International Business Management

We interviewed two managers from KIA auto mobile. Mr.kim and Mr.choi are in auto mobile manufacturing team and they visited manufacturing facilities in Iran and Japan for supporting manufacturing techniques. Also, they didn’t go with their family.

1. Identify the problems they experienced

Iran

Mr.kim visited Iran to support their auto mobile product technique. At first, he had suffered from communication problem because most people in Iran speak Greek and little English.

Besides language, at workplace mr.kim was very upset by Iranian workers’ behaviors. No one volunteered to do work even though it was their job, making it very hard for Mr. Kim to control them and enforce their duties. But few weeks later, he realized they were neither lazy nor selfish. When they were individually allocated with specific amount of work, such as certain amount of car-engines within certain time span, motivated by daily goals and targeting process, they worked hard enough to amuse the manager.

Off the workplace, Iran was, overall, a very strict country with a lot of governmental regulations. Once, he was going out for a drink with other colleagues. He had to wait for more than two hours to get just one bottle of liquor. The liquor- seller was very cautious about governmental policy and kept on changing the place they should meet. Being a typical Korean to enjoy drinking, Mr.kim thought to himself, “why would it be so hard to get a bottle of beer?” It was not until he studied local law system and religious culture that he found out the reason. Iran forbids drinking alcohol by the law. But it is said that many people secretly make liquor in home to tacitly enjoy drinking.

Japan

Mr.choi had been sent to Japan as an expatriate manager. At the workplace, there weren’t many young workers and most were over their 50s. He realized Japanese workers were excessively kind, to some extent, but that was no surprise, since he already knew that Japanese were kind. Contemplating on...