As a student of business, I found it particularly interesting to write about the study of cross-cultural decision making tactics. It is said that in Western cultures, decisions are made much more rapidly and on impulse than in Eastern cultures. While Eastern cultures are generally more reserved to begin with, their every day culture is reflected in their corporate culture as well. What strikes me most about these findings is that people are people, but their ways of going about problems are drastically different and do tend to vary by regions. A manager in the US would be willing to seal a deal and fix a problem immediately and deal with the kinks and issues as they come. A manager in China however, would be much more hesitant to make any final decisions until all of the kinks were sorted out ensuring a smooth transition and solution to the initial problem.
Various approches to problem solving include algorithms - step by step procedures, or breaking up larger problems into smaller sub problems. The speeds at which these are implemented and executed at, however, can cause issues and glitches in cross-cultural operations as everyone is most comfortable moving at their own pace rather than at someone else's. Regardless, I know that to solve problems in whatever career I end up in, I will be able to use such tactics to solve the problem and move on. Algorithms especially seem to be right up my alley, but one burning question still eats at me at the end of the day. What happens if a business deal falls through because of miscommunicated solutions or discomfort among problem solving techniques because one group moved too fast or the other too slow. What happens then and how can cross-cultural business deals continue?
While reading this post, the question that came to my mind was "Can't be that hard, can it?" The reason I say this, is because even though there are different problem solving and decision making strategies for different regions, with the amount of international trade and business being conducted between many western and eastern businesses, obviously someone figured out how to bridge that strategy gap. Never the less, it would still be interesting to be a part of one of these types of deals, just to see how difficult it could actually be.