In this specific case, a piece of technical equipment was to be prepared and configured in Europe and sent to China where it would be installed at the customer premises. This first phase of the project itself provides a perfect insight into some of the major differences as to how western and Chinese culture conduct business transactions.

 

The expectation from a western enterprise is that a set of detailed specifications would be provided by the customer and the equipment would then be built to this specification. The Chinese customer, however, expects that the equipment provider is competent enough to know what should be provided and therefore did not provide any specifications. When the local sales manager was requested to ask customer for specific information some reasons were provided as to why this could not be done, although an actual refusal to do so was never offered. The western engineers failed to understand that for him to ask such questions would demonstrate to the customer that our company is incompetent and also place him in what would be considered to be a compromising situation. On the other hand this refusal also gave the western company the impression that the sales manager was incompetent since none of the offered reasons seemed to "make sense" (in their eyes at least).

 

This small example highlights some typical "east meets west" clichés which are often encountered; namely that Chinese often see western firms as extremely process driven and thus inflexible, whereas westerns will depict Chinese as unorganized and difficult to work with since specific information is often not provided.

 

The "critical incidents" can be summarized as follows:

 

•    Use of Language

•    Information Flow

•    The lack of understanding of the "cultural norms" from each side.

•    Misaligned expectations due to cultural differences

 

The corresponding communication led both sides to feel some sort of mistrust and frustration towards each other.

 

What is important in analyzing such a case is to be aware that without a doubt certain issues can be attributed to cultural differences, and indeed are relevant from an IC perspective, but just as importantly many are not and are merely following the buyer/seller culture. 

 

Of course this is not to say all interaction with Chinese on a business level will always behave in this manner or that all Chinese display these habits, clearly such a statement is ridiculous and has little credibility, the point is mere that there are some cultural differences which if not understood, or at least acknowledged, can result is communication problems. After all, our cultures are indeed different; if they were not then the field of IC would be non- existent.

 

Analyze the case and suggest some strategies for smooth functioning of business.

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Analysis 1 Use of Language Strategies Employing interpreters or bilingual staff to facilitate communication Offering language training programs to bot... View the full answer