Cultural Awareness Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is for you to understand the importance of national culture on a global stage. Please research and find a situation where a company either started operating or introduced a new product into a new market and failed because they did not take culture into consideration. For example, Target entering the Canadian market, or Starbucks in Australia, or Home Depot in China. You do not have to just look for failed products, we are looking for companies or products that failed because they did not pay attention to cultural differences.
If you use a religious example, please provide evidence as to why you would consider a religion part of a national culture.
Follow the steps:
Step 1: Search for a business case where culture was not taken into consideration. Do not use an example already mentioned in book or lecture. I would like you to find a unique case.
Step 2: Identify the company or the product, and describe the mistake they made.
Step 3: Resolution – Explain what you would have done to resolve the issues if you were the manager in charge of the product launch when this happened. Here you will come up with solutions to fix the problem.
Step 4: Prevention – Explain how you would have approached the situation in order to avoid the problem. Here you will come up with suggestions to avoid the problem.
* Be sure to cite your references. If you are using an example from an individual person, please provide an email for that person as part of your reference list.
** If you are not aware of any examples Google: International Business Blunders.
*** Please remember that there is a 250 word minimum for all written assignments in this course. You must include your name and date on your work. For your references, use APA style formatting.
RUBRIC Assignment worth 5 points
Identification 0.5 points
Search for a business case where the culture was not taken into consideration, identify the company and/or product. The uniqueness of the example will be taken into consideration.
Situation Description 1.5 points
You need to provide a description of the situation and what error was made.
Resolution 1.5 points
Looking to have you describe how you would have fixed the situation? Mistakes will happen. However, it is not the mistake that defines you, but more how you recover that will be remembered.
Problem Prevention 1.5 points
Looking to see what you would have done as a manager to make sure this did not happen in the first place. Be sure to demonstrate that you have read and understand the course material.
Be sure that you reference the resolution and prevention sections separately to ensure that you receive full marks for both components.
Up to .5 points can be deducted for poor grammar, misspelling etc. This may seem harsh, but I know many executives and company policies that will not look at proposals or resumes with spelling errors. You need to understand the importance of details now.
Up to 1 point can be deducted for not properly referencing your work. You need to reference where you found out about the company. If you are found to have plagiarized your work then you will be given a 0.
