Write an essay on Internal Communication Challenges in Cross Cultural environment.
In the recent era of globalization, the major issue faced by most of the multinational companies is the lack of proper communication in cross cultural business environment. It is also spotted in the merger or acquisition of the companies (Alvesson, 2014). This research paper illustrate the major communication issues that may be faced by the employees of Resp-Tech as the company is going to be merged with the German medicine company named as Pharma Ltd. Due to the language barrier, different national and organizational culture, the employees of Resp-Tech may face various problems in adjusting in the new organizational condition of Pharma Ltd. These types of communication barriers may affect the performance of the employees negatively that may harm the smooth running of the company (Becker, 2010). So in this scenario, the cross culture manager has to take suitable strategies for improving internal communication of the organization to improve the performance of the organization.
Pharma Ltd. is a Germany based pharmaceutical company which is specialized in research, production and marketing of medicines. The company mainly deals in respiratory medicines. The company started their operations in the year 1960. The company also has good reputation in the German medicine industry. It’s headquarter is situated in Munich. There are near about 1,000 employees in its units of research directorate and research function within the company. In its two manufacturing units the number of total employees is more than 1,500. The company also has near about 200 employees in their sales and marketing department. Now to develop their research business, the company’s directors are taking the decision of acquiring the US based firm named as Resp-Tech. Resp-Tech is a small bio tech company of US.
Resp-Tech is a US based bio tech company which is recently acquired by the medicine research firm Pharma Ltd. This company will be kept as a separate unit of Pharma Ltd. The employees and stake holders of Resp-Tech have to adopt the changes for this acquisition process. All the departments of Resp-Tech including the HR, IT and finance have to adopt the required changes. The company employs 40 researchers and 15 support staffs in their organization. Irrespective of the less number of employees in their organization, the company has good reputation in the quality research filed.
The Resp-Tech company is going to be merged with the large medicine research company Pharma Ltd. For this merger, the employees of Resp-Tech have to shift to Pharma Ltd. As the employees have to shift to a new working environment they may face problems in adopting the working culture of Pharma Ltd. In addition to this, the employees of the Resp-Tech were working in an informal working environment whereas the Pharma Ltd. is one among the well-known medicine companies of Germany. The employees of the Pharma company works in a very formal way. For improving the performance of the organization, internal communication among all the departments and their employees is very much needed (Cross and Stapleton, 2015).
Cross cultural problems arise when the employees of the organization belong to various cultures. In this context, the Pharma Company is merged with the Resp-Tech. The employees of both the companies belong to different cultural back grounds, so they may face difficulties in communicating with each other (Alvesson, 2014). For smooth running of any organization, persuading with effective communication among the employees is an essential part of the organizational behavior. Removal of language and cultural barriers among the employees is very much essential for effective communication between the employees of the merged company – Pharma Ltd.
The company Pharma Ltd. is merged with Resp-Tech. The cultural and language differences among the employees of the merged company may lead to degrade the performance of the company (Dellal and Côte, 2009). So the managers of the merged company should take the effective cross cultural management initiatives to build up effective communication among their employees. The cross cultural manager has to consider the below factors during the development of a plan to build up effective communication in the cross cultural environment at Pharma Ltd.
National Cultural Differences: If the employees belong to different nations, the possibility of differences among them increases. The gaps in the form of national cultural differences lead to communication gaps among the employees of an organization (Groseschl and Doherty, 2008). To improve the performance of Pharma Ltd., effective communication among their employees is very much needed. In this scenario, the employees of the merged company belong to different countries namely Germany and US, so the possibility of cultural differences among them is very high. To build up internal communication among the employees of the merged company, the cross cultural manager of the company has to take suitable strategies (Keillor and Wilkinson, 2014).
Organizational Cultural Differences: The organization’s cultural differences also can create communication gaps among their employees (Pettigrew and Fenton, 2009). In this case, the organizational cultures of both the companies Pharma Ltd and Resp-Tech are different from each other that lead to create difficulties for the employees of Resp-Tech to adopt the new organizational culture of the company Pharma Ltd. To be a part of the merged company, the employees of Resp-Tech have to adopt the organizational changes as soon as possible unless it will soon be reflected in their performances. The cross cultural manger of the company should take initiatives to help the employees of Resp-Tech to adopt the organizational culture of Pharma Ltd.
Liaison required among stake holders: The main issues associated with the merger action of the companies do create problems among the stake holders of both the companies (Quirke, 2010). To improve the performance of the merged company, all its stake holders have to maintain effective communication with each other and take joint decisions about the company. As the relation among the stake holders affects the performance and productivity of the company, the cross cultural managers of both the company must have to take suitable steps to build up good relation among them (Randles and Laasch, 2016).
Language Barrier: One of the major causes of the cross cultural differences among the employees is the language barrier. In this scenario both the companies belong to different countries, so the employees of the merged company face the problem of cross cultural differences due to their language barrier. For smooth running of the company, understanding between the employees is also necessary. Language barrier is also a great concern for misunderstanding among the employees. So the cross cultural manger has to take initiatives to remove the language barrier among their employees.
Effective Communication: In the cross cultural scenario, effective communication among the employees is very crucial to build effective relation among them. The cross cultural manger must have to take the step of arranging refreshment facilities for their employees to build relation among them. With relevance to this case scenario, Pharma Ltd. should arrange effective cross culture management programs to build effective relationship with the employees of the Resp-Tech.
The performance of the company is totally dependent on its employees. The motivated and encouraged employees help the organization to carry out ethical business operations and thereby increasing their productivity. So to increase the profit of the company, motivation is essential. Proper work culture and effective communication performs effective role in building up employee’s motivation to their work. In this case, the cross cultural environment of Pharma Ltd. can lead to negative effects to the organizational behavior. Effective teamwork is also essential in developing the effective relation between the employees of both the organizations.
The company Pharma Ltd. is merging with Resp-Tech. So the company has to arrange proper cross culture management program to build effective communication among their employees that helps them to improve their performance. The cross culture manager should focus on the three important factors of cross culture management namely Emotional Skills, Cognitive Skills and Communication Skills.
Emotional Skills: As the employees of the company Resp-Tech has to adjust in the new working environment, they may face the problem of stress, personal adjustment, language differences and cultural differences. So emotional development of the employees is very much essential in the cross cultural environment. To adjust in the cross culture situation, the new employees of the company Pharma Ltd. have to understand the organizational culture as well as the national culture of the country. In this case, the cross culture manager should focus on emotional development of the new employees of Pharma Ltd.
Cognitive Skills: It refers to the professional skills of the employees. To improve the performance of both the organizations, all the employees of the companies have to perform their best for increasing the productivity of the company. As the employees of the company Resp-Tech are shifting to the company Pharma Ltd., their job roles in the new working environment of the merged company also get changed. In this scenario, the employees have to understand their job roles effectively. The Pharma Ltd. should arrange proper skill development program for their new employees to give them effective idea about their new job roles and also it helps them to improve their performance. So, in the cross cultural management scenario of organizational management, cognitive skill development of the employees is also an essential feature (Stubbs and Cocklin, 2009).
Communication Skills: The key issue faced by the employees in cross cultural working environment is lack of proper communication with the colleagues. Due to language and cultural differences, the employees face the problem of communication gaps. Proper communication among the employees also helps to build effective working group. The effective team work of the employees is also essential for increasing the productivity of the company. Effective communication among the employees also leads to remove cultural differences among the employees (Needle, 2014). For development of effective communication among the employees, the organization should arrange online intra network group that helps to build relation among the employees. In addition to this, arranging group discussion and open forum also leads to develop effective communication among the employees (Morden, 2009). In this case, effective communication among the stake holders of the merged organization is also necessary to improve the performance of the company. The physical environment of the organization also helps to reduce communication gaps among the employees (Spoelstra, 2012). The relaxation area and chat points of the organization also leads to increased interaction among the employees of the organization that can reduce the cross culture barrier of the employees.
For maximizing the productivity of Pharma Ltd., improvement in the performance of the employees is most essential. Cross cultural environment of the organization leads to decrease the productivity of the company (Morden, 2015). In addition to this, effective communication among the employees is also a necessary factor of efficient working environment. The company Pharma Ltd. is going to merge with Resp-Tech to develop their business process.
In this scenario, the employees face the problem of cross cultural issues that may harm the effective working culture of the company. To increase the productivity of the company, proper working culture is also necessary (Lin, 2015). The cross culture manager of the company has to arrange proper initiatives for developing effective communication among the employees. The organization should include emotion development, knowledge development and behavior development feature in the cross culture development process to build effective team that can leads to increase the productivity of the organization.
To build up self confidence among the employees of both Pharma Ltd. and Resp-Tech and to reduce the stress of the employees, the emotional development of the employees is also necessary (Boone and Kurtz, 2015). Building effective relation with the employees in the cross culture environment helps the employees to perform better.
The organization should arrange proper skill development program for their employees that help them to improve the performance of their employees in the cross cultural environment (Sevic, 2013). These types of training programs also help the employees of both the companies to understand their job roles in the organization better. In addition to this, the managers of the company should motivate their employees to communicate with each other effectively that help them to improve their performance. To build up effective relation among the employees, both verbal and non-verbal communications are necessary (Cross, 2014).
Understanding of the different work culture of the new organization also helps the employees of Resp-Tech to perform better. So the organization Pharma Ltd. has to arrange team meetings and seminars to provide the new employees an idea about the organizational structure, working environment, and business process of the company.
Arranging team gatherings once in a month also helps to build effective relation among the employees of the organizations (Boone and Kurtz, 2015). The team leader should also discuss about the team performance and undertake effective ways to improve the performance of the team etc.
In addition to this, the organization should also arrange open forum for the employees where they can get the chance of asking their queries about the products and working process of the organization that helps them to gain adequate knowledge about the organizational setting.
Proper communication is also necessary between all the employees of the organization and the company. The company should adopt an intranet communication method to communicate with all the employees effectively. The organization can send ‘e-mails round up’ weekly to all their employees using the intranet of the company (Change, conflict, cross-culture, 2013). These types of e-mails may contain important news of the organization, team performance index, and many other new related to the organizational performances and achievement.
As the informal physical environment of the organization helps to build effective communication among its employees, Pharma Ltd. may adopt the strategy of arranging physical hubs as a chat point or relaxation area to develop effective communication among their employees (Cowan, 2012).
Conclusion
This research paper concludes with the strategies that help the cross culture manager of the company Pharma Ltd. to take effective steps to develop internal communication among the employees. Before taking initiatives for developing internal communication among the employees, the cross culture manger has to identify the key issues behind the communication gaps in the working environment (Berlin, 2011). As per this research paper the major factors behind the cross culture issues of organizations are national, cultural and organizational culture differences; language barrier; lack of effective communication among the employees etc. In addition of identifying the reasons behind the cross culture issues, this research paper also identifies some strategies that help the cross culture managers of the organization to adopt suitable cross culture management program to develop effective communication among the employees.
References
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