Response of chapter 9 by KU

So far the book has introduced various kind of concepts such as Individualism, Masculinity, Power distance(PDI), Uncertainty avoidance(UAI), etc. to distinguish the different culture of countries. In this chapter, the writer used the example of the struggle of producing strategy to visualize these concepts together. In the story, the manufacturing managers try to dye from light to dark to minimize the cost and trouble caused by cleaning the machines, while the design and sales manager would like to do it another way. It seems they oppose each other. They want to trouble each other to show their priority power that is the relative power distance. It reminds me the internship I had last summer. I was in an organization which is an owner of a construction project. They did mean, in which some of them are not that reasonable, to the contractors on the sites meeting. The contractors seemed poor. In fact, we did nothing wrong as we were just fighting for profit as what the managers in textile printing company did.

Page 324 showed the perceived business goals priorities in five countries. In western countries like US and Brazil, “This year’s profits” marked as important while in eastern countries like India and China, we value “Patriotism and national pride”. This fit what we have been discussing. What the country value will develop what kind of economic structure. For sure, the way of people doing things are different as well.