Footwear International Study
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Introduction: Cross-cultural management is to help you develop an understanding of the practice and the doing of global business and management. Different cultures have different orientations. Also, different culture not suit for every country. Disney failed to understand cross-management in Paris. So it made a large financial lose due to the culture errors. As our case of Footwear international is another case about International Corporation make a cultural error. Footwear international is a multinational shoes company. Footwear Bangladesh starts doing business in Bangladesh in 1930. In 1989, footwear international had a trouble with a wrong decision when they put a similar name of “Allah” logo on the insoles of sandals. Culture issues: Language: 95% of population speaking Bengali and 5% specking Arabic. Religion: 85% of population is Moslem and Islam. And Moslem and Islam is the official state religion. Political environment: the political system in Bangladesh is very unstable. Global Managers (global mindset) In the case study we also identified Carlsons lack of global mindset. Global mindset is how the managers see certain things that others are not able to see. In this case, Carlson was not able to see the impact of the design of the sandal to the Moslem people. For a global manager, he should have the abilities of manage uncertainty and balance tensions in the company. Communication: Language is the one of the most important way of communication in international management. In this case, all of the people working in the design department of Footwear International do not speak and read Arabic, thus, they do not know that the Chinese temple bells they used in the design of the insoles is very similar to the Arabic spelling of the word “Allah”. Culture theories: According to Schein three levels of cultures, The artifact is the sandal with the “Allah” logo. It is visible. This design was based from Chinese bells.
The espoused value in this case is against footwear international. Because of the sandal is not new in the market. And people want through the sandal to against the footwear international. The basic underlying assumption is the tradition beliefs and religion. Islam is state religion in Bangladesh. They toward to their religion, so they dont recognized the logo as a Chinese bell, instead they think that is the world of “Allah”. The Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck Framework- orientation to time Bangladeshi tend to focus on the present and connect it to the events in the past. It means that Bangladeshi have strong religion view. They protect their religion against American company. Hofstedes studies: individualism and collectivism: American culture towards to individualism, and Bangladesh towards collectivism. Americans they make decision by their own ways. So when footwear international entered the Bangladesh market, they havent done enough research. Such as