Question

Discuss (3) three major cultural challenges that a company outside the Caribbean Region would face when entering the Caribbean market? Please be specific to which country (ies) in the Caribbean your analysis is being centered. How would you recommend the company deal with these cultural challenges? Utilise Hofstede’s five value dimensions in your analysis.

Answer 1

cultural challenges are the challenges which a company faces while integrating the economies of a different country and different region. Many a times, a company faces an issue where the culture becomes a barrier in the growth prospects of the company in that particular region.

Three major challenges that can be seen by a company invading in the caribbean market of countries like Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana would be:

1. Poverty: The cultural problem of poverty prevails in these countries. These countries are not financially developed for companies to come and grow. Resources are very limited and thus, markets are hard to explore.

2. Drugs and Crime: The people and the population of these countries are very much involved with the crime rates and drugs. Thus, finding the right employees for your company would be a hard task to accomplish.

3. Logistics and Divide: The logistics are very hard to be handled in these countries due to poor infrastructure. Also, many cultures and division of many religions and regions are there. Thus, movement and transportation of goods is a very difficult job.

By using the Hofstede's five value model, I would recommend the company to deal with these cultural challenges by such analysis:

1. Power distance: Power distance is the willingness of a culture to accept status and power differences among its members. In cultures with low power distance, people are likely to expect that power is distributed rather equally, and are furthermore also likely to accept that power is distributed to less powerful individuals. As opposed to this, people in high power distance cultures will likely both expect and accept inequality and steep hierarchies.

2. Time orientation: One should understand the time orientation of the company. An employee should be trained with the values of long and short term orientation that any organisation can take long hours and few hours of devotion for the productivity. Patience and persistent is the key.

3. Masculinity and Femininity: The ratio of male-female should be duly made. Every organisation should have more or less an equal balance of the males and females to include culture acceptance and diversity in the organisation.

4. Individualism and Collectivism: The company should focus more on collectivism rather than individualism approach. A company should try to be more collective in form of its employees and work as a team.

5. Uncertainty avoidance: It refers to the lack of tolerance for the generality or vague items to be present in the organisation. Every organisation wants to be specific and certain with their tasks, thus the avoidance of uncertain happenings should prevail.