Corning and Vitro

To sum up, attitudes, orientations, emotions, and expressions differ strongly among people from American or Mexican. These differences are fundamentally cultural. According to Hofstede's culture dimensions, we can get the conclusion as the table demonstrated below:

American

Mexican

Power Distance: Small Large

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Individualism Collectivism

Femininity vs. Masculinity: Masculinity Masculinity

Uncertainty Avoidance: Low High

Short-Long Term Orientation: Long Short

(Hofstede, G. 2001)

As shown in the table, although culture of both countries has masculinity characters, there is still a large culture gap in other aspects between American and Mexican. Therefore, without fully understanding Mexico's culture leads to the failure of Corning's alliance strategy with Vitro.

2. Cultural clashes among partners in joint ventures are not a new issue. Discuss why an MNC, and specifically Corning, would be interested in fully understanding the culture of a potential before deciding on an alliance.

Culture clash - the cultures of the companies are not compatible and compete for dominance. The businesses of both companies suffer while attention is diverted to the contest and it may destroy the key element of prior success. (Jeff Jacobs 2001)

Although there is evidence of increasing cultural convergence between countries around the world, cultural differences among countries will persist. It is widely recognized that cultural differences between the partners of a merger are one of the most common reasons for failure in mergers, this may happen during pre-merger negotiations or during post-merger integration.

Thus, fully understanding the culture of a potential can help managers anticipate problems in negotiating mergers and prevent them from disrupting what can be an attractive and mutually beneficial market entry strategy.

In this case, as an innovative leader in foreign alliances, Corning has formed...