Issues of sustainability have been debated upon since the 1970s in the West, and the process now continues in the global forum. Companies are realizing that several past assumptions and practices are unsustainable in the changing world.
Concerns for the company's longevity in the new age now forces consideration for other people and environments. The global emphasis is also shifting from positional and group power to less obvious power sources - expertise, creativity and networking. These have been instrumental in the phenomenal rise of the Internet. Since then, organizational structures and the nature of work have been transforming. Virtual offices allow personnel to come to ‘work’ even when located in different regions. Innovations, solutions, information and opinions spread exponentially across the world.
Communications have been facilitated. Global teams pool resources in joint ventures, collaborations, and problem solving exercises across boundaries and geographical borders. For example, computer-aided technology allows medical help, even complicated surgery by specialists thousands of miles away. Connectivity to remote parts of the globe expands the knowledge base. Access to higher education empowers the once disadvantaged - women and other minority groups. Their competing on equal terms with the privileged is now less of an impossible dream.
With globalization, companies seeking new markets perceived exciting new avenues in other continents. This led to spate of mergers and takeovers occurred during the 1990s. Companies based in different regions of the world came together based on the numbers. Lack of knowledge or experience of one another’s values and cultures merited little attention.
For example, in the car industry, American Chrysler and German Daimler merged into one giant company assuming that their gains with access to new markets, would equate the sum of the parts and more. But then it was discovered that, within the same organization, cultures termed distinctly “scrappy” and “stodgy” do not quite jell! Inevitably, the anticipated success of the global presence failed to occur.
The culture clashes raised global awareness about people issues in diversity. In learning about other cultures, people discover their similarities. The easing of constraints in India and China has allowed these two most populated in the world to make appreciable economic strides forward, with higher growth rates. Migration of skilled workforces is now bi-directional, not only East to West, but increasingly West to East, as Asia is said to be becoming the new economic frontier.
Those companies working at global “acculturation” first are the most likely to have realistic success in the new markets. Managers in charge of a knowledge-based global workforce also need new people skills to be able to fulfill their roles. Quoting research, the article Crosscultural Awareness explains:
Earlier it was generally accepted that organizations required three groups of specialists to be effective: business managers, country managers, and function managers. But now, with the trend to go global, the new important requirement is for a unique fourth kind of specialist manager – a leader with global mindset skills for successful intercultural management.
Societies around the world are becoming more heterogeneous with the changing demographics of constituent groups. Consumers are no longer a homogeneous mass with product wants easy to identify and manipulate. Social representative groups have buying needs different to one another. The business strategy of the new millennium should have specific rather of broad classifications of consumers.
The company that tunes into “culture”, “lifestyle” and so on, can innovate or design product fit. Investments in research about possible consumer need, want, like and dislike along cultural lines, could reap returns, with “culture sensitivity” augmenting the corporate bottomline. The article “Homework” illustrates the context:
…the research - the homework - is meant to set up effective performance. For example, three months after the launch of its new cultural website aimed at ethnic immigrant communities, Lufthansa had 190,000 visitors and revenue raked in through the site was 91 percent over their target. Because they remembered cultural occasions, their particular significances to the immigrant people, and associated their customary travel plans with interesting packages…
Ethnic communities are the new consumer units targeted in many marketing initiatives. However, no company can afford complaisance. “Culture”, even ethnic culture, is ever changing. The article Crosscultural Awareness notes:
Culture is not a static ‘thing’, but is constantly being created, expressed, affirmed and enforced. It is evolving unceasingly, from continuing conversations and negotiations about individuals, about the organization and about the environment.
With availability of information is literally at the fingertips, consumer groups have become far more aware of their own needs and the products that will fulfill them best. Along with the demographics, consumer tastes and their assertiveness have changed.
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