A Jumping-off Place

A Jumping-Off Place

1. In what way will the culture of Spain be different from that of the United States?

In the United State, the power distance seems to be less accepted compares to Spain. United State is the country that everyone has equal rights and all of them are being treated the same way and people can say whatever they want to anybody as long as it is not harmful to anyone. In an U.S. company, it will have less of hierarchy and everyone seems to be equal and not categorized by their position and all opinions and feedbacks are accepted no matter which position it came from within the company. On the other side, in Spain people are more accepted to the power distance and they have more respects to the higher position in a company and sometimes negative feedbacks are not encouraged to people in lower position to say to higher position.
People in United State are more individualistic compares to people in Spain. U.S. people seem to rely more on themselves and serve for themselves or their direct family only. They will believe whatever they did right is their own interest. In the opposite way, people in Spain tend to be less individualistic but not entirely collectivist, sometimes they believe that family and friends are also important and working as a group is a natural thing that should have done in the society.
In Spain country, people are more uncertainty avoidance compares to United State. Spaniards are not the risk taker and they will try to avoid changing new things in their society. Spaniards follow their own rules and strictly behave according to the plan to avoid problems. Unlike Americans, people in United State tends to act and behave freely because they believe they are liberty country, these people don’t like setting up rules as they knew each one has their own way of living and they all have freedom in living in the society. Americans are willing to take risk if it leads them to the higher benefit or interest.
In Spain, people have less masculinity and more on feminine since working is not their everything and they tend to care more about family rather than working to get paid each day. Spaniards believe that the quality of life is the more important thing so they would want to spend time with their family instead of working. In contrast, people in the U.S. like to work more and thing quality of life is not everything. These people do not like taking care of family because they are all independent and they prefer working and putting efforts to working to get promoted to higher position. They thing that position in work is very important because its their own image and people will have more respect for them.

2. If the company expands operations into Italy, will its experience in Spain be valuable, or will the culture be so different that the manufacturer will have to begin anew in determining how to address cultural challenges and opportunities? Explain.

In my opinion, I think the experience in Spain would not be much helpful to the company because the culture between these two countries are quite different from each other even though they are both from European. There is one dimension that is most similar between these two countries which is the power distance that are both in middle range, other than this are much different from each other. In Italy, people tend to be much more individualistic compare the Spain as well as the masculinity that people in Italy will take working seriously as its like a competition. These two dimensions between power distance and masculinity have too much different so it might be problem to the company to adjust and motivate people in same way and also might have to begin anew in determining. However, the level of uncertainty avoidance in Italy is lower than people in Spain, which mean Italian people are more willing to take risk than Spaniards. From these comparison the company might have to consider doing the research again about culture in Italy if they would like to expand business to there and one dimension that could help them from the experience from setting up company in Spain is the similarity in power distance within a company.

3. If the firm expands into France, will its previous experiences in Spain and Italy be valuable in helping the company address cultural challenges? Be compete in your answer
I think the experience in Spain will be more helpful to the company for expandig business to France because these two countries have more the similarity in culture dimensions which are masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. These two dimensions will give the company the experience and opportunity to manage and motivate people in France very well. However, the people in France are more individualistic and it is more similar to Italy compare to Spain. All in all, the power distance is also important in this case that Spain and Italy could not compare to France in this dimension because French people accept and consider most of power distance in a company and they take it seriously in the level of hierarchy. This could give the company a hard time to manage and arrange things to fit the culture in power distance dimension in the company if they want to expand to France.