With the development of the world economy and the acceleration of the process of global integration, more and more multinational enterprises have emerged. These enterprises have subsidiaries in different countries and regions. How to deal with the cultural conflicts caused by different national cultures and build the culture and values unanimously recognized by employees has become an important issue in enterprise management.
"Culture" is a common psychological procedure shared by people in the same environment. It is not an individual characteristic, but a psychological procedure shared by many people with the same social experience and the same education. People from different groups, countries or regions have different common psychological procedures because they have always received different education, had different societies and jobs, and thus had different ways of thinking.
After a large-scale investigation and study of culture and values, Professor hofstad of the Netherlands put forward the famous theory of cultural differences based on the quintuple method. He believes that cultural differences in different countries can be evaluated from the following five aspects: personal identity (i.e. focusing on individuals or groups), power distance (i.e. social distance between employees and managers, strong power or weak power), Gender role rights (i.e. a masculine society focusing on career success or a feminine society focusing on quality of life), attitude towards time (i.e. focusing on short-term interests or long-term interests), uncertainty index (i.e. acceptance and tolerance of uncertainty factors). For example, Chinese culture focuses on collectivity, power, feminization, long-term interests and low tolerance of uncertainty; American culture, on the other hand, focuses on individuals, weak power, tends to be masculine, pays attention to short-term interests and has a high tolerance of uncertainty. These different cultures have different value goals and value orientations, and often regard their own culture as superior and other cultures as dangerous. When they spread and come into contact with each other, there will be competition, confrontation and even attempts to eliminate each other. This kind of conflict is called cultural conflict.
Corporate culture is like an invisible link that runs through every link of enterprise development. The management of multinational enterprises means that cross-cultural and organizational management differences must be handled well. If cultural differences are not handled properly, it will lead to the failure of multinational corporations. Practice has proved that, on the premise of respecting each other's cultural values, it is an effective way to solve the conflict of corporate culture to let people with different cultural ideas and values have a common corporate cultural spirit and form their own unique cultural values.
Microsoft has established its own unique corporate culture and corporate values, and successfully implemented the localization strategy, becoming a model for multinational enterprises in dealing with cultural differences. Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, Microsoft is the largest computer software provider in the world. As the world's largest software company, Microsoft currently has nearly 90000 employees and nearly 70000 partners in more than 100 countries. After Microsoft established its office in Beijing in 1992, it immediately established Microsoft China Research Institute and Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute. In January 2006, Microsoft Asia Pacific R & D group was established.
In the process of development, Microsoft has gradually formed a unique multi-cultural and special cultural management mode. In Microsoft, the top management encourages the coexistence of diverse backgrounds and concepts, fully respects the labor achievements of employees, actively encourages innovation, and forms the Microsoft corporate culture and corporate values commonly recognized by employees around the world: integrity and honesty; Full of passion; Openness and respect; Be brave to meet challenges; Be strict with yourself, be good at thinking, and adhere to self-improvement and perfection; Have the courage to take responsibility. In order to avoid cultural differences and conflicts, Microsoft has launched two special cross-cultural Projects - the silk road project and the Marco Polo project.
The silk road originally refers to the two missions of Zhang Qian of China to the western regions during the Western Han Dynasty, which led to Central Asia and West Asia through China and connected the Mediterranean countries, opening up a new era of Sino foreign exchanges. In order to make Chinese employees have a deeper understanding of the culture of the headquarters in the United States and broaden their international horizons, Microsoft has launched the Silk Road Plan: every year, a certain number of employees will be sent to the headquarters of Microsoft in the United States to work for a period of time. Every day, they will get to know their colleagues in several different countries, and then share what they see, hear and feel in the headquarters with their colleagues in their own countries after returning home. Xie Enwei, the founder of the project, said: "I hope this project can become a bridge and link between Microsoft and two different countries like the ancient Silk Road in China. Therefore, this project is named 'Silk Road'."
Marco Polo, an Italian traveler and businessman in the 13th century, arrived in Mongolia through the Middle East with his uncle when he was young. He traveled in China for 17 years. After returning home, he wrote the famous travels of Marco Polo, recording his experiences in the wealthiest countries in the East, which aroused the enthusiasm of Europeans for the East and had a great impact on the opening of new routes in the future. The Marco Polo plan of Microsoft refers to sending experienced technical elites from the US headquarters who are interested in Chinese projects to China to teach the latest technology, experience, management and corporate culture of the US headquarters to the employees of Microsoft China. While working in China, foreign employees assigned to Microsoft China can also more intuitively and profoundly understand the rapid changes and rapid development of China, bring relevant information back to the headquarters, and attract more excellent talents from the headquarters to come to China for rotation. This plan not only alleviates the shortage of middle-level technical management personnel of Microsoft China, but also promotes the communication, exchange and progress between the headquarters and China. While improving the technical management level of local employees, it has strengthened the relationship between the headquarters and subsidiaries, and the global competitiveness of the company has also been strengthened.
Microsoft has also actively implemented the localization strategy, strengthened its support to the government and enterprises in the information industry, and provided support and cooperation in capital, technology, talent, management and education. Microsoft has also invested a large amount of money in social charities and public welfare activities to express the corporate social responsibility. Through a series of practical actions, it has created a good corporate culture image for Microsoft, won various awards issued by the government and the media, and greatly enhanced the cultural identity of local employees.
The failure rate of overseas M & A cases of Chinese enterprises is as high as 70%. There are many examples of failure due to serious cultural conflicts due to lack of attention to cultural differences. One of the more famous cases is the failure of BenQ to acquire the mobile phone Department of Siemens. Taiwan BenQ started from OEM and is a famous IT enterprise in Taiwan. Its corporate culture is characterized by speed, efficiency, flexibility and flexibility. As an old German brand with a history of more than 100 years, Siemens has a high reputation in the whole world. The corporate culture is characterized by German characteristics: professional, rigorous, orderly and superior. BenQ originally intended to build a mobile phone brand belonging to BenQ Siemens by taking advantage of the brand advantages of Siemens and its own world in the OEM industry, so as to rapidly expand the domestic and overseas markets. However, at the same time of hasty acquisition, BenQ's senior management did not fully understand the cultural differences between the East and the west of the two countries and the huge cultural background differences between the two enterprises, and failed to establish a unified and appealing corporate cultural value of the new company after the merger. After the merger and acquisition of the company, BenQ was unable to effectively manage the employees of Siemens in Germany, while the local employees in Germany complained repeatedly and never recognized the management mode of BenQ. The cultural management concept of BenQ could not be truly integrated with the cultural management concept of Siemens, resulting in the failure of the merger and acquisition. BenQ's management should fully consider the lag caused by the difference in corporate culture. Before the merger, it should send an international professional team to analyze in detail and establish the cultural values and management systems commonly recognized by the employees of the two countries, cultivate and absorb international talents, and effectively communicate and implement the corporate culture and corporate system of the head office in combination with the characteristics of local localization. In this way, it is possible to achieve success.
A multinational enterprise is a large and complex organization with decentralized power. Different cultures from all over the world will collide with each other. How to establish the cultural values of their own enterprises, so that they can be recognized by employees and become the internal driving force of the company's development, has become a crucial issue. Through the analysis of the positive and negative examples of Microsoft and BenQ, to a certain extent, it can help the top management to understand and understand more deeply how to implement the corporate culture construction strategy, and help the company's future development to a higher level.