BUSINESS SCHOOL

(Department of International Business and Economics)

Advanced Professional Development & Research (BUSI 1460)

Dissertation / Project Preliminary Form

Student Name: Junaid Ahmed Khan
Student ID Number: 000529003

Title: How can organisations manage cross cultural

value in order to benefit their business?

Chapter 1. Introduction

As the markets are growing global, the need to understand cross-cultural values in the
business environment has become important than ever. Culture which according to Gus
G, Ruth R(2001) is a common standard of what is right or wrong, what is acceptable and
what is not, what is workable and what is unworkable. If you look around, in almost
every work place there are staffs hired from different cultures and backgrounds.
Businesses seek to go multinational in order to gain new market entrance and growth.
There are many definitions of multinational enterprise. According to Frayerweather
(1978) it is a business which is conducted between two or more nations. Hence
businesses are hiring multinational staff which has different cultural values. This has
created a link between the ability of the workers to work in the same place as well as the
ability of the firm to manage these cross-cultural workers in there business environment.
Diverse cultural environment requires diverse managerial behaviour. Managers who tend
to implement strategies, plans and technologies of one cultural environment to another
may face failure. Therefore managing across divers culture is matter of perfect perception
and adaptation to the environment. Multinational organisations have put managers in a
diverse cultures of different nations, which might look strange to some managers To
manage human relationships in a global sense has become an area of serious concern for
the international managers and also the students of international business. There should
be an understanding of the likes and also the strategies of different cultures both
pertaining inside of the business and external as well.

Chapter 2. Aims and scope of the dissertation

As a student of international business I will be looking across the aspects that will cover
the business practices that multinational organisations are following to manage a diverse
work force.
My aims from the research will be:

To gain a detailed understanding of cultural values and its effect on the business
environment. There is an increase perception that an understanding of cross-cultural
values has a positive effect on the performance of the organisations.

To understand the resemblances and the differences of values in different cultures

particularly India, China and the west and also to study the implications of such
differences on the business environment. Multinational corporations are facing challenge
to administer the culture value over its businesses globally, and it is consequently
important to have an understanding of the differences in cultures that exist in the
countries in which business are based in.

To Understand the impact of not making an attempt to understand and be sensitive to

different cultural values. When organizations become diverse in the sense of their work
force, it is now become important to understand the risks to failure because the
organisations were not being sensitive to other cultural values.

To learn how to be successful in a multinational organisational which is composed of

multinational cultures. Organisations, inorder to earn more profits and find new markets,
become multinational and they are bound to hire multinational staff. It has become
challenging for the organisations to manage and control the work force. It is necessary to
understand the cultural values of the multinational work force in order to be successful.
In the last I will try to give some recommendations to organisations that they can adopt to
be successful in a multinational and diverse work force.

Chapter 3. Methodology

The dissertation will be helpful to understand the importance of cross-cultural

management and how it can be used to enhance the performance of businesses. The
primary research will be conducted via detailed interview of the managers of the firms in
U.K who have been hiring diverse workforce and managing them as well. The main part
of the dissertation research will be based on paradigm that will be qualitative. The
research will be qualitative because the results will be driven by existing literatures that
are present on cross-cultural environment and also there will be in depth interviews with
the managers of multinational UK firms which have diverse staff.

4. Relationship to previous work

In a more and more competitive and global environment, the impact of cross cultural
values plays a bigger party in the success or failure of an organization. There has been a
number of research that reconsidered the impact of cross cultural values on the business
environment . The work of Taylor (2008) evaluated the influence of cross cultural
variables in the environment of work and argued that a number of influential factors
impact the the cross cultural values that exist in the organizations. There are various
theories that Taylor presented to identify the variables that influenced cross cultural
values in the work environment. A number of researchers argued that the cultural social
variables in the different countries have a big impact on the human resource policies of
the organisations. The comparative framework presented by Poole (1986) argued that
country-level variables which also includes the cross-cultural values have an impact on
the policies of the organisations. other researchers in the field adapted the theory of
Poole to increase this by including the characteristics of market and industry to define the
impact of cross cultural problems on politics of HRM resultant of an organization, and
the effect of this on the organization culture in the work environment (Jackson & Schüler,
1995; Aycan, 2005). The mentioned research linked up cultural social variables at
country level to influence the practices of HRM, and support the arguments that shows an
indication of the impact cross-cultural values have on skills of the employees, job
variation, and feedback.

Human resource management (HRM) as a function has increased its importance in

organizations that follow the understanding of the blow, that HRM principles and
practice could have on the achievement of an organization. A key factor that is been
determined in the development of HRM policies is that effective policies and practices
that have a positive impact on the performance of organisations highlight the
requirements and value of multi-dimensionality and diversity (McKenna, Singh &
Richardson, 2008).. hence it is important to have good understanding of the cultural
values and different backgrounds that exists in the organisation, that could lead to the
success of the organisations. Organisations that follow the understanding of culture in the
organisations practise are better able to control and incorporate the diverse work force
and cultural values that are in the organisation, they are also in a better position to be
successful and enhance there performance.

Cross-cultural values impact has also been assessed by chow and lin (2007), they argued
that there is a strong relationship between the business strategy achievement and
understanding of the cultural values. The link found was mainly related to the policies of
HRM and the rules that are used to support the cultural values as well as understand
them. .
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