Changan-Ford Joint Venture Essay Example

the contrary, China is based on ethics and morality.

Their collectivistic culture tends to avoid confrontation, preferring harmony at work. Decision making is gathered and evaluated with other members of the corporation. It takes more time to reach a common agreement. Chinese think that US managers are selfish whilst US managers tend to think that Chinese managers lack of intuition and a sense of individual responsibility. This cultural barrier is the major issue that has to be resolved.

Question 2: Knowing that the Joint Venture is the most common form of equity alliance, we can say that Changan-Ford’s strategic alliance is an Equity one. That is say that Changan and Ford remain independent but set up a new organization jointly. In this case, we can talk about an access alliance. In fact, Ford needed a local distributor to access the Chinese market. About the issues, Ford does not make available the engineering resources to their Chinese JV partner, they just transfer the engineering voice and specifications from Ford and block the local engineering improvement. Moreover, the report highlights several points, all about cultural differences. They don’t share their knowledge, therefore Americans have difficulties to match Chinese customers’ needs. Furthermore, it is important to notice that Ford has an independent engineering centre in China whereas they also have an engineering team in their JV.

3. To address the cross cultural differences identified, both companies should understand the strengths and weaknesses of their different cultures. Indeed, by mixing the two cultures, it could allow to a better communication and collaboration among employees, leading to a better efficiency at work. Both cultures have different values that

they should share, and could benefit from this information transfers. It’s an ideal opportunity to learn new ways of working and managing. A better understanding of customer’s expectations (especially on Chinese market) and each other’s expectations will facilitate to respond effectively to market changes.