork according to the Islamic traditions in the region.

Culture is essential in life and thus its overall impact should at no point be ignored which starts with the symbols, language, religion and images. Every segment of culture is very important as it might jeopardize marketing communications success and hence the company’s image. Nowadays, most companies work on expanding their business to the international market. The companies which have the zeal to invest in the marketing mix adaptation to the point whereby it is suitable for particular export markets create for themselves a great chance for success. The non-inclusion of the cultural differences in the marketing strategies can cost the organizations a great deal.

References

Aerni, P. (2018). Global business in local culture: The impact of embedded multinational enterprises. Springer.

Luthans, F., & Doh, J. P. (2018) International management: Culture, strategy, and behavior (10th ed.) McGraw- Hill Education, New York, NY ISBN 13: 978-1259705076