本文是一篇工商管理论文，工商管理专业描述依据管理学、经济学的基本理论，研究如何运用现代管理的方法和手段来进行有效的企业管理和经营决策。（以上内容来自百度百科）今天为大家推荐一篇工商管理论文，供大家参考。
1. CHAPTER ONE (INTRODUCTION)
1.1 Introduction
Culture is a topic that has been studied in wide dimensions and still has vast room forexploration. Business and culture have become inseparable in todays’ world. Scholarlyresearch has established and clarified the relationship between these two and it isundoubted that these two are inseparable and hence plausible to suggest that cultureimpactsbusiness.Forthis reasontherehasbeenarapidincreaseinthenumberofscholarsresearching on culture and business in its different aspects. Cultural differences at theTopManagementTeamisanareaofconcernforresearchandthisresearchworkexploresthis phenomenon.
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1.2 Background
Organizational success is at the centre of every organization. It is the desire of everyorganization to realize their goals and objectives being achieved, to see the visionbecoming a reality with the firm fulfilling its mission. In today’s globalized businessworld, the world is becoming a global market with many foreign investors setting uptheir businesses in foreign markets unique to them. This has created a situation wherebyit is necessaryto have multicultural management teams with managers from two or moredifferent countries workingtogether as statedbyS.C. Schneider andJ. L. Barsoux (2003)and N. J. Adler (2002). Firms in this globalized era are creating multiculturalmanagement teams so as to solve strategic challenges and to become competitive inforeign locations of operation (Kirkman, Gibson and Shapiro 2001). Strategic decisionsare made and influenced byTMT of an organization making the TMT very important formultinationals (Azam. A 2015). A lot of factors attract and inspire investors to establishtheir business abroad such as opportunities for growth and chances for increased marketshare. The needs and demands of customers that are not met and fulfilled in othercountries attract foreign organizations to come into those countries in order to utilize thebusiness opportunities by offering the products and or services needed by the customers.As a result of the well-established Sino-Zimbabwe relations, Zimbabwe hasexperienced an increase in the number of Chinese investors investing in the country,setting up and operating their business organizations offering different types of servicesand products to the Zimbabwean business market. Opportunities for executing viable business practice in Zimbabwe is what has attracted and is still attracting many Chineseinvestors to Zimbabwe and also because of the good relations that the two countries haveshared over years, this has enabled exchange between the two countries in differentspheres of business. As Zimbabwe is recovering from the wounds of economicchallenges, there are many opportunities for business that are presented on the marketand investors can actually utilize these opportunities for the development of the country,thebenefitofZimbabweancitizenandforthebenefitoftheChineseOrganizationswithinthe country.
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2. CHAPTER TWO (LITERATURE REVIEW)
The topic of Cultural Differences management at the TMT is one that has become ofgreatinterest and concerntomostmultinationalcorporations.Asaresultofglobalization,international relations are being strengthened as nations are realizing that they cannotlive in isolation but need each other for the betterment of their country’s economieshence the world is becoming more and more integrated as nations are doing businesstogether more than before. A number of developing countries are realizing these trendsand the priorities of being connected to other countries hence they are modifying theirpolicies to encourage FDI. Foreign companies or multinational organizations areincreasing in some parts of the world that lacked the existence of such companies withZimbabwe being a country that is now experiencing an inflow of Chinese ownedorganizations operating within the country. This situation has enabled the existence ofTMTs of such companies being composed of managers who are from different culturalbackgrounds. To have a clear understanding of cultural differences and the TMT, someconcepts shall be explored in order to derive an enriched explanation.
2.1 The concept of Culture
Culture is an institution that is a pivotal social factor that can’t be ignored in thisdynamic globalized business world. Culture has been scrutinized and defined by anumber of scholars across the globe and in many different ways. Due to its broadness,no single piece of work can fully and thoroughly elucidate on all the aspects of Cultureand shed light in its entirety. Following this premise, several ways have been used toshed light on culture as it is broad.Culture is an Informal Institution that determines the way in which organizations arerun and how they operate in a certain societal setting. According to Cox (1993) cultureis a presentation of one societal system of people that are different because of belongingto different groups of cultural significance. This definition denotes that culture is a majordeterminant of how one behaves, thinks, acts and relates with others and this makesindividuals different. This definition brings out the fact that culture differs according tothe group under which someone may be affiliated to. Williams (1964) suggests thatculture is banal, meaning that it is the result of the everydaylife that people live, the traitsthat are created from the repeated ways of doing things setting up standards that everybeing within that society ought to follow. Following this definition, it is plausible tosuggest that culture therefore wears the face of the society at hand and this also meansthat culture will have different faces as societies and communities are different too.
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2.2 Team
DeMeuse, Futrell and Sundstrom (1990) defined a team as when there are two or morepeople working together to achieve one goal. Usheva M (2016) suggests that a group ofpeople is named a team when there are certain characteristics such as a mission,acommongoal,aspecialneedforgatheringateam, whentasksandassignmentsaresharedbetween team members and in time. A number of business organizations now havestructures that are team oriented. The concept of teams or rather teamwork has become very important for most organizations. This is so because a number of organizations areexperiencing challenges which includes global competitions, as such having teams canbe a gateway for organizations to improve their products and services and becomecompetitive so as to outrun their competitors. Teamwork can and does produce desiredobjectives of an organization given that there are certain work conditions that allows theteam to perform very well as desired. A good team is comprised of members who haveskills that are complimentary.A lot of organizations are executing the use of self-directed teams as a tactic foraddressing competitive challenges. Cohen and Bailey (1997) said organizational teamsare usually made up of individual team members who depend on each other to achievetasks and projects which support organizational goals. Having team members who havecomplementary skills is quite important as they can work hand in hand and have eachmember contribute their valued input towards achieving set goals. Teams are becomingmore important in this globalized business world as products and services are becomingmore complex as consumers demand more advanced products and services. Therefore,theuseofteams is becomingmoreandmorenecessarywheremanydifferent peoplehaveto contribute their different skills and knowledge to one task or project. The idea of thedynamic environment is the other cause for the need of teams. The business environmentis so dynamic,it changes everynowandthenas suchteams arebecomingmoreimportantas they do not face a lot of challenges to adopt to change unlike individuals who mighttake longer to adjust to the changing environment.
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3. CHAPTER THREE (METHODOLOGY).......29
3.1 Methodology....29
3.2 Selected Research Approach..............30
3.3 Data Gathering method ...........30
3.4 Face to face interviews...........31
3.5 The Interview Questions .........32
3.6 TMT Interviewees selection....33
3.7 Selection of Firms. .......33
3.8 Analysis of Data..........35
4. CHAPTER FOUR (FINDINGS AND DISCUSION)...........38
4.1 How Chinese firms in Zimbabwe manage Cultural Differences at the TMTlevel..............38
4.1.1. Discussion.............43
4.2 Challenges encountered by Chinese firms in Zimbabwe..............46
4.3 Solutions for challenges of managing Cultural Differences ..........54
4.4 Cultural differences at the TMT Level of Chinese firms in Zimbabwe ...........64
5. CHAPTER FIVE (CONCLUSION).....74
5.1 Conclusion .......74
5.2 Recommendations and Future Research......76
4. CHAPTER FOUR (FINDINGS AND DISCUSION)
Data analysis is a very important section of the thesis where the information from theinterviews with top managers is analysed to find out the views, opinion that the topmanagers gave from their experiences working in a culturally different TMT to answerthe research questions for this thesis. The analysis for these interviews was explored withrelevance to each research question. The main goal for this research is to analyse culturaldifferences at the TMT level of Chinese firms in Zimbabwe. The research questions playa big role in this analysis and what the top managers aired was analysed and discussed incategories of the main crux of research questions as follows:#p#分页标题#e#
4.1How Chinese firms in Zimbabwe manage Cultural Differences atthe TMT level.
Thiswasfollowedbyveryinterestingideasfrom theinterviewedtop managers.Similarways of managing cultural differences were discovered from what the Top managersrevealed. Different interesting ideas were also noted from the different top managers ofdifferent firms.
As a way to manage cultural differences Top manager A1 from company A said “Weorganize events which allow the team to meet and mix thereby sharing cultures andunderstanding the differences. We also conduct cross cultural seminars”. This idea wasidentified by all managers from company A. Top manager A3 mentioned the idea ofmeeting as TMT for the purposes of cultural difference awareness, as the team meetsmore often theybecome more aware of the cultural their differences. This highlights thatin this company as a way to manage cultural differences within their TMT, create timefor meeting, team building so that as the team interacts more they become more awareof each other’s cultural differences hence they will communicate better with each otherand get rid of some misperceptions.
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Conclusion
The existence of Chinese firms in Zimbabwe has been the main influence for inspiringthe researcher to write on this topic. The main purpose of this paper was to analysecultural difference at the TMT level of Chinese firms in Zimbabwe. In this light, whatdrove the nature of the research was the need to unveil how Chinese firms in Zimbabwemanage cultural differences at the TMT level, what challenges they are facing asculturally different TMTs of these firms in managing their cultural differences, alsounveiling the solutions that theyare employingto bring to a halt the challenges and lastlyto find out if the cultural differences have any effect on the quality of decisions made bythe TMT. The researcher of this dissertation has worked for a Chinese firm in Zimbabweand after having made some observations about cultural differences, he was inspired toresearch on this topic which is very relevant as Chinese firms are investing in Zimbabwein different business sectors hence the information from this research maybe useful.The topic of culture has recently found attention over the past recent years as it hasbeen concluded by researchers that culture plays an influencing role on businessinternationally. What previous scholars have said and discovered about culture andbusiness was mentioned in the literature review of this paper highlighting their differentopinions and the scale at which the research has been executed so as to clarify theknowledge gap for this dissertation. Theoretical framework for this thesis was based onC Hambrick and Mason’s Upper Echelons theoryto analyse and shed a light on the TMTin relation to culture.
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References (abbreviated)
