Reference no: EM133323137

Case Study: A Finnish retail company located in Helsinki and managing several boutiques in the country, ordered clothes from a company located in Milan, Italy with strict deadlines and expectations that the goods will be delivered on time. The Finnish Purchasing Manager told two collaborators to make sure with their Italian suppliers that the orders are done and delivered on time. The two collaborators then contacted the local managers in Italy and agreed on due dates of the payments and delivery dates. In fact, the two collaborators thought everything was on track, however the delivery date came, yet no goods were delivered or even sent from Italy. The Finnish manager blamed the two collaborators for not doing their task well and directly contacted the manager in Italy and asked for a face-to-face meeting in Milan. During the meeting that took place in late hours of a day, the Finnish manager wanted to go straight to business and talk about the orders when the Italians managers would prefer to have a dinner and take the time for getting together first, as they thought nothing was wrong from their side. Once back to Helsinki, the purchasing officer explained to his collaborators how rude he perceived the Italians were because they came physically very close to him during the meeting and didn't stick to the points. The all case occurred because of a misunderstanding of delivery dates and expectation from the Italian team that Finnish was flexible with the delivery dates, which they were not; the rest of the meeting between the Finnish manager and the Italian team was chaotic because the Finnish manager could not obviously handle the cultural differences. He had been used to only do business in Finland with Finnish people before and had no understanding how different the business between two countries can be.

Question 1: What are the issues described in the case? Use as many theories learned in class, you shall use two or three Hofstede's or Trompenaars-Hampden's dimensions, to support your statements

Question 2: What recommendations would you make to avoid/prevent such issues to occur? Specifically, address each issue listed in question 1, analyze each of your recommendation's pros and cons