Discuss about the Multi-National Organisation Operates In Other Countries.
This paper provides an overview and discussion about a Multinational corporation that operates in various countries among them Australia, India, Vietnam, Nigeria and Oman. Notably, its head office is based in Australia. The firm specializes in manufacturing and distributing agricultural equipment to both the local and international market. Currently, the company has employed approximately 8,000 workers in the five countries that it operates in. Additionally, it has a client base of over a million customers from all over the globe. Over the recent years, the organization has been experiencing multiple communication challenges. Mainly, these challenges arise from the ineffective use of social media, social networks and blogs to support teams in building knowledge, task management and sharing ideas. Another major problem is the lack of quality feedback from the firm’s clients on ways to improve and enhance the quality of its products as well as its service delivery. In addition, the company has been facing a series of misunderstandings and lack of trust among its personnel due to intercultural communication issues in different contexts. For this reason, the purpose of this report is to identify and discuss various strategies and plans that may help the multinational corporation to improve on all the three communication challenges at all levels of the organization. The paper covers an overview of the social media challenges facing the company and ways in which it may solve these problems. Additionally, it offers a detailed solution as to how the company may obtain feedback from its clients on how to improve the quality of its goods and services. Lastly, it offers a solution to the intercultural misunderstanding between the staff members due to cultural diversity of the various countries that the organization operates. Lastly, the paper will offer various recommendations that that the firm may implement to improve the level of communication among its subsidiaries. Primarily, the report is structured into various sections comprising of overview and analysis on the issues section, conclusion and recommendations.
Social media has become an important aspect in today’s society. It has gained rapid prominence within a few years of its existence. Today, the most common social media include blogs, wikis and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It is generally the medium to socialize and many are awed by the transformation of communication processes made possible by the social media platforms (Robin, 2016). In the business world, the medium has penetrated through boardroom of business organizations and has transformed the process of communication and sharing knowledge (Singh, 2017). Although it is a recent concept, social media has proven to be an effective method of communication and sharing knowledge within a business, especially multinational corporations. It has also proven itself as a platform for institutions to exchange contents and creations, thereby increasing the interaction among members of the organization (Ferris, n.d.). Therefore, the MNC may utilize the resources made available by various social media platforms to build its knowledge base, task management and share ideas within the organization.
As noted earlier, the multinational company is facing communication challenges that arise from the lack of quality feedback from clients on ways to improve their product quality and service delivery (Zadjo, 2017). Also studies indicate that customers usually do not bother to share their feedback with the service provider about an experience that did not meet their expectations. Instead, they decide to never do business with the company again (Ciotti, 2016). As a result, the company pays a significantly huge price for the lack of feedback from its customers. Therefore, it is very important for the company to solve this problem. In order to solve this problem, the company must devise a sound plan and strategy that would allow it to communicate effectively with its clients and obtain useful feedback from them.
Apart from lack of feedback and ineffective use of social media, the company also faces communication barriers and challenges arising from intercultural differences and lack of trust between the organization’s subsidiaries. It is, therefore, important for the organization’s managers to understand how to communicate effectively with other managers and company personnel working in Australia, India, Vietnam, Nigeria and Oman in order to achieve the firm’s common goals. Trust is a fundamental component in any organization (The Real Reason, 2015). For this reason, building trust is a critical step in the creation of intercultural teams. Cultural differences can create significant misunderstandings between teams from different countries with different cultural backgrounds. As such, cultural disparities among employees and management can create misunderstandings between them even before they have had a chance to establish trust and credibility with each other (Murphy, n.d.). At the moment, the level of trust is the company is low, thereby inhibiting the level and quality of communication in the organization. Noteworthy, the level of trust between strangers varies from one country to another. While in some people normally assume that the other person can be trusted, others prefer to know the other party before trusting them.
All in all, trust is fundamental and the company should focus on fostering the level of trust among its employees. This can be achieved through emotional bonding and conceptual understanding (Molinsky & Gundling, 2016). Emotional bonding can be created between members of global teams through face to face meetings in convivial settings. On the other hand, conceptual understanding can be fostered by providing employees with an intellectual understanding of how cultural similarities and differences influences business conduct (Toegel and Barsoux, 2016). On other occasions, the company may foster trust by measuring the level of trust among its personnel. When monitored and reported back to the team and team leader, challenges can be identified and overcome before they endanger team effectiveness.
Conclusion
All factors taken into consideration, communication is an important element in every organization. This report focuses on a multinational-corporation that deals in the manufacturing and distribution of agricultural equipments to the local and international companies. At the moment the organization operates in Australia, India, Vietnam, Oman and Nigeria. Over the recent past the MNC has been experiencing fundamental communication challenges brought about by the ineffective use of social media such as wikis, blogs and social networks to support teams in sharing ideas, task management and building knowledge bases. In addition, the lack of quality feedback from the organization’s clients on methods to improve its agricultural equipment and enhance its service delivery has also contributed to the firm’s communication challenges. What is more, the misunderstandings and lack of trust arising from intercultural issues has contributed to the challenges facing the firm. Therefore, in order for the firm to effectively solve these issues, it must develop strategies and plans that aim at enhancing communication at all levels of the organization in the five countries. These strategies will go a long way in improving the level of communication in the firm as well as lead to an improvement in the quality of the firm’s agricultural equipment and overall service delivery to its clients. Aside from that, the company would be able to effectively utilize social media platforms for sharing ideas, knowledge bases and task managements. Most importantly, the firm would manage to foster a culture of trust between the management team and its employees in all the five countries. In the long term, a successful implementation of these strategies would improve not only the organization’s communication levels but also its profitability.
After a critical analysis of the case study, this report makes various recommendations that the multinational corporation may implement to improve its communication issues arising from the lack of quality feedback from clients, ineffective use of social media and misunderstanding and lack of trust based upon intercultural communication issues in different contexts. These recommendations include;
As noted earlier, the company has been experiencing various communication challenges over the recent past due to its ineffective use of social media platforms such as blogs, wiki, and social networks. Thus, to resolve this challenge, the firm may implement the following recommendations.
Using social media to share ideas .The multinational organization can use social media as a tool to share information between the management and its employees. The firm may use the ‘Open Text’ software for this function. Noteworthy, this interactive media can be used for interaction between the employees, customers as well as other organizations (Obbard, 2015). Primarily, social apps can be used to create a socially charged work atmosphere that fosters innovation and collaboration between employees (Beck, 2017)Mainly, this is because social apps provide employees with a platform for them to engage with each other, discuss and share ideas, and express themselves more often (Managing, 2016). Thus, employees can share information through videos, post blogs, and resources or even participate in discussion forums in these platforms.
Using social media to build a knowledge base. It is noteworthy that knowledge is what gives a company its primary competitive advantage, unique experience and insight. Additionally, an effective knowledge base helps the firm to identify and address specific market gaps and questions from its employees. It also provides an effective way for the company to store important information regarding its services, products and workers. What is more, it helps employees’ access critical information to address customer needs, resolve issues and gain insight for collaboration with other experts in their field of work. What is more, an online knowledge base helps an organization to enhance its productivity and efficiency since employees can easily obtain information from one location. For this reason, it is important for the organization to utilize the social media and social networks to develop a strong knowledge base.
Therefore, the multinational corporation can build its knowledge base using social intranet software as a knowledge management solution. This will then help capture all the valuable information, utilize data and insight (Eisenhauer, 2014). It will also help the employees offer support to clients, thereby leading to greater customer satisfaction and enhanced profits. Most importantly, it would bring about an increase in employee morale and, hence, productivity (Eisenhauer, 2014). Additionally, it would lead to increased efficiency, smoother communication and enhanced information flow.
It is also worth pointing out that a company’s knowledge base could function like a repository in a manner that it contains vital information for the daily functioning of the business and the long-term as well. However, to create a relevant online knowledge base, the MNC must add important information alongside major guidelines and frameworks within the company. In order for the employees to obtain important information from the knowledge base, it is crucial for it to be updated regularly (Signh, 2018). This way, workers would be able to able to get new insight and data when there is new information available.
The knowledge management software may also be structured in a way that allows the employees to share relevant information externally using social share technologies (Eisenhauer, 2014).. All in all, a good knowledge base would make sharing information within the multinational corporation to be simple because the employees would no longer waste time looking for files since they can access all relevant data on any topic in one location (Bradley and McDonald, 2011).
Using social media for task management. The multinational corporation can also use social media to solve its task management issues. This would be particularly useful in supporting timely and faster communication between the managers and the staff (Jiwat, n.d.). Mainly, social media may come in handy in task management by playing a critical role in the planning, execution and delivery of tasks through communication management, task update management, and knowledge management. It is vital to point out that communication plays an important role in the success of any task within an organization (Oyza & Edwin, 2015). As a result, managers spend approximately 90 percent of their management time communicating information to their teams. Therefore, they can utilize social media apps to facilitate audio, text or video based secure messaging to communicate useful information and instructions to the firm’s employees wherever they are. These social media platforms may also be used by the staff to obtain clarifications on the tasks they have been assigned. In the end, the social media platforms would empower the management to manage their communication to staff members more effectively.
In order to resolve the various communication challenges arising from the lack of constructive feedback from its clients, the firm may undertake the following measures.
Develop a customer feedback survey. The organization may develop a client feedback survey to help bridge the communication barrier between the company and its clients. Today, the web has made colleting surveys easier by letting firms test longer and more traditional surveys as well as shorter ones when they visit their website. For long surveys, the company may use tools such as Google Surveys, Typeform, and Survey Monkey, among others. For short surveys, the MNC may utilize tools such as Qualaroo to conduct simple polls and ask clients brief questions. This way, the firm would achieve its goal of obtaining useful responses from customers who are active on its website.
Email and customer contact forms. It is imperative to point out that the organization may also utilize customer contact forms and emails to obtain useful feedback from its clients all over the world. As such, the company may improve the way its customers reach out through email by maximizing on its effectiveness. When seeking feedback through emails, the company should assure the customers of a speedy response. It should also develop an organized customer feedback system to provide clients with immediate response and send candid follow up messages. In so doing, the company would be able to obtain candid feedback about their products from the customers point of view, and know how to improve the product as well as service delivery.
Exploratory customer interviews. An exploratory customer interview comprises of a direct outreach to the client to obtain feedback. This method would help the firm in understanding its customers by simply talking to them and obtaining their views about the products. Furthermore, it may also facilitate in filling in the gaps that less personal forms of feedback tend to create. However, when conducting these one on one interviews for feedback, it is important for the one obtaining the information to focus on user attitudes. Here, it is crucial for the company to explore how clients think about the firms agricultural machinery. Also, the interviewer should use the critical incident method to inquire from the clients those specific instances which they faced difficulties when using the firm’s products, or a great quality of the product. By so doing, the direct approach would yield a great feedback for the company, which would then be useful in improving the products as well as customer delivery across all its subsidiaries in the five countries.
On-site activity survey. Given the nature of the company’s products (agricultural equipment), the most suitable method to obtain feedback would be to conduct an on-site activity survey. Basically, this involves obtaining feedback in the field when the customers are actually using the product (Ciotti, 2016). By visiting the clients in their farms, the company will know if their equipment is functioning properly, or if they break down easily. It would also help the firm know if its equipment are efficient and useful for the clients in the tasks that they are intended for. Most importantly, the activity would allow the firm to obtain useful insights on how it can improve its equipment to satisfy the farming needs of its clients. By so doing, therefore, the corporation would be able to break the communication barrier that exists between the organization and its clients and, in turn, allow it to make improvements on the equipment while also enhancing its customer service to its clients. Eventually, this would improve the firm’s profitability.
Community groups and discussion boards. It is worth noting that customers love to be part of a community group. Therefore, the firm may utilize community groups and discussion boards to offer its clients a platform to interact with other users of the company’s agricultural equipment. Through these forums, the customers would provide feedback in the form of comments and discussion in the group (9 Effective Strategies, 2017). By and large, such feedback plays an important role in the development process of the organization. Therefore, it is important for the organization’s representatives to listen carefully to the views of the clients and respond to them appropriately. Additionally, the clients would offer some recommendations that would go a long way in helping the company improve and enhance its agricultural equipments.
For the firm to mitigate the communication challenges arising from the lack of trust and intercultural differences, the multinational corporation might undertake the following steps.
Understand cultural diversity. Given that the MNC has branches in five different countries that have different cultures, it is important for the managers to understand the cultural diversities that exist between the five nations (Cross Cultural Communication, 2011). Understanding that the sender of the message and the receiver of the message come from different cultures would go a long way in bridging the cultural communication issues in the organization and foster trust among staff members in the long run (White, 2016). It is indeed crucial for managers to recognize that a basic understanding of cultural diversity is the key to effective cross cultural communication (Fanen, 2018). Hence, the company’s personnel must learn how to better communicate with those from the other countries.
Develop awareness of individual cultures. In addition to understanding cultural diversity, the firm should develop an awareness of the individual cultures of the five countries. Notably, this is necessary for developing the basic level of understanding that is needed to engage in interactions (Cross-culture, n.d.). To achieve this goal, the company may offer training to its personnel on the different cultures in order to convey proper communication and understanding when exchanging information.
Cultivate mutual acceptance. Afterwards, the organization should work towards cultivating mutual acceptance and understanding among its members. It is important for the general managers to explain to their teams about the different time zones, holidays, and office hours between the five branches in Australia, Oman, Vietnam, Nigeria and India. The employees would appreciate the information and work hard to understand the different needs and means used to achieve common company goals.
Cultivate a culture of trust. It is important to note that building trust in an international company is not an easy task. However, trust is critical and the management of the multinational corporation should take the necessary steps to cultivate a culture of trust among its employees in the five countries. The study recommends the following steps.
Acknowledge and respect the cultural differences between the employees in the five countries. This is the first step to building a culture of trust. It involves addressing the existence of different cultural backgrounds within the teams (Henman, 2017). The best way to tackle the issue is by discussing the cultural differences in a team meeting where members can share their cultural and expectations about communication and working styles.
Establish norms for the teams. It is important that each member of the team knows what the company expects from them by establishing norms for the team. In this process, it is key for the management to get the team leaders to contribute to the formation of the norms. Building norms that are specific to the team helps to build trust and enhances their performance.
Develop team identity and outline roles and responsibilities. The next step involves breaking down the common goal of the company into actionable steps that outline each member’s responsibilities and tasks (Grossman, 2016). Developing a team identity involves finding the commonalities between team members. Developing these personal connections between team members would go a long way in boosting the trust levels among teams.
Over-communicate. It is important for the organization’s top management to minimize any information gaps in its cross-cultural teams. All employees should be on the same page in order for the team to achieve its goals (Sheng, 2016). Besides, giving the required information will help reduce conflicts and team dysfunctions, and cultivate a culture of trust among members of the team.
Build rapport. When the steps outlined above are followed and done right, they can help bond the team and create a basis on which the team members can build their trust. Thus, it is important for the organization to create an environment where the employees feel safe so that they can collaborate better with their colleagues.
Measure trust levels. At the end of the process, the international company can measure the level of trust among its employees using tools the trust or investment game (Asherman & Bing, 2000). When monitored and reported back to the team and team leader, challenges can be identified and overcome before they endanger team effectiveness.
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