Good practices

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the communication problems that are faced across organizations and the challenges that have to be confronted. The case study provided to guide for this paper tells that the multinational organization works in the many countries like Australia, Vietnam, India, Oman and Nigeria. This shows that the organization has to work in territories that are socially, economically and culturally completely different from each other. Some challenges have been faced by the organization and these challenges have to be overcome by them by using some clever strategies by their management.

Good practices

Whenever an international organization undertakes to provide their services across the globe, it is very evident that they must have a very wide supply chain network. The supply chain management of the company has to be very efficient if the company wants to reach its target and meet the organizational objectives (Yeh & Hong, 2012). In this company the management seems to face many challenges worldwide. The headquarter of this company is situated in Australia. So, they will not have any problems in getting the proper resources and talents. They have sufficient resources but their clients and customers have been complaining about some of their strategies. This will not be good for the brand image of the organization (Maor, Gilad & Bloom, 2012).

Challenges

In this segment of the paper the main topic of discussion is about the challenges the organization is facing at this moment and the ways these challenges can be overcome by them. This resolves to the fact that their current global market stretches from Oceania to Asia and then Africa as well (March, 2013). This reflects the fact that the employees must be having difficulties in communicating with the local people and many barriers to communication must be present there.

Challenge 1: Timely communication to all staffs and clients

The alarming problem here is the fact that the employees and the clients are lacking in proper communication on time. The clients are ordering for certain things to be delivered on time (Cheung & Yiu, 2014).  The staffs are not working at their best to deliver the goods. Around 8,000 employees are running short to deliver the services on time. The clients are dissatisfied with their services.

Challenge 2: Communication breakdown from top management to front line staff and vice versa

The communication between the top level management and the front line staff is deteriorating. This may be because there is a communication gap or miscommunication between them (Daim et al., 2012). This will be very risky for the image of the organization and clients will get a wrong message.

Challenge 3: Feedback from clients to improve the product quality and service delivery

The clients have been complaining that the product quality is not up to the mark as it was used to be some times ago. This will be very harmful for them because the clients will not compromise a bit with a bad product quality (Cummings & Worley, 2014).  They are not being able to send the services on time as well. If the customers do not get the products on time, they will automatically switch their preferences to other brands.

Challenges

Challenge 4: Issues around local language

There are certain serious issues in managing their people in diverse linguistic ambiences. The target audiences in other countries speak different languages and they have a verbal communication problem with the local people. They might even miss even some important deals because of these problems.

Challenge 5: Cross cultural issues

The different language speaking people follow different cultures as well. The Asians and Africans will not surely follow the same cultural values and the employees of the organization belong to different cultures and communities as well (Thomas, & Peterson, 2017). This will be a barrier from them.

Challenge 6: Limited development in digital literacy in some countries and use of social media

Some countries like Vietnam and Nigeria are not yet that much developed and the literacy rate is not so high. The people there are not aware of the use social media and digitally they are not so developed as well. This is a challenge for the organization for making their advertisements (Radovanovi?, 2012).

Future Strategies

Some strategies have to be taken in the future so that these hazards can be avoided. Many multinational organizations have faced these kinds of problems too and they have succeeded in eradication these problems.

Strategy 1

The clients should be informed about the product delivery time through proper communication. The employees should be able to send text messages to their numbers or send e-mails so that the clients can be communicated and the reason for late can be informed (Skovholt, Grønning & Kankaanranta, 2014).  

Strategy 2

The employees should be able to communicate with the higher authority in case of any problems. The top management should also send feedback forms to the employees to mitigate this challenge. Sports Direct had faced these challenges and issues as well and they overcame with distributing survey and feedback forms (“SportsDirect.com – The UK’s No 1 Sports Retailer”, 2017).

Strategy 3

The clients should be able to feedback to the employees about the product quality (Nicholas & Carswell, 2013).  The company should use latest technologies to produce agricultural equipments. Woolworths has used this method of new technologies so that they can improve the service delivery and product quality (“Woolworths”, 2017).

Strategy 4

The employees who will be sent to those internally expanded target markets should possess a thorough knowledge about the language of that place. Or else they should look to recruit employees from that place only. Tesco, the British retail company had faced these problems also so they resolved to train their employees and familiarize them with that language (“Tesco – Online Groceries, Homeware, Electricals & Clothing”, 2017).

Strategy 5

Many companies have faced the cross cultural issues. Wesfarmers faced such troubles when they expanded to China (“Wesfarmers”, 2017). This challenge was mitigated by adjusting with these issues and making the employees aware that strict punishments would be given for violation of racism issues and other cross cultural issues. This concerned company should do this as well.

Strategy 6

The digital literacy issues are faced by companies when they expand to a less developed market. The Australian mining company BHP Billiton faced such problems such problems when they expanded to foreign undeveloped countries (“BHP Billiton | A leading global resources company”, 2017). They resolved it by training the local people the use of social media for advertisements. This company should follow these footsteps as well.

Conclusions

The paper can be concluded by saying that the concerned multinational company should train their employees properly so that they can align themselves with the objectives of the organization. The organization should be able to overcome the challenges by applying proper communication methods and eradicate the miscommunication between the top management and employees. They should also get rid of these cross cultural issues and local language issues by inflicting ethical morals into the minds of the employees. They should also train the employees to use the social media and build a proper network for their marketing and advertisement. Thus they will strive in this competitive business environment.

References

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Nicholas, F. C., & Carswell, I. B. (2013). U.S. Patent Application No. 13/937,148./

Skovholt, K., Grønning, A., & Kankaanranta, A. (2014). The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E?Mails::?. Journal of Computer?Mediated Communication, 19(4), 780-797.

Thomas, D. C., & Peterson, M. F. (2017). Cross-cultural management: Essential concepts. Sage Publications.

Radovanovi?, D. (2012). Digital divide and social media: Connectivity doesn’t end the digital divide, skills do.

Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Daim, T. U., Ha, A., Reutiman, S., Hughes, B., Pathak, U., Bynum, W., & Bhatla, A. (2012). Exploring the communication breakdown in global virtual teams. International Journal of Project Management, 30(2), 199-212.

Cheung, S. O., & Yiu, T. W. (2014). Interweaving Trust and Communication for Project Performance. In Construction Dispute Research (pp. 169-187). Springer International Publishing.

Yeh, H., & Hong, D. (2012). The mediating effect of organizational commitment on leadership type and job performance. The Journal of Human Resource and Adult Learning, 8(2), 50.

Maor, M., Gilad, S., & Bloom, P. B. N. (2012). Organizational reputation, regulatory talk, and strategic silence. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 23(3), 581-608.

March, J. G. (Ed.). (2013). Handbook of Organizations (RLE: Organizations)(Vol. 20). Routledge.

Wesfarmers. (2017). Wesfarmers.com.au. Retrieved 8 September 2017, from https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/

Woolworths. (2017). Woolworths.com.au. Retrieved 8 September 2017, from https://www.woolworths.com.au