Organizations in Global Environment Paper Editing Services

Organizations in Global Environment Paper Editing Services

 Executives summary

The topic of activity 6 states that the impact of the internet is such that now a day companies are getting inclined towards designing their companies’ websites in multi-languages so as to cover a large number of target audiences irrespective of nationality and culture (Arno, 2010). This helps the companies in targeting large numbers of the customer across the countries.

The topic of activity 3 comprises of the cultural dimension of Hofstede so as to compare the cultural background of two or more countries. This dimension reflects the difference between the individuals of two or more country (Chen, et al. 2015). It enables the organization to resolve the issues related to intercultural and organizational culture with the help of framework based on Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

E-Learning Activities

Week 2 - Activity 3- Comparing Countries

The topic of e-learning activity 3 is the comparison of the countries according to their cultural background. In this topic, the countries can be selected starting from one to any numbers and are checked and analysed according to the six dimensions such as power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence (Arno, 2010). One or more countries can be selected to compares their score. Cultural survey tool like culture compass is chosen to compare the personal preferences to the score of the country selected by the user.

The culture compass of Hofstede is a tool that helps the individuals to avoid the cultural drawbacks while working with the people who follow different culture and are from different countries (Rallapalli and Montgomery, 2015). The culture can be referred as a collection of psychological programming of the human brain that differentiates one individual or group of people from another. The influences of this psychological programming are such that it affects the thinking pattern of the individual which reflects in the different aspects of life and thus become the norms of the societal institutions.

 It cannot be assumed that every individual of the same society is same as every individual is considerably different from other. The cultural difference between individual is more significant than the cultural difference between the countries (Mazanec, et al. 2015). This tool helps the organization to resolve the conflicts that arise through the difference in the cultural background of the individuals working together in the company. The cultural dimension of Geert Hofstede is effectively framed to resolve the challenges faced by the difference in the culture of an individual and as followed by the organization.

Power distance is described as the level of the distribution of the power among the individuals of the society which expresses the cultural attitude towards these inequalities.  Individualism is addressed the extent of the interdependence of the individual maintained in the society which is categories as either individualist societies or collectivist societies. Masculinity level of the country indicates the dominant values that motivate the people which are either masculine like being driven by competition, success and achievements or feminine that means caring for others and quality of life in a particular country (Bakir, et al. 2015). Uncertainty avoidance relates to the degree in which the anxiety and threats of cultural difference between the individuals. Long-term orientation reflects the maintenance of linkage of society with its past to deal with the challenges of the present and future.  Indulgence is the degree to which the individual control their desires and impulses.

Week- Activity 6 – Building A Cross-Cultural Web Design For A Wider Audience

The topic of E-learning activity 6 discusses the significance of building cross-cultural websites for the companies to attract a large number of audiences (Calabrese, et al. 2014). Simple and easy accessibility of internet has influenced the world to appear a homogenous place where more people visit the multilingual pages. As the number of English speakers is decreasing, so it gives rise for the designers to build the websites in such a way that it follows the present trends of design and also optimise the search engines so as to provide access to full range of people around the world. 

It is essential to consider the cultural difference while designing the websites as it impacts the ways of processing information by the people. The impact of the culture has an impact on the way the website is designed so as to appeal the audiences of a different culture. Here the difference between the two websites of the same company for different countries that follow the different culture is mentioned (Duncker, et al. 2013). While designing the websites a general rule is to be applied that indicates either high context or low context culture. It states that low context cultures embrace the professionalism and straightforward information and high context cultures embrace interactive and explanatory information.

It is essential for the web designers to use proper tools like CSS and Unicode UTF-8 so that they can build the website which can travel across different cultures easily. CSS allows the web designers to modify the images and text languages between the pages of the website as it enables the web designer to store the content of the website so as to avoid the redesigning of websites. Unicode UTF-8 helps the web designers to build the website in multiple languages as it has a character encoder that covers the scripts into over 90 languages.

It also helps us to understand the navigation of web pages according to the different languages like English, French, Arabic or Hebrew. The horizontal navigation of the web pages enables the web designers to keep the design symmetrical thereby looking creative and innovative enough (Chen, et al. 2015). This activity also provides tips which are effective for language translation of websites so as to make it accessible to different cultures.

Conclusion

Thus it is concluded in activity 3 that different countries and individuals in the country follow different culture which can be analysed by using Hofstede’ cultural dimensions so as to avoid conflicts and challenges by resolving it. It is an effective tool to compare two or more companies by using 6 dimensions (Mazanec, et al. 2015).

The conclusion of activity 6 is that it is very important for the companies to target a large number of the audience so the role of web designers is very important as by building the multilingual websites the companies can appeal and allure a large number of targeted audiences (Duncker, et al. 2013).

References

1.Arno, C, 2010 Building A Cross-Cultural Web Design For A Wider Audience [online available at https://onextrapixel.com/building-a-cross-cultural-web-design-for-a-wider-audience/] [accessed on 11-Dec-2017]

2.Bakir, A., Blodgett, J.G., Vitell, S.J. and Rose, G.M., 2015. A preliminary investigation of the reliability and validity of Hofstede’scross culturaldimensions. In Proceedings of the 2000 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 226-232). Springer, Cham.

3.Calabrese, A., Capece, G., Di Pillo, F. and Martino, F., 2014. Cultural adaptation of web design services ascriticalsuccess factor for business excellence: a cross-cultural study of Portuguese, Brazilian, Angolan and Macaneseweb sites. Cross CulturalManagement, 21(2), pp.172-190.

4.Chen, J.V., Yen, D.C., Pornpriphet, W. and Widjaja, A.E., 2015. E-commerceweb siteloyalty: Across culturalcomparison. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(6), pp.1283-1299.

5.Duncker, E., Sheikh, J.A. and Fields, B., 2013, July. From global terminology to local terminology: A review on cross-cultural interface design solutions. In International Conference on Cross-Cultural Design (pp. 197-207). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

6.Mazanec, J.A., Crotts, J.C., Gursoy, D. and Lu, L., 2015. Homogeneity versus heterogeneity of cultural values: An item-response theoretical approach applying Hofstede's cultural dimensions in a single nation. Tourism Management, 48, pp.299-304.

7.Online available at https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/ [accessed on 11-Dec-2017]

8.Rallapalli, K.C. and Montgomery, C.D., 2015. Marketing Strategies For Asian-Americans: Guidelines Based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions. In Minority Marketing: Research Perspectives for the 1990s (pp. 73-77). Springer, Cham.