The Impacts Of The Cultural Differences Between China And America

Nowadays, with the development of the economy and society, the problem of cross-cultural conflict is becoming more and more prominent. How to carry out cross-cultural management in Chinese enterprises and how to learn from the strengths of American culture and formulate reasonable and effective management methods to bring benefits to enterprises has become a very worthy of study and discussion, so this presentation mainly studies the cultural differences between China and America, their impact on business management and the solutions.

The cultural differences and their impact are discussed in four points, containing individual and group, hierarchy structures, ways of communication and interpersonal relationship.

Firstly, Americans tend to play a great deal of emphasis on an individual identity, while Chinese focus more on a collective group, which leads to disharmony of team and greatly influences the work. Secondly, it’s important for Chinese to respect hierarchy and to understand the invisible rules of respect towards superiors. (Zhang,2012, ‘Comparison between Chinese and American business culture’) However, there are much flatter structures so that workers at all levels can get touch with those at the top in America.

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(Sue,2019, ‘Identify cultural differences and similarities: China vs. the US.’) Therefore, the differences of their attitudes towards superiors always make American subordinates feel unfair and lose the enthusiasm in work. Thirdly, because America was founded relatively late and its language was based on the development of English, so they pay more attention to what they want to say while with the long history of Chinese civilization, Chinese language tend to pay more attention to how to speak, which makes easier to meet misunderstanding and then influence their work efficiency (Yuan, 2010, ‘Conflict management among American and Chinese employees in multinational organizations in China’).

Lastly, Americans are used to keeping the personal life out of the workplace while Chinese people always mingle their business with personal life (Nicky, 2018, ‘American vs. Chinese business culture’), which results in compatibility of teamwork. In order to deal with the situation, there are several solutions such as providing Americans higher salary and more holidays, employing an American superior to manage them and so on.

When attending the seminar, I could only understand half of what he was talking about and I came to know there was a wide disparity between a professional and me. Through the search of theoretical knowledge about the organizational justice and cultural identity negotiation and interviews from some supervisors and subordinates in China and Germany, the speaker gave us an intuitive understanding by using charts and words. Finally, he drew some suggestions on theoretical contribution and practical application, which benefited me a lot. For example, if I cooperate with other Germany colleagues in the future, I may have a better understanding of their fairness perceptions. Before our presentation, we didn’t rehearse together so that we couldn’t have a good presentation. In this presentation, not only did we lack some diagrams and pictures, we also used too many words in some slides, which made others easily unwilling to look at slides. Besides, I found it most difficult was to speak in front of others naturally. Moreover, we didn’t consider some specific suggestions that might help Chinese enterprises alleviate divergences and contradictions caused by cultural differences.

After the first group presentation, I have found several solutions that enable me to overcome these problems on future presentations. Firstly, graphs should be combined with words to provide a better view and attract the interest of audience. Secondly, I need to pay attention the number of words on the slides to make audience watch them clearly. Besides, I need to spend more time on repeatedly practicing presentation and rehearsing with group members. Lastly, after research and investigation, we should find out some practical suggestions to improve the situation rather than general advice, which benefits others indeed. 

Works cited

1. Nicky. (2018). American vs. Chinese business culture. https://businesstalkchina.co.uk/2018/11/09/american-vs-chinese-business-culture/
2. Sue, A. (2019). Identify cultural differences and similarities: China vs. the US. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/identify-cultural-differences-and-similarities-china-vs-us.asp
3. Yuan, L. (2010). Conflict management among American and Chinese employees in multinational organizations in China. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(4), 609-618. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9189-9
4. Zhang, X. (2012). Comparison between Chinese and American business culture. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(3), 545-549. https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.2.3.545-549
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