Many organizations are working towards expanding in many countries other than the mother country to win new ground from customers and achieve the most significant amount of different markets.
In this paper, I will assume that my organization will open new branches outside the European Union, in the United States (Chicago) and Argentina (Buenos Aires). Will cultural assimilation add value to employees? What are the alternative strategies for cultural assimilation?
Cultural Differences:
I must first, as an international manager, understand the cultural differences between these countries in the business environment, which is it could be as follows:
Standards | The main branch in Europe | The first branch in America | The second branch in Argentina |
Respecting Deadlines | According to Randlesome, Brierley, Bruton, Gordon & King (1993), not all of Europe is the same, but southern European countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece have flexible schedules and may arrive late for meetings. | According to (Pörhölä, Cvancara, Kaal, Tampere & Torres, 2015), Americans generally prefer strict schedules, and meetings have fixed start and end times that are not subject to modification. | According to (Druckman, Benton, Ali & Bagur, 1976), Latin countries, in general, and Argentina among them, prefer flexibility in dealing with time. The important thing is social relations and maipeople's people's friendships more than the deadline. |
Conduct Negotiations | In many European countries, negotiations may take several weeks, depending on the integrity of the information. | Many Americans assume that the deal is supposed to be signed as soon as it is discussed. | Negotiations are based on the negotiator's confidence in the person negotiating with him, even if he presents all the necessary information. |
Discussions and Conversations | Most Europeans are calm in discussions, do not use bad words, and are more patient when listening to others. | Americans are flexible in using words that seem inappropriate to others. | Greeting and welcoming guests at work discussions take longer, and social side events can take significant time. |
Official at Work | In many European countries, titles such as Dr., Mr., and Mrs. are essential, but business meetings can be held in a restaurant. | Americans are generally informal people's people's names as they are, but business can be discussed in the company rooms, not in the restaurant. | Argentines respect each other in surnames much more than Europeans and Americans, using nicknames "s like ""Señor" "r men;" Señora" for older or married "women, "S" ñorita," and academic titles are sacred, but the work is done in workplaces, not restaurants. |
Cultural Assimilation of Employees:
According to (Shao, 2019), Cultural assimilation can be defined as the fusion of the culture of a group of culturally different employees with the culture of the more numerous employees from the same country. Unfortunately, some managers implement a set of policies to erase the culture of culturally different employees, and when these employees do not integrate into the culture of the majority, the manager marginalizes or even isolates them; the process of cultural assimilation is beneficial if culturally different people adopt the culture of the country or system in which they work while preserving their original culture because this makes the organization more creative and able to produce different ideas (Moran, Harris & Moran, 2010).
Benefits of Training in Cultural Comprehension
This type of training helps to achieve integration with culturally different colleagues. This integration is vital and effective in creating work teams that complement each other. However, without addressing their cultural differences or forcing them to change their culture, differences will still exist to enrich and develop work through cultural diversity. The goal of training is to adapt to the culture of others, not to swallow their own.
The I'lltegy I'll Use Instead of Cultural Assimilation:
The strategy followed by the United States at the beginning of the last century with immigrants was and still is one of the best strategies for the cultural assimilation of new immigrants; the United States did not care about changing the culture of immigrants to the American culture, i. Instead, defined the duties of citizenship that individuals must accept to build this great country, as the culture of the mother country, such as dress, religion, and language, can be preserved without interference from anyone, the same strategy can be followed at work, apply an approach of integration, not cultural fusion and dependency, integration is the collection of different points of view, thus, new employees can shape the culture of the organization and work to raise it (Jagne & Smith-Atakan, 2006).
Conclusion
According to (Moran, Abramson & Moran, 2014), a successful international manager must think about how he wants the employee culture in his company to be. Is it a culture that contains others, or does it impose a specific culture on others? There should be training programs to discuss the issue of cultural integration between different cultures, cultural assimilation is not imposed on employees by force, it is also necessary to develop measures to motivate employees to achieve them and encourage them to support these principles.
References
Druckman, D., Benton, A. A., Ali, F., & Bagur, J. S. (1976). Cultural differences in bargaining behavior: India, Argentina, and the United States. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 20(3), 413-452.
Hooker, J. (2012). 19 Cultural Differences in Business Communication. The handbook of intercultural discourse and communication, 29, 389.
Jagne, J., & Smith-Atakan, A. (2006). Cross-cultural interface design strategy. Universal Access in the Information Society, 5(3), 299-305.
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences. Routledge.
Moran, R. T., Harris, P. R., & Moran, S. (2010). Managing cultural differences. Routledge.
Pörhölä, M., Cvancara, K., Kaal, E., Tampere, K., & Torres, B. (2015). Cross-cultural comparisons of bullying among university students: perspectives from Argentina, Estonia, Finland and the United States. In Bullying Among University Students (pp. 127-141). Routledge.
Randlesome, C., Brierley, W., Bruton, K., Gordon, C., & King, P. (1993). Business cultures in Europe. Routledge.
Shao, Z. (2019). Interaction effect of strategic leadership behaviors and organizational culture on IS-Business strategic alignment and Enterprise Systems assimilation. International journal of information management, 44, 96-108.