Cultural diversity (The Main idea is a little long, but I found most of the article interesting enough

to mention it)

Main idea: Multinational companies no longer operate purely on a global scale. They are forced to
learn and appeal to the local cultural characteristics if the want to stay in business. The difference in
management based on culture can be seen between North America/Europe and Latin America. The
“West” is primarily focused on logic, rationality, system, whereas Latin cultures are focused more on
personal relations, intuition, emotion.

This can also be seen in countries like Japan, where promotions are traditionally based on seniority.
In Europe and North America, it’s your ability that plunges you up the ranks, no matter your age.

The northern cultures work on a simple pay-for-performance basis. As stated in the article, Italians
would rather purposefully decline their performance, hiding their coworkers and bosses’
inadequacies. The pay-for-performance strategy does have its drawbacks. It comes to a point when
salesmen pressure people into buying products or services they don’t want, which impacts the long-
term future of the company.

Another American idea that fails in other cultures is the matrix management. Frenchmen would
rather let their company die than be reporting to two bosses.

Trompenaars distinguishes colleagues into universalists and particularists. Each group finds the other
one corrupt and they each find different things important. Universalists follow rules. Particularists
value personal relations and friendship.

Keywords: Universalist, Particularist, Pay-for-performance, matrix management, cultural divide,

seniority

Source: MacKenzie, I. (2004). English for Business Studies. Cambridge University Press