A Comparative Study Of Corporate Culture Between Coca Cola And Wahaha From The Perspective Of Cross-cultural Communication

Culture, as an inclusive conception, exerts great influence on shaping humanbehavior. Corporate culture is an important branch of culture, relating to company'scompetitive force and promotes forward of enterprise. Modern corporate cultureoriginated from western countries. It was until1980s that corporate culture wasintroduced to our country. In the21stcentury, cross-cultural communication has beenincreasing, therefore, more and more domestic enterprises pay attention to theestablishment of corporate culture.Wahaha, as a new beverage company less than30years old, has built an excellentand unique corporate culture and established a good image. Coca Cola, one of the mostinfluential beverage producers in the world, has set up profound corporate culture.Corporate culture, as the software of an enterprise, is of great importance on thedevelopment of the enterprise. The establishment of corporate culture has an inseparablerelationship with national culture. Therefore, the analysis of cultural roots reflected incorporate culture exerts profound influence on the study of cross-cultural communication.This thesis tries to compare the corporate culture between Wahaha and Coca Colabased on the Cultural Dimensions of Hofstede from the perspective of cross-culturalcommunication. According to the corporate culture theory of Van Muijen et al, thecomparative contents are divided into two levels—visible and invisible. At the visiblelevel, this thesis covers the four aspects of the corporate culture: history; founders;advertising; released news. At the invisible level, values, missions and philosophies arementioned in the study. Two major research methods are adopted in this thesis. In thequalitative analysis, information either in words or picture is collected by reading booksand theses on Coca Cola and Wahaha, visiting the websites and branches of the twocompanies,and acquiring organizational documents such as company annual reports,press release and rules and regulations. In the quantitative analysis, data derives frompress releases which were published from2008to2011in Coca Cola and Wahaha'sofficial websites.Finally, through the comparative analysis and data statistics, the author found that the corporate culture of these two beverage giants reflects the cultural orientation, values,social norms, and thinking patterns of two nations. Therefore, the thesis attempts toreveal the connotations of cultural divergences between China and the United States byresearching the corporate culture of two beverage companies.