Saturday, 21 March 2015

Different culture, different way to do business

Hello, every one!
I am happy to share my working experiences with you. I have worked in an international company, and I was responsible for supporting Europe companies’ monthly closing. There are significant differences between China and Europe. Usually, Chinese junior staffs always work extra hour, and managers often work much harder than their subordinates. This is a very common phenomenon, because employees in companies are always expected to work harder. If you leave office on time every day, you manager will assign more tasks to you to raise your workload. Moreover, there are numbers of meetings each month and every employee need to regularly summarize their working performances and report to their managers. In addition, we always follow managers’ demands and there are not many spaces to negotiate. This is also supported by Zhang (2011), hierarchy in Chinese companies always reflects quite clear, executive level will never discuss important issues with lower ranking employee. However, on the other hand, my colleagues in European companies work much easier than us. They need not to work extra hours and they can leave offices by 5:00 every day, and their working pressure are much smaller than us.  What is more, they can express their dissatisfactory and demands and they can safeguard their rights very well. In addition, they can say “no” directly if they think they cannot finish these tasks on schedule time, which will not threat their job because this is their culture. However, if in China, people often “reserved about their feelings” (Zhang, 2011). Thus, we should understand people doing business in different way is caused by their different cultures, after that, communication in international companies could be easier.

                                         Reference list
Zhang, L. (2011). How business professionals perceive intercultural differences: A survey. Global Business Languages, 16,15-26. Retrieved from http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer

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