Essay on Managing Across Global Culture

Question: Write an essay on "managing across global culture". Answer: Introduction: In the recent world of globalization, every business organization aims to expand itself beyond the local confines, by setting up its outlets in various corners of the world. However, this process of globalization requires an organization to possess a comprehensive knowledge regarding the cultural traits , likes and preferences of the citizens of the country, it is desiring to do business in. Hence, an organization must ensure that it has a comprehensive idea about the legal complications, or the political problems or even language and cultural barriers that the organization may encounter which may impede the growth of the business organization. Otherwise, if the cross-cultural issues persist for a long period, it may imply the failure of the company in the foreign market (Pieterse et al. 2015). Discussion: KFC is a much-reputed name in the market of restaurant chains in the world. Although headquartered in USA, the KFC is a chain of restaurants that specializes in catering mouth-watering junk food, to the inhabitants of as many as 109 countries across the globe. Worldwide media promotion, competitive price advantage, global recognition as the producer of chicken based fast food, have helped KFC operate business quite smoothly in various countries of the world. However, in recent times, it has been reported that KFC has encountered much trouble in doing business in China. Although, KFC has been able to enjoy much competitive advantage over other fast food supplying chains such as the Yum brand in China, the recent case of it in falling apart in the Chinese market bears testimony to the fact that KFC has not been able to adopt cultural strategy sufficiently in China (Huang et al. 2015). China has a business situation highly distinguished from that of the other countries. As the article suggests, the primary problem that has contributed much to the emerging problems of KFC in China, is its inability to serve the Chinese customers in time. An in-depth study of Chinese culture suggests that the Chinese people consider punctuality as one of the most important virtues, and they apply punctuality in every aspect of life. KFC as a fast food centre must ensure that it is able to serve the food to its customers at the right time, but it must respect the timely offering of food, all the more when doing business in China. As the article suggests, the Chinese people are largely dissatisfied with the restaurant chain, for supplying the food after being ten minutes late. While serving punctual Chinese inhabitants, the KFC chain must stay away with the act of procrastination if they wish to serve the people satisfactorily. However, although KFC should indeed focus on delivering it s food at the right time while doing business in China, various other cultural factors were so far overlooked by the KFC authority in China (Shen et al. 2014). The Chinese people are very conservative when it comes to choose their food. They are not very experimental and do not usually prefer to try out new dishes. Although, the young generation people love to try out Western cuisine, a considerable part of the Chinese population prefer Chinese food. Any foreign restaurant chain can be an instant success in China, if it sells off rice noodles, soup or sausages and street kebabs (Cheung et al. 2012). However, KFC as a restaurant chain sells Western products such as fried potato, burgers, sandwiches which do not exactly fit in the food preference of Chinese people. Ghemawat has already talked about the AAA model of global business, which highlights the importance of adapting to the local culture and tastes of the place, an organization wishes to set up its business outlets in. Keeping this in mind, KFC should have modified its food menu, in terms of the Chinese food habits. A restaurant chain must ensure that it introduces innovative items in its menu, so that it can cater to the demand of the international customers (Ghemawat et al. 2014). Recently, KFC has indeed introduced the Chizza item, which has gained enough appraisals across the world, due to its superb combination of cheese and pizza, without any bread. However, this recipe could not do wonders in Chinese food market, simply because cheese cannot fascinate the Chinese people, for whom dairy was not a major part of diet until very recently. Therefore, any milk product, as cheese based food item, cannot easily attract the Chinese consumers. To do successful business in China, KFC may not necessarily invent a new food item, but it can at least change the toppings. Instead of cheese toppings, it can at least offer fish and other sea food toppings which easily become popular with the local taste of the Asian countries. In addition, China can also introduce more food and noodle based items; at present, the rice bowl of KFC has gained much popularity among the Chines e people, as rice is the staple food for the Chinese people, and any cereal based food, can be a huge success in the Chinese food market. Hence, KFC should introduce at least two or more food items in China, that include rice or noodles or wheat items (Bakir et al. 2015). Communication plays an integral role in the business process in a global market. It should be remembered that it is not sufficient for KFC to set up its outlets in China, and sell the Chinese food habit based food items. But it must ensure that the workers are able to communicate adequately with the Chinese people. While doing business in a foreign country, an organization must ensure that it employs and attaches much importance to the employees of that country. One major loophole of the authority of KFC in China, was that it has not employed the native Chinese people, as a result there was a constant language barrier (Piekkari et al. 2014). As many of the Chinese people are not much adept in speaking in English language, they find it difficult to communicate with the workers and helping staffs of KFC in China. McDonalds has been far sighted enough to understand this issue, and considering the language and cultural barrier a foreign organization it is likely to confront in exotic loc ations, has decided to double the number of native Chinese employees in China (Bishop et al. 2016). When McDonalds proposed its objective of expanding its market in china by opening at least 200 to 250 stores in China, it has also proposed its plan of recruiting as many as 7000 Chinese workers to serve in these outlets. According to the spokesperson of MacDonalds in China, this plan to recruit more Chinese people for their outlets, is guided by their understanding that there exists a communication gap between the native Chinese people and the western people, which needs to be crossed. This can be done ewith the help of Chinese workers, who have much knowledge about the culture, customs and language of China. More importantly, this is also a matter of strategic importance for an organization. As the President of KFC China, Guo Geping has stated, that this process of hiring the Chinese people in the various outlets of China is also expected to enhance the loyalty of the Chinese people to the organization, and it will also help in rendering the brand a Chinese touch. The same strategy should be adopted by the KFC, as recruiting Chinese workers will create a positive impression among the Chinese people, and will make the US based brand much familiar to China. KFC, far from hiring fresh Chinese workers, is rather getting criticized for offering extremely poor pay scale to the employees. This is most likely to create a negative impression of KFC among the Chinese inhabitants (Beware et al. 2013). The Chinese people are very mindful of the ambience of the place they are visiting, and hence KFC should have taken sufficient measure to provide the Chinese people with an atmosphere they would love to call Chinese in the true sense. China is one of the few Asian countries, which value tradition and custom over everything else (Zhou et al. 2016). Hence, as an US based brand, KFC can strategically create an essentially Chinese ambience in its outlets of China. This strategy has been fully exploited by Pizza Hut in China, where the food chain brand has offered a more Chinese and sophisticated ambience, with large, cozy cushions in its outlets, which widely differs from its counterparts of the Western countries. In addition, it has introduced certain food items in China, which has especially got a touch of the Chinese flavor, to satisfy the Chinese consumers, of all age groups. KFC should also adopt such a strategy. Incorporating some Chinese food items, like porridge or noodles in the ir food menu, and offering chopsticks, along with spoons, while eating can greatly benefit the KFC company. Further, the Chinese people are too much fond of their own culture, even in terms of music, and hence the KFC outlets can also play the hrad core Chinese music in the backgrounds, instead of the English songs (Thompson et al. 2015). As a restaurant brand, any organization is expected to serve quality food, and profit maximization should never be the final and the only motive in the organization. However, owing to the food security scandal of KFC in China, in recent times, has also contributed to the considerable ill-reputation of the organization in China. Accusation was raised against the Chinese KFC outlets that these KFC outlets were using expired chicken to prepare the fast food, and even the food items were consisting of addictives. This created much fuss and resulted in ill-reputation among the public (Peng et al. 2015). At present, China has introduced the strictest food security law, whereby a management committee is going to be set up, for supervising the food items that are being catered to the Chinese people. Further, in case there are any kind of loopholes found, then the organization is going to pay a huge amount of compensation to the consumers. Keeping this in mind, KFC should focus more on the ma tter of food safety, in order to avoid legal complications in future; otherwise, it may ruin its business in future in China. Above all, while marketing in a global market, a big organization like KFC, must focus sufficiently on the promotion strategy. According to Holfstedes cultural dimensions, an organization, while promoting itself in the foreign market, must ensure that its promotion strategy complies with the value, ideology and lifestyle of the country it is going to do business. It must be remembered that China is a hard core communist country, and it may not accept the idea of capitalist market, as reflected by KFC. Further, as Holfstedes cultural dimension shows, Chinese culture, very much like any Asian country culture, believes more in collectivism rather than individualism. As a result, while advertising and promoting its service in China, KFC should focus more on offers and discounts that serves their family benefits, rather than individual happiness (Mazanec et al. 20 15). For example, KFC may provide more discount on buckets rather than on single items, as these will help largely in promoting family values, so common in China. Chinese people greatly boast of Chinese culture, and as such inclusion of Chinese symbols, such as Dragon figures in the brand image of KFC may also help to customize KFC to Chinese culture and preference (Yang et al. 2016). Conclusion: While doing business in any country, an organization must possess sufficient knowledge about the cultural values and ideology of the particular country. Keeping this in mind, even KFC must ensure that it has sufficient in depth knowledge about the customs, likings and food preferences of the Chinese people, before doing business in China (Bishop et al 2016). 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