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If you google the internet for the term “cross cultural management” you get 7.840.000 results. Adding the word “challenges” to the search phrase above reveals 350.000 hits. These results sound promising. Provocatively stated in cross cultural management, according to Google, there are only 5% challenges left, which should make you optimistic in an economy on the move to globalization. You get enthusiastic if you replace “challenges” with “solutions” in your search phrase. Google comes up with an astonishing 375.000 results. Although, like in reality, it takes Google longer to find the solutions (0.27) compared to the challenges (0.09 seconds) simple math of these results gives you a little more than 1 solution per challenge, in other words the challenges of cross cultural management are solved.
No one will say that this simple Google approach is valid, but in my opinion it serves well to provocatively point out the key challenge in cross cultural management.
Don´t underestimate obvious cross cultural related management problems.
Beside the vast internet information hundreds of books, thousands of articles and complete magazines exist on the topic of cross cultural management. With this abundant information one could think that by now, international companies should have overcome the major challenges in cross cultural management.
But in reality billions of dollars are still flushed down the toilets of “global” companies as a result of cross cultural mismanagement. Good examples for this are the mergers of Pharmacia and Upjohn where American and Swedish culture could not be integrated (Rugman, International Business 4th edition, p. 128) or the failed expansion of Wal-Mart into the German market, ...