Cross Cultural Management

Project Statement A proposal to improve the current inventory practices in the Riordan Manufacturing Plant facilities of San Jose, California, Albany, Georgia, Pontiac, Michigan and Hangzhou, China. Systems upgrades to each distribution site are necessary for Riordan Manufacturing to compete in the global market and increase profitability and market share. Targeted Areas for Improvement: Inventory Management Currently, all four plants operate on independent inventory management systems. The objective of this project will be to improve our warehousing and distribution facilities in each plant by implementing a uniform system that can communicate between all facilities and increase efficient.

With hot topics like globalization and cross-cultural opportunities in the Asia Pacific rim, one might think it would be easy to research the implications of cross cultural issues. Rather, what the writer found was a significant discussion all around the periphery but little in-depth analysis. Discussion prevailed on the socio-economic and technological ramifications. Others resources focused on the language issues but little work was intuitively available on the subtleties of cross cultural issues one may encounter.

For me, this subject requires the drive to open one's mind about the reality of the corporate world worldwide. I can now consider myself as an effective adult learner who is able to share skills, experiences, independent views, opinions and beliefs to make the learnings of the subject more meaningful and productive. The subject provides with me an opportunity to test whether I am capable to function in a real-world setting. With this I say that there are several issues to contend with and ones that could threaten the very existence of business operations, functioning and survival, one of which is cross-cultural management. Culture would be the most pressing issue whereby the success of any business operating in various parts of world should understand how understanding the cultural aspect of management might ruin permanently or benefit the business itself.

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