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Know the culture where you do business
By Lauren | June 18, 2010
Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s talk about a mistake that we’ve seen two major international corporations make in the very recent past. British Petroleum and Toyota are two enormous companies founded in the U.K. and Japan respectively. They both have done a lot of business here, but neither really seems to understand how Americans think.
What’s my basis for that assertion? Look how long it took both companies to issue public apologies when they failed to live up to American safety standards. Toyota had its issues with unintended acceleration, and we all know what’s been going on for BP in the Gulf. These two supposedly sophisticated companies had to be hauled up in front of Congressional hearing panels before they finally got it together enough to apologize convincingly to the American people. I believe they waited too long because they didn’t understand that failing to apologize quickly and completely would do enormous damage to their reputations in the States.
Every country has its own culture, and many of them have more than one. (It’s not hard to argue that the cultures of Massachusetts and Mississippi are very different in several respects.) If you take your business into a new venue, it’s important to investigate before you open your company’s doors so you have a good sense of where the cultural sensitivities are. Otherwise, you may find your company embroiled in a nasty public spectacle, or vigorously defending itself in court.
Topics: Risk Management, Social Ethics, business communications, corporate responsibility, customer relations, ethics |
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:20 am
Lauren, While I agree that an apology took too long, I believe two other issues were at play. (1) I don’t think the acceleration issues was as bad as the media played it up to be. Remember, that as soon as two prominent “fake” acceleration cases were exposed, it virtually disappeared from the media. (2) While there were some issues, I think Toyota knew they weren’t as copious as reported - and failed to take into account the media impact. Same result - just a little more understandable.