The appearance of international leaders coming from what Westerners usually call the “emerging countries” is creating new trends in the globalisation phenomenon. Once dominant companies are now being bought by Chinese, Brazilian or Indian companies and managers are increasingly recruited from these and other countries, creating new intercultural challenges.
 © istockphoto.com/ Urban Cow
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The merger between Arcelor and Mittal in 2006 is perhaps one of the best examples of this new trend. Arcelor, a powerful western steel company was bought by Mittal, an Indian steel manufacturing consortium owned by the Indian businessman Lakshi Mittal. This transaction faced heavy resistance and the French, Spanish and Belgian governments expressed their opposition alongside most of the Arcelor board members. Guy Dollé, the Chief Executive of Arcelor at the time, even described Mittal as a mere “company of Indians”.
This international merger shows us the difficulty many westerners have in accepting the fact that tomorrow’s decisions makers, managers and leaders will not only be German, British and North American but also increasingly Chinese or Indian. As these new international managers come onto the scene, they will bring with them their own unique cultural values and working practices which can be quite different to what most westerners are used to.
Perceptions of time, orientations toward hierarchy, approaches to decision-making or styles of communication are all elements of business which will be different. For employees of global organisations, having managers from different cultures means they could face intercultural challenges they may not have experienced before. Providing them with intercultural training courses before the new manager takes the role will help them to understand their managers’ style and expectations while it will also improve their ability to adapt to these new working styles. Failure to understand or adapt to another intercultural style may result in misunderstandings, conflict or poor performance.
Managers from countries like China or India coming to manage employees in the UK or Germany will face similar intercultural challenges. Understanding what their teams expect of them and knowing how to motivate, lead and manage them effectively requires a high level of cultural understanding and knowledge. Intercultural training provides managers with specific intercultural strategies and appropriate management tools that will help them achieve success in their different global projects.
Providing international employees and managers access to specific intercultural training programmes like Working Effectively across Culturesor Effective Global Leadership is crucial for global organisations employing multicultural teams or managers from other cultures. Enhancing the intercultural awareness and understanding of employees and their managers will not only reduce cultural misunderstandings and conflict but it will create a good working atmosphere allowing organisations to harness the benefits that their multicultural population brings.
With intercultural training, organisations such as ArcelorMittal can look towards joint ventures or M&As with other cultures more favourably so that Guy Dollé’s quote about the ‘company of Indians’ would instead be seen as a positive force rather than a negative one.
© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2010
© admin for Communicaid Blog | Cross Cultural Training and International Communication Skills, 2010. |
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Post tags: ArcelorMittal, Courses - Cultural Training, Cross Cultural Training, cross-cultural challenges, intercultural communication, intercultural training, Leading across cultures, merger and acquisition, Working Succesfully Across Cultures
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