The main change of the century is that local markets are not big enough for industries. The future of any company that wants to be bigger than its competitors is to go international. Selling a product won't be the hardest of things that companies will have to face while going international, but the cultural adaptation will be one of the hardest things. There are different kinds of adaptation, the product adaptation, the administrative and law adaptation, and the cultural adaptation that can be the one where facing a client as the one while creating a subsidiary somewhere. In this report, we will study the cultural adaptation basing our analysis on the 5 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede. These 5 dimensions come from an analysis done by Geert Hofstede while working at IBM and trying to understand the employees attitudes at IBM worldwide. Even if we will go through more details during the analysis, it is from now important to know that the 5 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede help individuals and companies to understand, analyze and compare the culture of different countries. To support our analysis we will look at the Accenture strategy towards international markets. How did they become one of the leaders in their sector? And how did they manage to be present everywhere in the world?
[...] It leads individuals to understand how they can become one of the leaders:[16]“High performers recognize shifts in the landscape before they happen.” Those two sentences reflect the two cultural dimensions very well. The English are competitive and individualistic; the French have a bit of that orientation, but the main point is that they want to evolve as individuals and grow into a group. Uncertainty Avoidance Index: (UAI) This “Deals with a society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; it ultimately refers to man's search for Truth.”[17] The graph reflects that the French culture has a higher rate for Uncertainty Avoidance than the English one. [...]
[...] Masculinity versus femininity represents an assertive and competitive character when femininity will be more modest and will carry more values. Here again the difference between the two country are considerable. The English culture has more masculinity than the French culture. We come back to the others cultural dimensions in UK people are more individualistic, competitive than in France. I will reinforce this observation by the statement that Accenture uses on its website at the top of the page on the page on inclusion and Diversity; a page directly dedicated to present and future workers. [...]
[...] The second part will focus on the 5 cultural dimensions and how Accenture has used them, or met them through their international development strategy. We will also see how these dimensions have led to Accenture's international success. Accenture: The Growth of a Global Leader[2] If we go through Accenture's web site we will find this definition of Accenture[3]: “Accenture is a Global Management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with net revenues of US$ 19.70 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments.” The first part of this document will enhance our knowledge of Accenture's markets and environment. [...]
[...] To conclude the first part, I would state that the most important things for the Accenture group are their human resources and their international development, and that the decision and strategic development policies are the same for the entire group. Thus they have a truly global organization. In the section below, we will analyze the geographical subdivision of their organization, and find out how they selected their cultural organization. Accenture is an international company Accenture has consultants in 49 different countries. Though it is a global company, they have sorted their different countries into groups to manage them better. [...]
[...] What interests us really is how those differences are linked with the 5 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede. The section below will study those differences deeply, and we will try to find out how the management of Accenture is linked to those cultural dimensions. Accenture and the 5 cultural dimensions There are 5 different cultural dimensions that we will study in this part. In each country, each dimension has a different index or rate. In attempting to compare these, and more specifically the differences between France and the United Kingdom, I have consulted Geert Hofstede's website, and have use the 'countries' comparison' option available to create this chart[12]: Though the two countries selected are only at a distance of two hours by train, the differences in the cultural dimensions are great. [...]
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