Cultures and how to deal with them across countries

1. CROSS-CULTURAL
ORIENTATION
Submitted By :
Nitish Sadotra

2. What the culture is?
Culture is derived from a Latin word
‘cult’, which means a small group
who perform same or similar beliefs
or customs.
It shows the way people live their
lives including their attitude, values,
beliefs, arts, habits, perception, etc.

3. Constituents of Culture:
 Value System: Assumption of what is good or bad, what is
right or wrong.
 Norms: Guidelines or social rules that are prescribed in a
appropriate behavior in a given situation.
 Aesthetics: Idea or the perception of beauty & good taste.
 Tradition & Customs: The way how their rituals are to be
performed.
 Language: The way of presenting one’s feelings or senses.

4. What the Cross-Culture is?
 A business environment where participants from different countries or
regions interact, bringing different values, viewpoints and business
practices.
 Cross culture can refer to a company's initiatives to increase understanding
of different groups, develop effective communication or marketing efforts
to reach out to customers and clients outside its traditional market.
 Methods of cross culture are intended to strengthen the
interaction of people from different backgrounds in the
business world and is a vital issue in international
business.

5.  More than 50% of all national and international mergers and
acquisitions fail to live up to the hopes and expectations of their
initiators, and collapse in the first four years of their existence.
 The main reason for these sad statistics is very often not the “hard
facts” (such as the implementation and correct usage of the market
and technology factors), but the clash between different
organizational cultures.
 It says the better side of cross-culture is to be look up, hence…

6. Orientation of Cross-Culture
 There are many a way to see this, but two main
approaches that were used in the orientation of
the cross-culture are:
1. Parochialism & Simplification.
2. EPRG approach.

7. Parochialism & Simplification.
Parochialism:
 The beliefs that views the rest of the world through own
eyes and cultural perspectives.
 Not recognizing that others have different ways of living
and working.
 Ignoring others’ values and customs and rigidly applying
an attitude that “ours is better than theirs”.

8. Parochialism & Simplification.
Simplification:
 Exhibit the same cultural orientation toward different
cultural groups.
 It leads to the better understanding between two different
work organizations.
 It decreases the difficulties for the managers working for
the sake of different organizations with totally different
cultures.

9. EPRG approach
It stands for:
 E (Ethnocentric)
 P (Polycentric)
 R (Regiocentric)
 G (Geocentric)
Ethnocentric
Geocentric
Polycentric Regiocentric

10. Ethnocentric
 Parochialistic belief that the best work approaches and
practices are those of the home country.
 Lack trust in foreign employees with key decisions or
technology.
Polycentric
 A belief that host-country managers know the best work
approaches and practices.
 Let foreign employees determine work practices.

11. Regiocentric
 It views different regions as different markets, or a region with
certain important common marketing characteristics is regarded
as a single market.
 Organizations operate and divides the workforce according to
these regions.
Geocentric
 Focuses on using the best approaches and people from around the
globe.
 Look for the best approaches and people regardless of the country
of origin.