Compare eight common dimensions of culture using CultureWizard’s cultural self-survey and multicultural comparison tool.

1. Compare eight common dimensions of culture using CultureWizard’s cultural self-survey and multicultural comparison tool. Consider the differences between the candidates and compared to the United States. Within each cell, briefly annotate key differences you uncovered between each country candidate and the industry’s U.S. or home culture.

2. Using CultureWizard, CultureGrams: World Edition or similar resource, help your new U.S. expats get “off on the right foot” (a cultural idiom) in the candidate countries. For each country, provide tips in at least five different areas of business etiquette that address unfamiliar cultural norms, behaviors, and expectations they will encounter in the professional environment.

3. What are the communication challenges your U.S. expats will face in the candidate countries? Describe the potential verbal and nonverbal communication dynamics you expect to face in each country that differentiate it from the United States. Try using the eLinquistic.net’s quantitative linguistic proximity calculator to establish the “genetic distance” between English and your host countries’ languages.

4. Using the latest edition of the World Values Survey (WVS), identify the general sentiment of each candidate’s citizens toward these issues. Note: The WVS question number is listed in each row to expedite your research).

1. Briefly outline the decision-making mind-sets and negotiation patterns you would expect to face in each candidate country. Which will be more challenging to your industry’s U.S. salespeople? You may find CultureWizard and the A to Z World Business (Shapiro database) particularly helpful (go to country, then business culture, then negotiation).
2. Use resources like the World Development Indicators (Section 2.6 is a great starting point) to understand the roles of children in your candidate countries. Are they focused on education or income earning? How many are in employment? How many “study and work” versus “only work”? Lastly, are they self-employed, wage workers, or unpaid family workers? Looking at the statistics, are you surprised by the number of children who are “self-employed”?

3. Do you think employees in your country candidates would be better at handling technical issues or relationship hurdles with U.S. colleagues?

4. Using your research this week and CultureWizard’s team collaborator tool, examine the cultural dimensions of both candidate countries relative to the United States. What are the most significant differences? How will the relative distance from the U.S. cultural dimensions impact (a) the cost of doing business in each country, (b) business practices (e.g., business protocols, meeting facilitation, management styles), and (c) the likely future economic development of each country?

5. Based solely on etiquette, give a brief recommendation of which foreign business environment your expat is likely to feel more comfortable entering for the first time.

1. Including a cultural context, place your two candidate country names in all viable internationalization strategy quadrants of the integration-responsiveness framework. How has your perspective changed from last module?

2. Given your positioning of each candidate country in the IR framework, summarize the industry’s need to “think global and locally but act appropriately.” Has the cultural environment presented net opportunity or risk to firms in your industry?

3. Consider your logic for using the IR framework in Questions 1 and 2 above; would it change if your clients were all small- to medium-sized enterprises versus large national ones? How does the scale of firm resources inform internationalization strategy?

4. Knowing that “structure should follow strategy,” how centralized do you think corporate governance should be to successfully execute internationalization strategy? Do you see any multicultural management concerns with this governance design? Briefly explain.

5. Which of the six alternative organizational structures currently seem to be the best matches between your industry’s needs within each candidate country? Briefly describe how sociocultural characteristics and cultural dynamics with U.S. expats informed your decision.
6. As you better understand the areas of cultural differentiation among your foreign candidates, estimates of the possible managerial challenges and profit opportunities should be forming in your mind. Given what you know to date, would you favor indirect, contractual, or direct entry modes as your top recommendation for each of your candidates? How did each country’s cultural environment impact the four trade-offs inherent in the entry-mode strategic calculus?

Reflection

Briefly reflect on your learning process in this module:

1. What were the most challenging concepts?

2. What areas discussed in this module interested you the most?

3. Lastly, as your instructor reviews this submission, is there anything you would like additional feedback on?