Volkswagen diversity at the home country and host
Volkswagen has extemporarily performed in its host country. Its rating has continuously improved due to customer loyalty to the brand. Nonetheless, the company has struggled to break even in other markets across the world. Due to changes in marketing and customer preference, companies have been forced to gear up globalization. As such, Volkswagen has expanded its market across the world, including both developed and developing countries. The United States has, for a long time, been a high consumer of Volkswagen products. However, recent developments have changed the situation for Volkswagen in this host country. In Germany, Volkswagen is a trademark, thus making it the number one choice car. The company has been developed to blend in with Germany’s social, economic, and cultural life. As such, the brand is well known in the home country. In the USA, other car brands exist, thus making it highly a competitive market for VW.
Due to its dominance in the home country, VW has fewer problems with officials over environmental pollution. The company has infiltrated the government, making most officials in the home country hushed. Thus, VW’s operations remain significantly unaffected by the political debate on the environment. In the US, the company is facing significant conflicts with environmental issues due to emissions. Several United States officials have threatened to impose heavy penalties on VW concerning its involvement in emission scandals. The United States regulatory policies on gaseous emissions potentially make VW obsolete in the market. As VW improves their products to emit less carbon, the United States continues to strengthen its environmental regulatory laws.
Over the past few years, the United States car consumption has drastically shifted to domestic companies. In 2006, VW enjoyed approximately two percent of all car sales. The sales have fallen to less than one percent. US authorities are continuously pushing for the expansion and support of local manufacturers. As globalization takes shape, the United States has set policies such as high tariffs on imports in a bid to strengthen local companies. Volkswagen has been affected by both the regulatory and cultural changes in this country.
Policies on diversity
VW’s policy on diversity is concrete and focused on ensuring that the company manages any differences. The company founding policy on diversity is to become more adaptable to the changes in technology, cultural, economic, and social aspects in host countries. This has been demonstrated through hiring where the company focuses on hiring a high number of local employees as compared to expatriates. The company also trains expatriates working in the host nations to make them accustomed to differences in culture or other ways of life. The company is concerned about strengthening relationships with host countries to allow a harmonious working environment. VW is involved with several social responsibility activities in host countries to bolster its ties. The activities include scholarships and environmental conservation. At VW, all employees are implored to “think globally but act locally (Volkswagen, 2018).” The slogan helps employees solve diversity challenges while increasing global performance.
Managing diversity
Volkswagen’s diversity between Germany and the United States can best be addressed through increased marketing and corporate social responsibility. The idea behind this plan is to make VW more popular with potential customers while minimizing conflicts with US officials. The company should adhere to regulatory policies in the US, specifically in terms of emissions and payment of tariffs. Although the taxes are high, increased marketing will increase revenue in the country. The company should also set up a manufacturing plant in the country to increase employment opportunities for American citizens. Further, VW should increase the number of American employees in every entity across the country.
Virtual Team
Working through virtual means results in a myriad of challenges. The issues are heightened by diversity between employees concerning geographic location. Although the team was working towards a common objective, there were unhealthy agreements that led to distrust—further, cultural and social differences as an obstacle to building constructive debates. Nonetheless, the primary barrier was communication. Interaction between the different members located in the host country and those in Germany is constrained by the language barrier. In some cases, some team members would not understand a statement meaning, or they would misconstrue it. Further, cultural differences gave rise to differences in values and norms, making it difficult to build fruitful deliberations.
My experience with the intercultural team leads to an emphasis on improving communication. Building rapport is essential for building a conducive, reliable, and healthy relationship with team members. As rapport is established, team members in both countries have more trust in each other. However simple it sounds, creating rapport requires an individual to employ precise communication skills, including emphatic listening, confrontation, and interpretation. Further, improving the team would call for a well-developed conflict resolution plan. As a leader, I would develop a system through which unhealthy agreements are settled. To establish rapport, I will make team members learn how to listen without interrupting or asking interruptive questions. During my interactions with the workgroup’s members, I realized that the most effective way of demonstrating interest during a dialog is by listening keenly and trying to displaying both verbal and non-verbal cues. During these conversations, it is imperative to show concern, encourage the team members to open up, and to create a connection between all members. The key to building rapport lies in the ability to create mutual trust quickly.
Women in Leadership
Volkswagen has, for a long time, maintained its leadership status in promoting gender equality. The efforts are demonstrated by VW’s continued commitment to employing and promoting women into leadership positions. Women have held leadership positions both in Germany and the US since 1988. The company has a department in both countries whose only function is promoting gender equality. Anke Tesch notes that “Volkswagen is a corporation where, from fairly early on, it was relatively normal for women to work, especially at the assembly line, in Sales or Human Resources (Volkswagen, 2019).” In both countries, women have increased revenue by improving relations with customers. In the past, VW made a policy to help women innovate and grow into top management. Today, the company has shifted its focus into knowledge sharing irrespective of gender. The system has given women equal chances to men both in Germany and the United States. The women in both countries have actively participated in gender equality efforts both at work and in their community. The women created volunteer and outreach programs to promote and gender equality while still marketing the company’s products.
Preparing an expatriate
Holding a leadership position in a different country comes with numerous challenges. These challenges emanate due to differences in cultures, beliefs, and sometimes religion. When working as an expatriate, unique characteristics should be considered for there to exist an accomplishment of the set objectives. These particular members of human capital should have the ability to quickly adapt to the alien environment (Bowlby, 2015). The émigré has to work under new situations. This fact makes it critical for human resource management to select the right fit.it is utterly imperative to have an individual who will swiftly fit into the new working environment. Hiring people from different jurisdictions gives the enterprise the ability to grow its human capital cumulatively over a given period.
Generally, the diversity that is brought by expatriate and mobile workforce has made organizational managers in charge of organizational behavior to necessitate the possession of linguistic and cultural competences among its employees. Therefore the plan is to build linguistic and cultural competencies before deployment. Regarding cultural competence, managers require continued commitment or institutionalism of appropriate policies and practices that accommodate different ethnic groups. On the other hand, linguistic proficiency relates to the ability of organizations and their workers to communicate efficiently to each group and express information in a way that is easily comprehended by each group. These competencies can lead to the improvement of employees’ work performance, thus increase their job satisfaction. Therefore, the company should retrain managers from the home country before redeploying them into the host country. Retraining should be done through courses offered by the company or facilitated by VW.
Maintaining synergy
Communication is an integral portion of any entity. Communication is an essential component in any organization since it improves cooperation and synergy. Team leaders should be good listeners to be able to address pressing issues in their team jointly. Listening skills help in increasing the chances of achieving the set goals. Better listening is also integral in decision making and increasing the level of trust and confidence among the employees. Competent expatriates should possess the power to listen actively without interrupting the bearer of information. The inability to monitor due to language differences has been proven to be a significant barrier to effective communication in organizations. The company should take advantage of grapevine communication within the subsidiary. The unofficial interface should be used to build better communication for expatriates. Further, the organization should consider team building activities such as retreats and online platforms. Creating open communication, either formal or informal, enables all employees to fit in, thus increasing their productivity.
Cross-cultural management strategies
Being fully in the moment at work is imperative for a better understanding of employee and workmate needs. There are three skills that one can learn when he/she is present at the moment. They are; active listening, asking questions, and planning actions. Everybody knows that communication skills will help reciprocally by using verbal and bodily techniques that are necessary for successful communication and action-taking, especially when cultural differences are present, that is why the importance of the application of these skills in the work environment (Bubble, 2011). One of the strengths of listening is that it involves high levels of empathy that permit to create a climate of trust and freedom. An active listening strategy is most applicable at VW since it will yield more positive results.
Asking questions is a crucial part of active listening; the strengths of this skill is the provocation to break the ice and start a meaningful relationship of confidence. An expatriate can only effectively as questions if he/she is in the present moment. The goal of this skill is to help the employees in host countries uncover that insight themselves. The challenging part is how to discover those inner thoughts and to prove that all the answers are entirely true. Finally, planning action is an essential part of active listening, not only because the manager will support the employees’ progress, but they also can celebrate the objectives reached as a team. This skill can face challenges during the process of accountability is not applied correctly. Active listening is all about supportive and agreeable relationships. Being fully present is affected by different distractions from various sources. The distractions can be from environmental factors or individual factors. In most cases, the disturbances can be alleviated by active listening.