Footwear International

Footwear International

Operating in a different culture from your home location can have challenges; especially when you aren’t aware of certain cultural issues that might raise a problem for your company. Footwear International has operations in 70 countries and is well experienced in operating abroad; however, their lack of responsibility and due diligence in Bangladesh is appalling to say the least.

Bangladesh is predominantly Muslim (85% of population); with approx. 93 billion Muslim people in the nation. That serves as a magnificent market for Footwear assuming one per of shoes is consumed every two years. Despite Footwear employing mostly Bangladeshi personnel, they must be held accountable for their lackluster performance in allowing such design as a company in its entirety. An integral part of the problem that faced Footwear was that individuals who were responsible for marketing decisions were based in headquarters away from Bangladesh and aren’t familiar with the culture they were involved in. The fact that the designer was Bangladeshi and Moslem doesn’t justify the cause; since they couldn’t read Arabic and didn’t object. A major portion of Muslims would identify Allah in Arabic even if they were very unfamiliar with the language. Having Bangladeshi employees in the marketing and development department is probably a good idea to identify with the culture however there seems to be a subpar performance and review on their part as they weren’t able to catch such a major insult to Muslims. It is important to note and surprising that a Libyan newspaper reported this incident in a country that’s miles away and irrelevant to its borders as well as that the newspaper incorrectly identified the owners as Jews; obviously this issue had a political initiatives behind it; however, it is also crucial to note that no one in Bangladesh had complained when the design is obviously very close to the Arabic version of Allah.

John Carlson stance is indeed justified regarding why this issue didn’t arise for such a long time and wasn’t even acknowledged by the Bangladeshi public until a Libyan newspaper spread the word. However, John Carlson must ensure that his Marketing and Department are better aware of cultures that they take part in. Hiring Bangladeshi employees without educating other departments overseas on the culture can cause for problems to arise such as this one; furthermore, it is apparent that employees weren’t empowered enough to suggest that this identifies with Allah in Arabic since any Muslim, whether devout or not or speaks Arabic or not, can identify the term Allah in Arabic. John must work with the rest of his organization to enable them to better align themselves with the culture they’re taking part in; furthermore, he should empower employees to speak up when they see something that might cause distress. Hence why he is hiring Bangladeshis