The company needs to communicate to the Koreans that the customer engineer is one of the most educated and talented people in the organization and that if there was any doubt they could always call the director.
The company needs to make the director's telephone line less accessible so calls will automatically transfer to the customer engineer.
Case 6. Silent Eater
A European sales manager had invited his Chinese agent's entire staff for dinner as a reward for a well-organized seminar. Everyone seemed to be happily eating and drinking except for one person, Mr Li, who had hardly touched his food or beer. He had not spoken to anyone, and he had a very serious look on his face. The European was not sure whether he should ask about Mr Li's problems. Fortunately, the Chinese manager explained the situation on his own initiative. He began by saying that his entire staff held their European friend in high regard. The best example was Mr Li, who had a serious domestic problem but still insisted on taking part in the dinner in order to honor the host.
Later, more details were disclosed. Mr. Li's young son had caught a cold that day and was running a fever. For Europeans this is not considered a problem; in China, however, severe colds can easily lead to complications. Moreover, the Chinese live for their children, especially as each couple is only officially allowed to have one child. Leaving home for whatever reasons under such circumstances is considered quite improper in China, let alone to participate in a joyous event.
What would you do in this situation?
In this case Mr Li thought it appropriate to attend the dinner but clearly showed his concern to all his colleagues. Let's leave it at that.
His colleagues in their turn regarded such a display of emotions as natural. If Mr Li had been eating, drinking, and laughing like the others, his colleagues would probably have reproached him for his lack of human feeling.
I would just tell him that I was concerned with the mood he was in and ask him what had happened. I'd suggest making the event a bit shorter.
I would take him aside and tell him how much I appreciated his worries, but advise him to go home to his child. This would make the group happier in view of the fact that Mr Li cares about his son.
I would give a little speech indicating that it is important to respect our families and children and that all those who agree should go home now; the rest could celebrate even further.
Case 7. Future/Past Confusion
A western company had agreed to provide financial support for some of the promotional activities of its Chinese agents, including taking part in two national exhibitions a year. The only condition was that the Chinese submitted a proposal and got consent whenever they wanted to attend a particular exhibition.
While reporting on the promotional activities of the past year and negotiating those for the coming year, the Chinese suddenly started talking about an exhibition in which they had participated. The Westerners got a little irritated because this was the first they had heard of this exhibition, so they reproached the Chinese for not having sought approval beforehand. The Chinese were confused.
After a while it became clear that the exhibition was scheduled for six months in the future, but this information had gotten lost in the translation. As the event was to take place in the near future, the agent had spoken about it as if it were a current event. He had also taken part in an exhibition a few months earlier. As this event had taken place in the near past, it was also talked about as a current event. This was confusing even for the most experienced interpreter.
The performance of interpreters during Sino-foreign negotiations is a perpetual source of jokes and complaints. Linguistic knowledge alone does not make a good interpreter. The interpreter not only has to be fluent in both languages but also has to be aware of the cultural differences and how these differences are reflected in the respective languages.
How would you address these issues? We invite you to create your own alternative options for this case.
What would be the course of action in which you had ignored the cultural differences and simply gone your own way without any attempt to reconcile the differences?
What would be the course of action in which you had abandoned your own orientations and immediately sought to behave like the other side?
What would be a compromise solution?
Finally, how could you reconcile these differences?
As explained above, you can explore the answers to these cases on our website: www.cultureforbusiness.com.
Conclusion
After reading this book it will become quite obvious that the Anglo-Saxon roots of marketing, market research, and marketing planning are both a strength and a weakness. The strength lies in the fact that thinking about a "market out there" is typically an invention by the British and Americans, if only because they have an enormous need to codify their experiences. The weakness of the Anglo-Saxon approach is that cultural complexities are often ignored. What works in New York or London will obviously not work everywhere. But we hope you now know both why and what you can do about it.
In fact the problem is now for the consumer, rather than marketer. A new trauma has been identified for consumers, which has been labeled "choice fatigue." Too much bombardment, too many suppliers, and it takes time to make sure you check out all the alternatives to ensure that you got the best bargain. So perhaps we need to write the next book to bear in mind the dilemmas faced by consumers! Already, around the corner, we can begin to see new constructs for purchasers that are being called BTO (buy to order) and OTB (order to buy), which will become the reconciliation between buying "off the peg" and "bespoke."
Watch this space!
Appendix A:
Accumulating and Interpreting the Evidence
OVERVIEW
Here we explain some of the background to the collection and analysis of evidence obtained to support the propositions of the underlying conceptual framework on which this book is based. Although the general conclusions from these studies have appeared in our other publications, some of the underlying methods have not, and this Appendix is a response to marketers and researchers asking for further detail.
Originally the investigative work on dilemma theory was inductive. In an action-learning, exploratory phase over several years, Charles Hampden-Turner undertook many interviews with senior international leaders that sought the elicitation of a number of challenges/ decision options in situations with seemingly opposing views and values. Fons Trompenaars undertook similar investigations in parallel on value dilemmas leading to the construction of the main quantitative cross-cultural database. The latter required the development of a range of instruments that were originally focused at discriminating value systems at the ecological level (country specific) to derive models of cross culture and measure cultural differences. The high reliability of these instruments is well known as extensive statistical and other analytical studies have been undertaken and published extensively. This database and its principal questionnaire instruments have been used extensively in training workshops and consultancy interventions across the world. Face and content validity have been constantly improved from qualitative and quantitative studies including formal research by university PhD doctoral students.
Resulting from these activities, a number of core propositions were developed concerning the underlying significance of reconciling dilemmas. The interest was to develop an underlying robust theory to provide a model for improving professional practice in what we have described as intercultural competence.