Should multinational companies standardize their training system(s) across all operations?

Table of Contents

Introduction

Control and the Company´s Culture.

International Exchange and Collaboration.

Importance of Consistency for Customers

Conclusion

References

Introduction

The need of a multinational to standardize its training systems is based on the increasing level of internationalization of companies and accompanying challenges, like dealing with different cultures, norms, and traditions. The volatility of the markets rise with increasing globalization and boundary less trading, forcing companies to become more flexible and reactive in order to quickly respond to changes. This leads to more complexity and a greater desire for control, as well as to a higher need for collaboration and consistent appearance towards the customer. But, “A company´s decision about how much local control to allow depends partly on the industry; for instance, consumer products need to be more attuned to the local market than pharmaceuticals or software”. (Ghoshal, 1989) However, the level of standardization of companies training system highly depends on the company itself and the circumstance the company is in.

Control and the Company´s Culture

To keep control over the multinational company on an international basis, the organization should standardize its training system up to a certain extend. The development and implementation of a company’s culture is mainly done by trainings. Codes of conduct for example lay out a series of phrases, helping employees to understand what an appropriate behavior is and act accordingly. The implementation of such control tools is crucial for the well being of a company, since different cultures have differing understandings of what is acceptable and what not. In some states it might be generally accepted and sometimes the only way to do business, by paying bribes, while companies culture may see it as unacceptable. Therefor, companies need to conduct standard trainings to make sure that every employee understands the company’s culture and is able to align with it. By using trainings as a top down communication tool, the multinational enterprise may vary the means of the training according to infrastructural ability (computer based trainings, paper based trainings or personal trainings), and it may alter the way of communicating according to cultural differences. Cultural differences according to Geert Hofstede´s cultural dimensions could be for example the different levels of power distance acceptance or according to Edward T. Hall´s model the difference between high context versus low context countries. In the end, standardized training systems are useful to steer and to control the company, but the training should be designed in a way that fits to the circumstances.

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