APEL Essay - Managing Operations Across Foreign Borders

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Executive Summary

 

​     While serving as an operations manager for Matthews Metal Products in Suzhou, China for 11 months and while also managing my own international business at the same time, I have been able to acquire knowledge and advanced managerial skills in an international setting. Learning managerial skills on the job has provided me with the opportunity to apply the advanced language skills and cross-cultural communication skills that I acquired while living and working in Malaysia, Taiwan, and China. While working for Matthews Metal Products (MMP), my communication skills and managerial skills were tested in ways that they had never been tested before. The result was that I rose to the challenge and developed an array of advanced skills that are valuable in the field of international management.

 

Introduction

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     ​After teaching English in Asia for 10 years, finding stable teaching positions without an accredited bachelors degree was becoming increasingly difficult.  I was also feeling very tired of doing a job that I no longer felt was challenging or helping me to develop new skills.  Therefore, I was looking for a chance to apply my problem-solving skills, language skills, and business skills to a job that had a steady salary.

 

     In May of 2012 the opportunity that I had been longing for finally presented itself when my roommate, Steven Fiala, told me about an American company that was looking for a Chinese-speaking western person with business experience to take over as operations manager at a factory in Suzhou, China.  I determined that I could commute by the new high-speed train from my home in Shanghai, if needed.  Therefore, I immediately applied for the job and only a few weeks later began receiving training from Matthews Metal Products in Gilroy, California. Over the following 11 months, I had the privilege of working at a very challenging managerial job that allowed me to gain valuable experience and develop advanced skills in the field of international management.

 

PURPOSE:  The purpose of this essay is to document and explain in detail how the challenges I faced as an operations manager in China provided me with the perfect learning environment for understanding the principles of international management and developing this knowledge into advanced managerial skills for international settings.​

 

SKILLS:  In this essay, I will show how I gained an understanding of the global environment and developed skills for adhering to international management processes, leading and motivating cross-cultural teams, upholding cross-national ethics and social responsibility, using cross-cultural business practices and negotiations, as well as employing cross-cultural decision making.  As I applied these skills in real-life situations, I was also able to improve important managerial skills such as communication, organizational, presentational, and problem-solving skills.

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The Global Environment

 

     Due to globalization, managers in the twenty-first century are being required to operate in increasingly complex environments.  Common challenges that international managers face involve politics, cultural differences, increasing competition, ever-changing technology, and threats of terrorism, just to name a few.  Globalization, which refers to the international linkages that binds countries and organizations in an interdependent global economy, has caused business to evolve to new levels of sophistication (Deresky 2011). Some of the trade barriers that used to exist because of borders, distance, and language have been almost entirely flattened. The result is that international trade continues to grow and competition has become borderless.  The effect on international managers is that they need to be more knowledgeable and more skilled than ever before. Therefore, an understanding of the global environment in which we all live is essential for all managers of international businesses.

 

     First of all, we need to understand that both threats and opportunities have appeared in the new global economy as new competition from companies within developing countries and emerging markets arise.  The entire reason why I was hired to manage a factory in China originated with IBM’s desire to overcome threats and to seize opportunities at the same time.  IBM had been producing storage servers, and many other products, exclusively within the United States for many years.  But as companies in Asia began producing similar products at much lower prices, IBM was faced with a threat.  Therefore, IBM approached several of its American suppliers, including MMP, to see if any were interested in setting up a plant in China.  China, as an emerging market, is an attractive location for setting up an overseas plant due to it low labor costs and educated workforce (Deresky 2011). 

 

     My future boss at MMP, Zack Matthews, accepted the challenge and entered into a partnership with a medium-sized business from Taoyuan, Taiwan, called Kepro International.  Seeking lower labor costs, Kepro was already in the process of setting up a factory in Suzhou that same year.  Therefore, in February of 2010, Zack moved a portion of the operations from his grandfather’s small steel-stamping business in California to Suzhou, China.  MMP had been producing storage servers for IBM on a small scale in Gilroy, California, but after moving to Suzhou, MMP would become a major supplier for two of IBM’s most popular storage servers and for many of the parts and accessories that are associated with servers.

 

     Within a few months of relocating his wife and child to China, Zack was able to organize Kepro’s staff and acquire the specialized tooling needed for producing the first few small orders for IBM.   For the next two and a half years, these orders were gradually growing in size and were shipped to Foxconn in Guangzhou, China or Flextronics in Penang, Malaysia.  From either of these plants, the servers would first be loaded with mother boards and cooling fans and then shipped to IBM’s customers all over Asia, especially Japan.

 

     From this scenario, I learned that globalization affects small-sized, medium-sized, and large-sized companies alike (Deresky 2011).  All three companies were looking to take advantage of lower labor and operating costs to manufacture products that would be shipped to customers within that particular region.  This move not only reduced costs, but it also reduced shipping times to customers in Asia.  The threat of losing business to up-an-coming Asian producers triggered IBM’s move to have the products that were sold in Asia to be manufactured in Asia.  This opened up opportunities for Matthews Metals and Kepro International to increase their production and grab a larger share of the growing technology manufacturing industry.  But in order to make the plan work, Zack Matthews and the managers at Kepro needed to display strong skills for executing an international management process.

 

International Management Processes

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     To understand how the international management process works, we need to first understand how culture affects management. Culture, after all, "comprises an entire set of social norms and responses that condition people's behavior" (Rodrigues 2001). Culture, which is learned formally, informally, and technically, is passed down from generation to generation within a society and greatly affects the way we think, feel, work, cooperate, and respond to authority.  Culture is often most strongly shaped by our family, by educational institutes, and by the common religious beliefs of an area.  Therefore, management approaches that are successful in one part of the world, can be completely ineffective in another area (Doh and Luthans 2012).  To begin implementing a management process, a manager must have a strong understanding of how the local culture affects planning, which includes organizing, staffing, coordinating, and controlling.

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     Organizing: The act of organizing involves designing structures that will enable the business to achieve its goals and objectives.  This includes deciding what needs to be done, who does what, how it is to be done, and who takes responsibility for what tasks (Doh and Luthans 2012).  The act of organizing is greatly affected by our culture since some cultures are very individualistic while others are more collective.  Therefore, workers in some cultures are more inclined to accomplish tasks on their own while others will look to a group for support.  Also, in some cultures, people view their assignments as showing loyalty to the company, while in other cultures people are expected to show loyalty to family over their work assignments (Rodrigues 2001).  A manager, therefore, needs to understand how these cultural factors affect the way that workers respond to organization.

 

     By the time that I joined the company, Kepro had already organized the office staff and factory workers.  Since Kepro was a Taiwanese company, the Taiwanese managers could implement organizational structures that the local Chinese workers could readily accept. And even though I had already lived in Asia for 11 years at that point, I was still impressed by the loyalty shown to the company by the workers.  Most of the workers lived and ate at the factory so there was a strong sense of family and comradery to a degree that I had never seen before in a western company. 

 

     Within weeks of serving as the new operations manager for all of the products made for MMP, I recognized that it was important for me to show a greater sense of comradery in order to be accepted by the staff.  Rather than eating lunch in my office (which I would have preferred to do), I decided that it was necessary to eat together with the entire staff.  This also required that I eat the same foods that the staff were provided or it would have been, to some degree, insulting to their culture.  In the beginning, the staff seemed surprised that I would join them in the canteen every day, but in time it became normal. I learned from the experience that adapting to the local sense of collectivism was an important step to be viewed as an insider rather than an outsider.  Understanding the local culture and adapting to it were important steps that allowed me to organize and motivate workers effectively in the weeks and months ahead.  

 

     Staffing: Staffing, which is the managerial act of recruiting, training, and developing people to do the work that accomplishes the company’s goals, is also greatly affected by culture.  In American culture, managers are expected to recruit workers based on merit and qualifications. But in other cultures, such as South America and some parts of Asia, workers are hired based on their connections to family and friends (Rodrigues 2001). How the office or plant has been staffed will greatly affect the dynamics and how problems can best be communicated, as I learned through experience in China.

 

     After I was hired by MMP, I began to determine that many of the Taiwanese managers were related to each other.  Zack, who did not speak Chinese, had not realized this for the two and a half years that he worked at the plant.  I was only able to establish the connection by the way that the managers addressed each other in Chinese after work hours.  This situation made my management duties much more complicated because there were several problems in the way that the office and plant were running so I would need to handle matters much more sensitively due to the strong family ties in the office.  Rather than addressing the shortcomings of other managers directly, I needed to let the owner of the Kepro plant know what corrections needed to be implemented, rather than addressing the issues myself.  I do not believe in using these methods in a western setting, but in order to respect the family relationships that would override our work relationships, I had to address them in the only way that would get action while maintaining peace in the office.  If I had ignored these cultural aspects of the office, I would not have been able to help the systems to progress.

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     Coordinating:  Coordinating duties, which include directing, inspiring, and motivating people within the organization, require a great deal of decision-making and communicating.  And since the way we make decisions and communicate differs from culture to culture, it is important for managers to have strong intercultural competence (Rodrigues 2001).

 

     For example, in some countries, such as the United States, it is common for managers to ask for suggestions from their subordinates and seek out facts before making a decision.  In many cases, managers share decision-making authority to others as a means of empowerment and to increase employee engagement. In other countries, on the other hand, decision-making authority is never shared and could even undermine a manager’s own authority. In many cultures, only one or two individuals in a company have any decision-making authority (Rodrigues 2001).

 

     The way that information is communicated to staff also varies from culture to culture.  In many western companies, a manager often makes a decision and explains how the facts that he collected helped him to reach this decision.  It is believed that sharing the information with other departments and with his or her subordinates will help to ensure that everyone understands the principles and can therefore work in a more coordinated way.  This is not expected, or even appreciated, in every culture (Rodrigues 2001).

 

     I quickly learned in my new position that the Taiwanese managers at Kepro did not allow their subordinates to make decisions.  I also learned that information was not shared freely amongst employees.  Managers generally made a decision and did not explain to employees why certain tasks needed to be done in a certain way. Many of the employees were mindlessly following directions and I hate to admit it but they often preferred it that way.  When I tried to help the plant workers understand the reasons behind the changes that I was implementing, the managers and workers both reacted to it unfavorably.  Some of the other managers, for example, felt that I was wasting time by explaining every detail to workers who did not need to understand the reasons for change.  Even the workers themselves appeared to be burdened by the responsibility of understanding all of the details.  There is a good chance that I was the only person at the plant that felt the need to understand decisions made by my superiors therefore I was the one who needed to change my approach.  From this, I learned that international managers need to have a clear understanding of the leadership styles and communication approaches of the local culture and adapt to them accordingly.

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     Controlling:  The most important aspect of my role as operations manager at the Kepro plant in Suzhou was the control process.  Within the first few weeks of being hired, serious defects in the storage servers and their cooling fans were being spotted all over Asia.  These products had been shipped out in the weeks and months before I began as operations manager but it was suddenly my job to resolve the defects that were already in the hands of customers and to make sure that future operations did not repeat the same errors.

 

     Controlling, which involves measuring and monitoring results and taking corrective action to ensure that results meet the company’s goals and objectives, is an important part of the managing process that can be very difficult to accomplish in cross-cultural settings (Doh and Luthans 2012).  Even the idea of control or commitment to exact objectives are not common to some societies. 

 

     For example, is societies that have a strong fatalistic viewpoint, which is common in the Middle East and many parts of Asia, it is believed that all matters have been predestined and predetermined by God or by gods (Rodrigues 2001).  It is common, therefore, for people in these societies to believe that we ourselves and the outcomes we produce are determined by forces that are beyond our own control.  I experienced such thinking on a daily basis when I worked in Malaysia but I also experienced this mentality to a lesser degree in China.  This was particularly evident when it came to controlling the production process.

 

     To illustrate, before any of the products went into mass production, the entire managerial staff studied the drawings carefully to understand each and every detail.  The plant workers then carefully produced at least 10 samples of the new product based on the operating procedures designed by the production manager.  From these samples, the best three were chosen as “golden samples”.  These three samples were understood to be as close to perfection as possible.  One golden sample was sent to the designers at IBM, one was sent to Matthews Metals in Gilroy, and the third remained at the factory for reference.  Despite having perfect samples as a reference, a problem with defects gradually crept in during the ensuing batches.  Rather than getting better and better at producing a product due to increasing skill and knowledge, the products were inevitably getting worse and worse. 

 

     After studying the defects, I concluded that the only two reasons that could allow a product to get progressively worse are: 1) the standard operating procedures were recorded incorrectly, and 2) the plant workers were not following the standard operating procedures.  After reading the standard operating procedures for each product (in Chinese) and comparing them to the drawings, I found many errors and missing details that were allowing some defects to occur.  What astounded me was that even with the operating procedures corrected, several defects continued to occur.  Even more astounding was that the defective products continued to be shipped out as normal.  I discovered at this time that the biggest problem that was causing defects in the products was mentality, not a lack of details.  The majority of factory workers that I spoke to did not believe that it was reasonable or even possible to control the outcomes so definitely.   Many of the workers believed that it was acceptable to ship products that were “close enough” to the standard, even though the specifications on the drawings stated that it was not close enough.

 

     I learned from this experience that different societies have different beliefs that contribute to shaping our understanding of how things are controlled.  Some societies believe that outcomes can be controlled to a very high degree, whereas others believe that accurate outcomes are only possible by chance.  In order to implement corrective action, whether it is in procedures or in thinking, international managers need to have an understanding of how the local culture understands and responds to the process of control.

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Cross-cultural Leadership and Motivation

 

     Leadership often refers to the way that one person guides another person, whereas motivation refers to the way that a person provides incentives to propel the follower to reach common objectives (Doh and Luthans 2012). Effective managers do not just do one or the other but must be able to use an effective leadership style and an effective means of motivation effectively.  What complicates matters in an international setting is that the leadership style that worked in a manager’s home country will not always be received well by the people in a foreign culture (Rodrigues 2001).  And managers also soon find out that what motivates people also varies from society to society.

 

     Since managers are expected to deliver results, there is often a strong focus on guiding workers to handle tasks correctly.  In American companies, managers that are overly task-oriented often lose the support of their followers through their use of applying structure when they do not focus enough on relationships. To the other extreme, managers that are overly focused on relationships often see the quality or quantity of production suffer because of not applying enough structure.  It is generally accepted that effective leaders are not too far to either extreme, but rather, have a balance between task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership styles.  When working in a foreign culture, however, finding the right balance can be even more complicated (Rodrigues 2001).

 

     For example, within the first few days of working at the factory in Suzhou, I had the enormous task of coordinating rework on defective products that had already been received by customers in Guangzhou, Malaysia, and Japan.  Aside from this, I also needed to implement corrective action for a number of different procedures in the factory so that the problems did not compound.  A lot of changes needed to happen right away and my to-do list was growing exponentially by the hour. I immediately called for meetings with the other managers.  I clearly outlined what needed to be done and that these corrective actions needed to be implemented right away.  I tried to appeal to the pride of the other managers by pointing out that each manager had a huge challenge ahead and I also expressed that I trusted in each of their abilities. Unfortunately, this leadership style was quite ineffective, especially for somebody who had only been hired a few weeks earlier.

 

     The biggest mistake that I made in using this leadership style was that I did not spend enough time thanking the other managers for letting me be a part of the Kepro team.  I was very careful not to point fingers and I communicated in an indirect way (that is considered polite in the Chinese culture), but I still had not established a “guanxi” with the other managers.  The word “guanxi” in Chinese literally means relation or relationship but it means much more to a Chinese person.  In the Chinese culture, having “guanxi” is needed first, before a person will do anything for another person.  And to the other extreme, when you have strong “guanxi”, a person will do almost anything for the other person.  Thankfully it was very early in my time at the Kepro plant that I saw the need to adjust my leadership style.  From that point on, I recognized the need to exercise a more relationship-oriented leadership style and to seek to build "guanxi" before demanding action from others.

 

     From this example, it is easy to see how a leadership style and the use of incentives to motivate are closely linked.  Coming from a culture that is very individualistic, I am often motivated by the opportunity to complete a challenge based on my individual skills and talents, and especially when someone expresses trust in my ability to do it well.  But from the viewpoint of the staff at Kepro, which was comprised of people from a collectivistic-oriented culture, anything that would be accomplished would come as a result of a complete team effort.  From their point of view, it was not individual efforts that were going to get us out of the mess so there was no point in challenging the managers as individuals.  I would have had much more success motivating the Taiwanese managers by presenting a challenge to Kepro (as a whole) and expressing my desire to be a part of that team.  From this and many other cases that followed, I learned that a manager needs to find out what motivates each and every person he is leading, and to especially put forth effort to find out what motivates people outside of his or her own culture.

 

Cross-national Ethics and Social Responsibility

 

     When a company decides to conduct business across borders, it is vital that the decision makers have a clear understanding of business ethics and social responsibility.  Just as views on ethics and corporate social responsibility vary from company to company within any given region, views on what is ethical can be vastly different from country to country (Rodrigues 2001). 

 

     Ethics, which is the study of morality and standards of conduct, is often the “victim of subjectivity as it yields to the will of cultural relativism” (Doh and Luthans 2012).  What is viewed as ethical in one country is often viewed as unethical in another.  As a result, knowing what the right thing to do is not always so clear for managers to discern. 

 

     I personally experienced the conflict that international managers feel when the social and ethical norms are different across borders.  For example, as the defects in the chassis became more evident, IBM expected me to explain each stage of production in detail, the point in production that the defects occurred, and how the defects would be corrected.  Considering that there were hundreds of work details that went into producing a chassis, I had an enormous assignment to complete.  As I gathered information, though, I began to discover many discrepancies.  For example, a worker would tell me that a certain process was performed on a certain machine but the production manager would tell me that it was performed on another. After asking more questions, I discovered that several other procedures or machines could be used, depending on who carried out the work, or what machines were available at any given time.  The difference between using one machine over another could affect the product’s ability to resist corrosion.  Therefore, I discovered that there were many sub-standard procedures at the plant that were being kept secret from Matthews Metals and from IBM.

 

     At other times, I provided IBM with detailed explanations of how a process was carried out by referring to the standard operating procedures but I later discovered plant workers using different tools or machines to perform the work.  When IBM asked me to take photos or videos of how the work was perform, I was shocked to discover that the factory did not own the tools or machines that the operating procedures prescribed.  What made the issue more troubling was that IBM had been charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for the customized tools that did not ever get produced.  I began to discover that the factory was very good at producing the right paperwork but the actual methods used did not follow the policies and procedures that had been recorded.  The head of Kepro charged IBM for customized tooling but decided to use machinery that the factory already owned.  The owner did not feel that it was unethical to charge IBM for tooling that was never produced because the machines being used were more expensive than the tooling.  From my standpoint, it was unethical because the customer was being misled and the fake standard operating procedures were also intended to deceive others into believing that the tooling had been produced.   

 

     As a manager in an international setting, I learned that practices that would be considered dishonest in one country were consider normal business in another.  I knew that this was not ethical according to the business standards of North America.  I knew that informing the owners at Matthews Metals could strain the business relationship but that I had the responsibility to pass on accurate reports.  If I had not informed the management at Matthews Metals, the misleading and covering up of information would have continued.  All members of the supply chain would unknowingly be passing on and receiving false information.  Even though I was later treated less favorably by some staff members at Kepro, the quality and consistency of the products started to improve after honesty and transparency was established.  In the long-term, behaving ethically benefitted all parties in the business relationship.

 

     Another way that ethical standards differ greatly is in the area of bribery.  According to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it is a crime for American companies to be involved in the bribery of government officials (Doh and Luthans 2012).  In countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and China, bribing government officials is a normal part of conducting business.  I was not personally confronted with whitemail bribery (which are bribes that induce officials to grant favor that is not warranted), but I did hear many reports of how ISO certification and important documents could be acquired through bribery.  Although I was not pressured to engage in whitemail bribery, I was pressured to pay lubrication bribes.  These bribes, which are intended to expedite routine processes such as customs clearance, are commonplace in China and many other countries around the world (Rodrigues 2001). 

 

     For example, when IBM sent important samples or relief supplies to help our plant to keep production flowing, the packages would often sit at customs for five or six business days before they were released to us.  The managers at IBM in the United States could not understand how packages sent by FedEx Overnight could take almost a week to clear customs.  The additional time that packages took to clear customs was causing serious problems for everyone involved.  As a result, the Kepro staff pressured me to pay a small bribe to the customs officials, which in Chinese is called a "hong-bao" (red envelope).  It was explained to me that the delays at customs are created by officials to generate income and end up causing extra long delays for those who do not pay them.  Even though lubrication bribes are not restricted in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, I did not feel that the practice was ethical (Deresky 2011).  Each time a package was held up at customs, though, I faced the same pressure from the other managers at the plant to pay the officials.  Therefore, I decided to tell my boss at Matthews Metals and the executives at IBM why the packages were being held up.  I also told them that I did not want to be involved in paying the officials for faster clearance.  I was happy to find out that IBM has a very strict policy of not paying lubrication bribes and my boss at Matthews Metals also supported my stance.  But I learned from these experiences that ethical conflicts are very common when conducting business overseas and that managers have the responsibility to uphold the standards of their own country and the companies they represent.

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Cross-cultural Business Practices

 

     A reality that all international managers must come to accept is that business practices are different from country to country. To try to force others into business practices that they are not familiar with or comfortable with will bring very little success (Deresky 2011).  In the time that I served as an operations manager in Suzhou, China, I learned to adjust to the following factors that effect business practices:

 

     Time:  In the United States, it is common for business people to view time as an asset that is equal to money (Rodrigues 2001).  For many North American employees, it is also common to give a set number of hours to the company time that rarely interferes with their personal time.  And if an employee receives a phone call from the office outside of work hours, it is completely up to the employee to decide whether or not to give extra time to the company by answering the phone. 

 

     However, in China and many other countries in Asia, employees do not relate the number of hours they give to the company directly to their paycheck.  Employees often live at or near their places of work so that they can be accessed easily.  In most cases, it is unacceptable to leave work before the boss leaves and employees do not expect to be paid for overtime.  Asking to be paid for overtime would likely result in dismissal.  Even if an employee has completely finished his work for the day, he or she will sit at a desk until the boss and other employees leave.  Employees, therefore, are expected to receive phone calls before and after work hours and even drop everything to run errands for their bosses.

 

     For a North American manager working in Asia, it is difficult to find the balance between “adapting” to the culture and “abusing” employees.  Just because employees are willing to work around the clock does not mean that it is ethical to require them to do so.  Adapting as a manger also meant that I had to be willing to receive phone calls at any hour of the day because this was especially expected from managers.  Refusing to give of oneself at any time of the day would most certainly lose the respect and confidence of the plant workers and other managers.  On many occasions, I participated in teleconference calls at two or three in the morning to accommodate managers in the United States and our managers who were visiting plants in other countries. I was hired for a job that was described as 20 hours a week at the factory and 20 hours a week from home.  But within the first few weeks I was working over 60 hours each week, not including the two-hour commute to and from the factory on a high-speed train.  Although it was not easy, adapting to the local culture’s sense of time and duty was the only way to gain respect from my colleagues and to help the factory to reach the standards required by IBM.

 

     Thought Patterns:  Just as people in different cultures have different customs and habits, even thought patterns are very different from culture to culture.  In the United States, it is a linear culture, which means that people view the past as being behind us, and the future as ahead of us (Rodrigues 2001).  In linear cultures, change is often viewed as good when it is implemented for the sake of progress. 

 

     Even though I had already lived in Asia for 11 years at time that I was hired as operations manager, it was not until I was in weekly meetings that I began to truly understand that the Chinese culture is circular.  In circular cultures, the past can be seen so it is expressed as being in the front.  And since the future cannot be seen, it is described as being behind us (Rodrigues 2001). Change is also often viewed as a negative thing.  It took me many years to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese mainly because it involved learning new thought patterns. Language issues aside, it still proved to be a challenge for someone with linear thinking to establish corrective action plans with large groups of individuals who thinking patterns were circular. 

 

     For example, in the first few months on the job, it was necessary for me to pinpoint the steps in the operating procedures where defects were occurring.  As we held meetings to discuss the steps, I communicated in a linear manner by seeking to establish common ground and then moving forward to identify the steps that we needed to change.  My colleagues, however, resisted any sort of change to procedures and were willing to speak for hours on topics that I felt did not directly relate to the cause of defects.  In the end, we were all seeking the same goal but our thought processes for attaining that goal were extremely different. What would likely have taken only 30 minutes or an hour to communicate to people within my own culture, could take many hours and multiple meetings.  I learned from these experiences that an international manager must have a great deal of patience to overcome this particular obstacle to effective communication.  Only by patiently listening to the ideas of others that I felt were side issues and non-issues, could I gradually lead the other managers to see the need to implement new methods and procedures.  If I had not been willing to spend the extra time, which felt like the "long way around" to me, I would not have been able to gain the support and approval that I needed from the other managers.

 

     Social Behaviors: At the time that I was hired by Matthews Metal Products, I had already become quite familiar with Chinese and Malaysian cultures.  Having this knowledge was very helpful but adapting to foreign social behaviors in a business setting is still a difficult challenge.

 

     For example, in most Asian cultures, it is common for business people to be taken to extravagant restaurants and night clubs to promote business relationships (Rodrigues 2001).  At these dinners, it is not uncommon to be served dozens of courses and for massive amounts of beer and whiskey to be consumed.  One person normally orders all of the dishes and it is expected that everyone in attendance will eat a portion of each dish.  And each time the boss drinks, every person should take a drink along with him or her. 

 

     At first, I did not feel the need to try each dish that was being served to me.  After all, many of the dishes were not appealing to me, such as fish heads in curry or chicken feet. Nor did I want to drink so much alcohol, especially at luncheons.  But to resist the social behaviors that are important within a culture would have driven a wedge between me and the other managers.  I learned that it was important to eat at least a very small amount from each dish and to give the impression that I was drinking as much alcohol as the other managers by raising the glass to my mouth each time the boss drank.  Adapting to the social behaviors enabled me to reduce the degree that others saw me as an outsider and promoted better relations with all of my colleagues. Reducing the feelings that others had toward me as an outsider proved to be very important as we engaged in difficult business negotiations.

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Developing Advanced Managerial Skills

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     Over the 11 months that I served as operations manager for Matthews Metal Products in Suzhou, I developed advanced cross-cultural managerial skills that are often required of international managers.  Although all kinds of managers need to employ these same skills, such as negotiating skills, communication skills, and problem-solving skills, the methods and the degree to which they need to be applied are especially challenging for managers in international settings:

 

     1) Negotiating skills: One of the skills that I needed to use on a daily basis was negotiating skills.  Each day, orders came in that I needed to confirm and schedule with the factory.  IBM had changed the designs of their chassis and cooling fans so many times that it created and backlog since it took many months for everyone in the supply chain to adjust to the changes.  Therefore, as orders came in faster than our suppliers could keep up, the factory could not possibly meet the demands.  On the other hand, the lead times that the factory had established were often two or three times longer than the factory actually needed.  Therefore, in order to produce the highest quality and quantity as possible, I was constantly in the middle of negotiations between IBM, the Kepro plant, and Flextronics (who was the next supplier in the supply chain). 

 

     I learned through experience that negotiating with the local Chinese staff required different techniques than negotiating with the Taiwanese managers.  With the Chinese staff, who were in charge of scheduling and purchasing, I needed to negotiate face-to-face.  Whenever I tried to negotiate from my home office, there was little or no progress made.  But, when meeting face-to-face, I was better able to stress our obligations toward our customers and our superiors by doing whatever we can to improve the quantity and quality of the products we shipped out.  As a result, the Chinese staff would often improve the production schedule to suit the needs of IBM with face-to-face negotiations that highlighted the need to preserve relationships.

 

     However, when negotiating with the Taiwanese managers, I had to use a very different set of negotiating skills.  One difference was that it was better to communicate through a middle person.  Negotiating directly with another manager was less effective because it often resulted in the Taiwanese manager feeling that I was criticizing his or her work or questioning their authority.  The middle person acted as a buffer that prevented anyone from taking offense.  Even though the negotiating process took more time since it needed to pass through another person, the results were much better and less offensive than negotiate directly.

 

     And regardless of what was being negotiated, I learned that it is always important to go into negotiations with a clear minimum acceptable level of support (or least acceptable result) from the other side, and a clear idea of the most that my side (at MMP) was willing to give, which is often referred to as the maximum supportable position (Rodrigues 2001).  Having these clear levels of support in mind will help the negotiating process along because it provides a basic framework and goals to aim for.  In many cases, by respectfully asking for the maximum amount of support that the other side could give, I was able to gain more support than I had expected to gain.   

 

     2) Communication skills:  Before accepting the position as operations manager, I had already developed strong communication skills as a teacher and as a translator.  But in the 11 months that I worked at Kepro, my communication skills were tested in ways that they had never been tested before. 

 

     Firstly, I learned from my first few interactions at the factory that how something is said in many cultures is often far more important than what is said (Rodrigues 2001). For example, when IBM and Matthews Metal Products started receiving reports of defects, I needed to urgently communicate the pressing need to prevent more defects from occurring. Equipped with detailed photos and measurements of defects, I began to show the power point presentation to the entire group of managers. My lack of understanding of how the information would be received caused a sudden outburst of screaming and accusations.  After everyone calmed down and the meeting resumed, I needed to express to everyone that the presentation was not an attack on the factory and that we should all view it as a means to reach higher standards and higher productivity. I learned from the experience that my role at the factory required that I become an effective communicator within the factory rather than a negative voice coming from outside of the factory. I needed to change the way that I presented information in order for everyone to feel respected and for information to be received properly.

 

     In time, I began to see that many of the problems at the factory were a result of misunderstandings and poor communication. IBM had ultimately set the set standards for the products they designed by writing the acceptable levels of variance onto the blueprints.  The managers and factory workers had an understanding of what those standards were, but their understanding was skewed due to language and cultural barriers.  IBM’s customers, especially the Japanese companies, were filing complaints over defects in the products that IBM had never provided specs for.  And due to the discovery of defects in Japan, the Malaysian plants that installed motherboards into the chassis began inspecting our products carefully and filing complaints for defects that were within acceptable levels of variation. So, in fact, there were four separate understandings of the standards for IBM’s products but all of the understandings were flawed in certain ways.  Being at the center of the controversy, I needed to communicate effectively to bring all of the four different understandings closer together.

 

     So with the factory, rather than presenting myself as an accuser or faultfinder, I learned to speak to everyone as a supporter that was hired to clear up the misunderstandings.  If anyone was unclear about any detail in the blueprints or the variance that was allowed, they could approach me and I would talk to the designers at IBM directly for clarification. I learned from this experience that being approachable and supportive are extremely important qualities for a manager to display in order to promote effective communication.

 

     The next lesson I learned is the need to communicate accurately. For IBM and the entire supply chain, I became the one person at the factory that could get honest, clear answers and even provide pictures or videos of processes, if needed. What started out as weekly teleconference calls with managers in Canada, the United States, and Mexico gradually became daily calls as the need for information and clarity increased. My organizational skills and presentational skills were put to the test every day as I needed to communicate detailed information between the factory, IBM, Flextronics, and my boss at MMP. I learned from these experiences how managers need to communicate details efficiently, thoroughly, and clearly (Doh and Luthans 2012).  If I ever missed a detail or failed to communicate a detail clearly, the result was that orders did not get completed or shipments were not sent out on time. With each member of the supply chain in different time zones, the need to supply complete and accurate details on a consistent basis was necessary or full days of productivity could be lost elsewhere. Late shipments meant millions of dollars lost at IBM, hundreds of thousands of dollars lost at MMP, and many thousands of dollars lost at Kepro. Working under this kind of pressure and extreme demand for information for 11 months taught me to become a more accurate and detailed communicator.

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     3) Problem-solving skills:  In order to organize, staff, coordinate, and control operations effectively, a manager is constantly faced with the need to solve problems.  After I had accurately communicated the areas of production that needed to be improved in order to meet IBM’s requirements, the products being shipped out were often still below standard.  The reason that defects continued to be shipped out was that there were problems with the way the factory workers were organized and rewarded that were working against the need to elevate the standards.

 

     For example, the factory was relying far too heavily on the individual management staff and plant workers to understand the standards, rather than having systems in place that would ensure that standards were maintained.  When production was behind schedule, it was not uncommon to hire more plant workers to boost production.  But these temporary workers were low-skilled and had little or no understanding of the standards.  Also, production hours were often extended to meet the needs of production.  Under these circumstances, it is simply not possible to ensure that knowledgeable staff are present at all times.  When production relies too heavily on people, problems occur when certain people cannot be present.  

 

     Therefore, the first problem that I had to solve was to ensure that no matter who was hired or present at any given time, a reference for IBM’s standards could be easily understood.  To accomplish this, I had pictures taken of the products at each stage of production and had these pictures posted so that no matter who was working on any given machine or stage in production, the standards could be easily identified through pictures and details.  Aside from pictures of acceptable products, I also had pictures and details of common defects posted so that workers knew which products to reject without relying on guesswork or the knowledge of whoever was supervising at that particular time.  Pictures, for the most part, eliminated the language barrier that was often the excuse for misunderstandings. Posting these pictures and details was a very import step to reducing the number of defective products that were being shipped out.

 

     Even though pictures at every stage of production made the production process less reliant on people, defects continued to occur.  A portion of these products were packets of accessories that were often shipped out with missing parts.  It is a very easy mistake for someone to miss placing a nut, bolt, or other part into a packet, especially after hours of repetitive work.  But, it would be nearly impossible for a faulty packet to weigh the same as a complete packet.  Therefore, rather than relying on people to visually recognize if all of the parts in a packet were complete, I had all of the packets weighed before they were shipped out.  This additional step did not add a significant amount of time to the process and it greatly reduced the number of complaints we received about incomplete packets.  The result was that the factory experienced savings since it no longer needed to send replacement parts to customers throughout Asia. 

 

     A third problem that was preventing improvements was the way that the factory workers were being motivated.  By working side by side with the team responsible for final inspections, I discovered that there was a strong pressure to pass products, rather than reject products.  The reason for the pressure was that all of the plant workers earned bonuses if the factory reached certain production targets.  The reward system was created to motivate the workers to increase productivity but it was causing the inspectors to pass many products that were below standard.  Rejecting products upset all of the workers at the plant so there was a constant pressure from coworkers to let certain defects slip.  By recognizing the negative results that were stemming from the reward system, I determined that final inspections could no longer be left to plant workers alone. 

 

     Therefore, with approval from my boss at MMP in California, I hired a third-party inspection company to assist the inspectors at the plant.  In the beginning, the decision to bring in a third-party inspection company was not received well by the managers and staff at Kepro.  I carefully and respectfully explained the reasons for needing a third party to conduct final inspections and also explained that the arrangement would only be needed until the plant’s own inspectors became more skilled at identifying and rejecting defects.  To my surprise, the arrangement was not only gradually accepted by the other managers, but eventually the inspection company that I hired was also used to inspect products that were being produced for other companies, as well.  Immediately after the new arrangement was implemented, the number of defects dropped dramatically.  No longer could workers pressure inspectors to pass questionable products.  Therefore, the only way for workers to earn bonuses was to increase the quality of their work, rather than pushing for quantity alone. 

 

     From this point on, a significant increase in the quality of the work was realized throughout the factory. After a few months, the inspection company no longer needed to be at the factory before the products were packaged and could rely on randomly inspecting only 5 or 10 percent of the products.  Knowing that the third-party inspection company would be conducting a second inspection before products were shipped out put enough pressure on the plant workers and inspectors to elevate the standards.  The executives at IBM also appreciated the photos in the inspection reports from the third-party inspectors to clarify standards and was a key step in re-establishing stability at the plant.

 

     After working at the Kepro plant in Suzhou for 11 months, I decided that it was best to find another job that was closer to Shanghai.  I enjoyed the worked at the plant and the learning experience was invaluable.  But I was working up to 60 hours a week and the two-hour commute from Shanghai was starting to wear me out.  Therefore, I recognized that it would be much better for two people who lived in Suzhou to take over my duties.  To accomplish this, I hired a local Chinese man to handle all of the translating work and an experienced manager from Belgium to oversee operations.  In only 11 months, the scene at the plant changed from chaos to relative stability.  I continued to check in with the new manager from time to time and I was surprised to hear that MMP was awarded an extended line of IBM’s chassis to be produced at the Kepro plant.  The experience of working at the Kepro plant for MMP not only helped me to learn important skills for managing operations in an international setting, but I also gained a great deal of satisfaction and accomplishment.

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Conclusion

 

     Since culture affects the way we feel, think, plan, and work, it is absolutely vital for international managers to gain insight into the culture of the people that we are seeking to lead, train, organize, and motivate (Rodrigues 2001).  During the 13 years that I lived in Asia and the 11 months that served as an operations manager in Suzhou, China, I have been able to learn the principles of international management and have applied advanced managerial skills in real-life international settings.   These skills include advanced language skills, cross-cultural communication skills, organizational skills, negotiating skills, presentation skills, translating skills, quality control skills, and problem-solving skills.  As I applied these skills, I also learned to adapt my leadership style and the incentives I used to motivate the workers that I was leading.  The result of applying these skills in challenging and, at times, stressful situations is that I have acquired extensive knowledge and a well-rounded set of skills in the field of international management.  

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