Asia's Culture-Internet Clash
Many managers in Asia bng to the standard corporate practice of doling out information on a need-to- know basis.
Asia is a world leader in wireless technology, broadband communications, and electroniC gov. ernment; it has tremendous potential as a center for B213 e-commerCe. Yet advancements into e-business are hindered by a culture-internet clash. There are several problem areas
While Asia is home to 60 percent of the world's people-creating the potential for huge pan-Asian emarketplaceSth0se people speak hundreds of languages, creating a web of Babble. Also, the Internet is about giving workers access to information so they can move at Net speed. Yet many managers in Asia cling to the standard corporate practice of doling out information on a need-to-know basis.
Another hindrance to e-commerce is the way Asian companies deal with suppliers. Supply chains in Asia typically involve three or four middlemen-tWice as many as in Europe. In Japan, for instance, retailers pay for what they receive and wholesalers eat the cost of missing items. To protect themselves, wholesalers get dozens of workers to unpack boxes, count the contents, and repack the boxes before they are shipped. Wholesalers, therefore, see the Internet as a threat to their jobs.
Costs of connecting to the Internet are high, also hindering e-businesS. While logging on in hong Kong and Seoul is still a third more expensive than in the United States, Japan is even worse off. Leased lines are three times pricier in Tokyo than in New York and twice the cost of those in Germany. Meanwhile the phone ystem i so Un-, derpowered in India, most businesses can't even get Internet connections.
Other problems include commercial ttansactions, which in Asia still involye cash Or letters of credit, ith wrtten receipts oftrcq,uircdJn addition, a lack of comprehensive creditserViceS also means ,each emarketpIace buyer ad seller must be painstakingly screened, whLch can take weeks.
E-Zaiko, for example, a venture between Mitsui & Co. and ltpchu Corp., twq of.Japan'S largest trading hcatses'has created an electronic marketplace for excess ,inventory that matches l?uyers. and sellers of clothing, furniture, and othex goods. It is a first in Japan, and e-Zaiko has a ready-made list of clients from their keiresu industrial groups. Yet the c'ompany must reach thousands of small businesses that don't even have oinputerS, let alone connections to the Internet,
One company that isn't waiting for its customers to ge't wired is Asia-Steel.cOm. For the past. few years, CEO Justin Chu has been giving away computers to get customers hooked into their online service. The Hong Kong company, which lets. buyers and sellers trade steel electronically, has handed out more than 1,000 PCs to steel mills in China and trained purchasing managers to use them, resulting in attracting 200,000 tons of steel to its site per month.
To close the Internet divide, Asian companies need deep pockets strong connections between their on-line and off-line businesses, and most importantly1 tremendous skill at translating to the Web the networks of business relationships that make Asia a complicated place to operate.
experienced, was lucky enough to scramble up a tree and escape the raging waters. As he looked down from his safe perch, he saw the poor fish struggling against the swift current. With the very best of intentions, he reached down and lifted the fish from the water. The result was inevitable.16
The monkey assumed that its frame of reference applied to the fish and acted accordingly. International managers from all countries thus must understand and adjust to unfamiliar social and commercial practices-especially the practices of that mysterious and unique nation, the United States. Japanese workers at a U.S. manufacturing l3lant learned to put courtesy aside and interrupt conversations with Americans when there were problems. Europeans, however, are often confused by the Americans' apparent informality, which then backfires when the Europeans do not get work done as the Americans expect.17
As a first step toward cultural sensitivity, an international manager should understand her or his own culture. This awareness helps to guard against adopting either a parochial or ethnocentric attitude. Parochialism occurs when a Frenchman, for example, expects those from or in another country to automatically fall into patterns of behavior common in France. Ethnocentrism describes the attitude of those who operate from the assumption that their ways of doing things are best-no matter where or under what conditions they are applied. - Companies both large and small have demonstrated this lack of cultural sensitivity in countless subtle (and not so subtle) ways, with varying disastrous effects.
Procter & Gamble was one such company. In an early Japanese television commercial for Camay soap, a Japanese woman is bathing when her husband walks into the bathroom. She starts telling him about her new beauty soap. Her husband, stroking her shoulder, hints that he has more on his mind than suds. The commercial, which had been popular in Europe, was a disaster in Japan. For the man tO intrude on his wife was considered bad manners, says Edwin L. Artzt, P&G's vice-chairman and international chief: And the Japanese didn't think it was very funny. P&G has learned from its mistakes and npw generates about half of its revenue from foreign sales.'8
After studying his or her own culture, the manager's next step toward establishing effective cross-cultural relations is to develop cultural sensitivity. Managers not only must be aware of cultural variables and their effects on behavior in the workplace but also must appreciate cultural diversity and understand how to build constructive working relationships anywhere in the world. In the next sections, we explore cultural variables and dimensions. In later chapters, we suggest specific ways in which managers can address these variables and dimensions to help build constructive relationships.
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