William Jonson

William Jonson arrived in Santiago in January 1997 and without speaking Spanish and no working experience in Chile, and with William Jonson American’s character he was isolated. A Chilean manager think William Jonson should speak Spanish so that he could be received , otherwise, he cannot blend in Chilean workers’ group. (Brian R, David and Henry W, n.d.)Neither William Johnson and Chilean workers are willing to learn the other’s languages, which means there is a language barrier. The sub-issue of language always lead to culture barrier, so ,they have not effectively communicated exactly what is expected from each other. This is causing productivity issues. But the fact that each company has much to gain from this venture and are both interested in the longevity of it. According to Hofstede’s Culture Dimension research, we can know the difference between American and Chilean in culture aspect.

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Uncertainty Avoidance: No one knows the future things, so the future things should be controlled or let it happened? Compared with Chilean, the Americans have more patience to the new things, innovative products, and Americans are willing to try something new or different, whether it comes to technology, business, etc. Americans always have more tolerant for every person of their ideas or opinions, and to allow freedom of speech. Relative to American, Chileans get high score in Uncertainty Avoidance which is 86.The Chilean are more conservative, they need rules or system to guide and control. And Chile employees always rely on managers, experts.( Hofstede website)

Individualism: In individualistic societies, people only care about themselves or their direct family members, in collectivist societies, people doing things priority with a ‘group’ , collectivist societies do not emphasize individual work. Americans have a high scored 91 points in this dimension, it is undoubtedly Americans belongs to the individualistic society, Chileans have 23 points so that they more toward to collectivism society. Americans are accustomed to doing business with strangers, they expect employees enable self-reliance and display initiative. Americans prefer that managers and employees should exchange consultation and information frequently. Stressing everyone should have equal right such as same information of business. Chilean managers and employs there have many different views.( Hofstede website)

William Johnson and Chilean workers are now in the embarrassed situation because language and culture barriers. The five culture dimension(Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long term Orientaion) are all different. So, solve the barriers to let Robert Mondavi Company has more competitive advantage is the main task and goal. Exchanging of information, ideas, decision making and so on. Leadership actions based on communicating effectively of different cultural backgrounds between managers and employees. In a multinational company like the Robert Mondavi company .Whenever the host country and the parent country do not share the same language , the parent will feel an increased sense of uncertainty. JV will use one language of the partners for working language, the partner with that language will dominate the relationship during the communication, Which post increasing pressure on the Joint Ventures. (Feely, A.J. and Harzing, A.W., 2003.) So, William Johnson was isolated.