Gulf Air

CASE STUDY GULF AIR

Table of contents

Introduction .3

Literature review .4

Solutions .5

Conclusion .6

References .7

Introduction

In any organization across the world the synergy between the environment in which the business operates (political , economic , social and technological ) with the culture of its employees is paramount for success . Culture can be generally described as the customs and the social institutions of a particular group of people or nation . At gulf air the turn around program being initiated by James Hogan an Australian , may

not be successful due to the cross cultural differences among the target markets that the airline serves across the globe . This will thus seek to argue that for continued success in the long run the company will have to invest heavily on different mechanisms like training expatriates who are deployed in countries that are different in culture with their mother countries and many other strategies . This is important in that with globalization the markets are becoming crowded and smaller and only those companies that targets specific market segments across the world will survive in the long run

Literature review

Today Research shows that businesses that operate internationally are basically facing a lot of challenges and problems in cultural differences . In fact according to (Hofstede , 1993 ) cultural differences have basically been ranked as the most common impediment to business success across the globe . While the development of the world as one global market has brought major opportunities for increased investment across the globe through partnerships , more and more businesses are generally making losses that can be well traced to their inability to fully manage the cultural variables present in their specific business environments like language barrier , management styles and beliefs

Gulf air being an international organization should take cognizance of this fact being that the new CEO Mr . James Hogan has actually initiated expansion plans and is currently operating in about 33 countries , since with the addition of more markets comes the need to be well versed with the specific cultural practices of the people by the companies employees to be capable to serve and interact with its customers well

Hofstede (1980 ) postulates that culture comprises of four major dimensions , of which he calls : power distance , individualism which is also called collectivism , uncertainty avoidance as well as masculinity or femininity . His research showed that western countries generally ranked higher than their counterparts across the world based on the above factors . The rating of the four cultural characteristics basically impacts on the cooperation strategies an organization employs , mode of managing conflict and decision making in the organization as well as the motivation system employed by an organization (Weaver ,2000 )stipulates that managers from countries with strong individualism and masculinity tend to be lone rangers and shy away from cooperating with other employees in the process of achieving organizational goals , independence and control is given high priority as cooperation is seen as assign of weakness . On the other hand managers from countries with strong collectivism and medium...