Cross-Cultural Case Analysis
Flamingo Consulting Firm Cross-Cultural Analysis
Introduction
Flamingo Consulting Firm is a well-established top consulting firm that serves as counselor to governments around the world in all matters related to the implementation of green initiatives and has fostered an impressive reputation as a firm that could identify project feasibility and then execute within short timeframes. Unlike most consulting firms, Flamingo prided itself on having fixed teams that could deal with any type of project. Flamingo management consider the factors that contribute to their superior results are creativity and efficiency.
Grace is recently promoted to the position of Project Manager and her team just has just been added three new members: Xin, Pedro and Rashid. The three new members are also new to the firm, so each of them is on his own way to keep up with the firm. However, the new members have made the group more towards multi-cultural and harder to manage. These days, Grace has been bothering with the issue of how to improve the quality of their team’s work as well as the efficiency. They are going to be assigned a new project with an important client and they have only two weeks to finish the work. She is now trying to find a way that can make her team work better and balance the relationships between different members, including herself.
This paper will analyze each related person according to cultural variables and their own career goals, and will provide with a solution for the team to improve their relationships.
Analysis of Team
Grace:
Born and raised in New York, this newly promoted Project leader, Grace is trying to transit her role from an employee to a small manager. She works hard and considers herself capable of solving problems. She feels worn out these days since she has to do all the clean-up workings, wrap ups, and even low-skilled job like grammar-checking. She is a typical low context communicator and monochromic person. During her years in Flamingo, Grace has turned herself to a good consultant who can finish her jobs on time and develop some abilities in leadership skills. However, the most important thing for her to realize right now is that her role has been changed to a project manager and she needs to take care of her whole group. Her jobs are no long like before and her responsibilities grew much bigger. As a leader, she takes too much control on the jobs that everybody else does. She cannot help focusing on every single small decision that have been made by her group members. She keeps doing what she used to do when she was a common employee and now she just doing that for everyone. She needs to mover her attention to her group members, instead of specific job. She did not use any time to get to know the three new members and she could not even differentiate her ways of communication to different members that carries different characteristics. If she had taken some time talking to Xin, she would have known that his way of communicating is not the same as hers.
As the leader of this group, Grace needs to know everyone better, for example, their backgrounds, their future career plans, their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses. These are the things that she needs to learn about. And she will not be able to manage the group well unless she knows how to make use of everyone’s strengths and avoid possible conflicts and difficulties causing by whatever reason. It is very helpful that she is professional and experienced in many areas. However, this does not mean that she needs to take care of each area one by one. She can be a good guidance to her members when they encounter any problems and help them out, but not the person that does everything for them. She needs to spread her duties on some specific jobs and take the responsibility of making the whole team more efficient and harmonious.
Xin:
Xin was hired to help build Flamingo’s Asia office, but was to complete a 1 or 2-year overseas assignment in New York now. From the case description, we know that Xin comes from the emerging middle class in China, and was the first member of his family to attend college in China and later business school abroad. His apparent quiet and shy demeanor really has to do with a lack of confidence in his English language skills rather than his actual personality. From our lecture, we know that Chinese people are higher context communicators than people from most of other countries, including US. (where Grace was born, and raised) He cares about how people express their ideas. This explains why he became even more silent after Grace told him that she was not satisfied with his English. From Grace’s prospective, she is just telling Xin what she really thinks about him, without any negative emotion. Grace considers her way of expression direct and efficient. However, Xin does not take those words that way. From Xin’s prospective, Grace is criticizing his work and she is not satisfied with him. He obviously increases his tension by hearing Grace’s words. It is highly possible that Xin feels shame about his English skills and would rather speak less so that no one will continuously pay attention on his influent English. It is better for Grace to know more about Chinese culture and state her opinions in a less direct way so that Xin will not feel uncomfortable. Also, Xin should gradually adapt American culture since he needs to live and work in this place for the next one or two years. Grace is not the only person around him that is low context communicator, and she will not be the only one in the future either. If Xin cannot get used to this culture, he will be hurt badly from many other people.
Rashid:
Rashid was born in Arabic countries and studied engineering in the UK then worked at the UAE government. A typical Arabic person, Rashid’s polychromic characteristic makes him not sensitive to deadlines of the jobs but able to do many events at once. Looking at his current job in Flamingo as a tool to increase credibility back in UAE in the future, he does not want to try his best finishing his jobs on time and adapting Flamingo’s culture. His unwillingness towards hardworking and his incapability of meeting deadlines are his weaknesses. However, his experience makes him good at dealing with government and authorities and these are his strengths. Grace has noticed his strengths but has not found any way to make him improve his weakness. Here, it is not a good idea to just let him adapt the culture of let other people get use to Rashid’s habits because some of his behaviors have already made other members angry. Grace can reduce his works that must be done before some deadlines and giving him multiple tasks at the same time.
Also, his culture is at lowest Gender Egalitarianism. (Globe National Cultural Dimensions). It is understandable that he does not want to look at Grace when she talks to him. He is just affected by the culture but not actually resent Grace’s instructions to him.
Pedro：
Being born and worker in his native country Argentina, Pedro has developed a typically Argentine personality, more specifically, less future-orientated, less Performance Oriented, but with strong sense of Power Distance. (Globe National Cultural Dimensions) These kind of explain why he enjoys his personal life and manage his own time. He was not used to future-oriented behaviors such like planning and investing so he has no fix schedule. He was not greatly encouraged or rewarded by his institution because of his own performance so that he has developed the ability of creating high-quality works without any additional rewards but refuses to take more works spontaneously. However, US is a country that specifically values performance and excellence of individuals. Here, people get rewarded for being excellent and making progress. It is Grace’s job to help Pedro adapt this culture and encourages him to do more work based on rewards.
On the other side, his strong sense of Power Distance can be useful to Grace. Pedro expects power to be unequally shared and distributed. So, the most effective incentive for him to take more responsibilities is power. Grace can offer him some power, for example, by granting him a vise-project manager position or making him slightly above the other 2 new members. With bigger power, Pedro will be more hard-working and his ability can insure his works.
Solution:
As a new leader, Grace should first reduce her attention on specific works so that she can take more time to know about new members and try to smooth over the existing conflicts between them. Then she needs to keep in mind everyone’s strengths, weaknesses and future career plans so that she can arrange different people to manage different work with highest efficiency and harmonious atmosphere. Besides these, she also needs to know how to leverage or encourage each person so that they are willing to improve themselves. From now on, Grace should focus more on managing people instead of managing specific works. What she should keep is her experience and her knowledges about the projects and be ready to answer any questions and solve any problems for any member that comes to her for help.
The specific instructions of dealing with each member include:
Try to talk to Xin and other high context communicators less directly but still clearly. Encourage Xin to express his ideas and use his professional knowledges. Encourage Xin to talk to other group members more, when he has problems and difficulties he can ask Pedro or Thomas for help, or even Rashid.
Reduce Rashid’s works that must be done before some deadlines and give him multiple tasks at the same time. Make good use of his capability of dealing with government and authorities. Encourage Rashid to work harder so that she will provide positive and higher evaluations for him so that he can gain more credibility once he gets back to UAE.
Give some power to Pedro so that he feels like he can make some of the decisions. As he takes more responsibilities, he will automatically adjust his time to work more and maintain a good attitude knowing he is getting bigger power than other members. Also, Grace needs to transit some of the specific works that she is currently doing to Pedro and gives him bonus incentives from the salary aspect. It is unlikely that others oppose Grace’s decision of making Pedro a vise-project manager. Because Pedro has the ability of finishing works with high quality and he can make good suggestions. Grace needs to talk to Pedro one to one whenever they need to make a big decision of the project so that Pedro will not challenge Grace in front of other members. As Pedro takes more responsibilities and heavier workload, he will spend more time in office so that others will not judge too much. One more thing to do is that Grace needs to ask Pedro to help checking the written documents so that Thomas can feel better.
Show respect and gratefulness for Thomas help. Keep him know that the group is doing project well and suggest him that he can provide some guidance to Xin since they both take challenges as joys. However, keep an eye on him at the same time, because his ultimate target is a job in another company.
Reference
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Javidan, M. & House, R. J. (2001). Cultural acumen for the global manager: Lessons from project GLOBE. Organizational Dynamics
Hooker, J. N. (2008). Cultural differences in business communication. In C. B. Paulston, S. F. Kiesling, & E. S. Rangel (Eds.), Handbook of intercultural discourse and communication. New York, NY: Blackwell.
