A Case Study On The Cross-cultural Management Of A Finnish Company In China

The cross-cultural management is an unavoidable topic in the process of the internationalization of companies.The purpose of this thesis is to study how Finnish companies in China deal with their cross-cultural management issues,how cultural differences are manifested and what the underlying reasons are,and thus it affords lessons that merit attention for the cross cultural management of multinational companies.The study focuses on SKS China Co.Ltd.,one of the branches of SKS Group(a Finnish MNC).Quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in this thesis.The author analyzed the descriptive quantitative data collected from 10 Finnish employees and 35 Chinese employees,and then carried out over 8 in-depth interviews with Finnish and Chinese employees.The results demonstrate that the characteristics of Chinese and Finnish cultures in Finland companies in China are still consistent with the previous related cultural theories.Chinese employees respect collectivism,while Finnish employees advocate individualism.Chinese employees think that superiors rank above their subordinates,while Finnish employees treat superiors and subordinates as equals.Chinese employees have a stronger sense of high uncertainty avoidance compared to their Finnish counterparts.Career success is of utmost importance for Chinese employees and life always gives way to work,while Finnish employees wish to pursue high quality of life by striking balance between work and life.Chinese employees tend to be multitasking,but Finnish employees tend to focus on one thing at one time for maximizing the efficiency.So it is meaningful to train the employees and managers about the cultural differences in order to promote the development of the MNCs.When dealing with cross-cultural management issues,we tend to focus on the common points and find the best solutions to deal with them.With the development of MNCs all over the world,cultural exchanges and integration would become more and more popular.The theories of national and corporate cultures would be perfected in the future,and the cultural distance between different countries or groups,at least in MNCs,would be possibly reduced.