I.

South Africa culture

South Africa is known for its ethnic and cultural diversity.

South Africa is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. In urban areas many
different ethnic groups will make up the population. In addition to the indigenous black
peoples of South Africa colonialism and immigration have brought in white Europeans,
Indians, Indo-Malays, Chinese and many more..
● South Africa has eleven official languages, but other indigenous languages are also
spoken by smaller groups, chiefly Khoisan languages - one of eight notable informal
languages, the Khoisan language family is in danger of not being officially
recognized, although several language groups within South Africa are still finding
ways to popularize their use. retained it in order to further diversify South African
culture.
● Religion in South Africa: Christianity is one of the main religions in South Africa,
about 80% of South Africans follow Christianity. Other religions that coexist are
Hindu, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. A minority of indigenous blacks preserve and
maintain traditional African religions. In addition, about 70% of Indians in South
Africa are Hindu and 20% are Muslim.

Meetings :

● Arrive on time. White and Asian South Africans are especially punctual.
● You are expected to greet everyone in the room individually – even if the group is
large.
● Exchange business cards after a formal introduction and take a recognisable moment
to examine the content of the card you are given before putting it away.
● Initial meetings are often used for partners to familiarize themselves with one another
and establish business relationships.
● Expect a South African to be well prepared with a plan and structure of how they want
the meeting to go. An Afrikaner’s approach to business negotiations and their
expectations of what will be achieved can be perceived as quite stubborn to an
Australian. Keep in mind that this is simply a different business communication style;
they appreciate and value directness for the sake of clarity and mutual understanding.
● During discussions, give your full attention to the person speaking and listen
courteously. Respect is paramount.
● When making a suggestion or criticism, comment on the idea and not the person
voicing it.
● Avoid showing favor or preference to certain people, giving everyone an equal
opportunity to speak.
● Do not interrupt people when they are speaking or displaying heated emotions.
● Expect negotiations to move slowly.
● Reaching a win-win result is the ideal outcome of a meeting for a South African.

Trust Oriented
It should be considered that in South Africa, people do not instinctively trust each other upon
first meeting one another. Therefore, it is important that you establish healthy business
relationships with South Africans in order to build trust. They generally do not yearn for a
strong personal friendship, but rather a mutual understanding. If you exhibit respect to
everyone equally and find common ground, you are likely to gain more traction. If a South
African is not familiar with the reputation of your company or they cannot find enough
background information to support your claims of character, they will be wary of doing
business with you. Therefore, try to get someone that can vouch for you to give you a formal
introduction.

As trust is often an issue in South Africa, people tend to speak in a very direct, honest way
during business negotiations. Any ambiguity or vagueness on your behalf may be interpreted
as a sign of untrustworthiness, dishonesty or lack of commitment. Furthermore, contracts and
terms should be explicitly detailed to assure them that the deal is transparent.

II. International business strategy

The manufacturing and distributing system of Honda are also sources for the succession of
Honda. With the global network, Honda’s global strategies somehow include the
globalization characteristic. Honda has established independent local operations around the
world and pushed local autonomy and proactive efforts to localize the needs regional with
mutual understanding. The competition between Honda and others speed up year by year.
This somehow carries the win/lose characteristic.

1. Don't globalize, localize.

Unlike Toyota and most other multinationals in any industry, Honda is not a top-down
company, controlled by headquarters. Instead, Honda manufacturing subsidiaries virtually
everywhere around the world operate as autonomous companies, designing and producing
vehicles based on local conditions and consumer behavior.

R&D is sharpening the business advantage of Honda, together with the fierce competition
between Honda and competitors, and they all define the Business Strategy of Honda. One of
the proudest things about Honda is its R&D system. With the systematic way of resembling,
focus on durability, reliability and basic performance to establish a creative and innovative
technical foundation.

With the wise approach to the future, the Honda products do care about the economical,
environmental, and social issues – This leads to a steady increase in American and Europe
recently, meanwhile the whole industry is going down by some external factors such as the
U.S.D. depreciation, Oil price raising, political recession. Honda is keeping involved in the
research and development that will benefit people in the future through leading-edge
technology and commitment to innovation that opens up new possibilities in mobility.

With “The Joy of Selling” The dealership of Honda is also one of its strengths. Through
creating products and services that provide the core values that make Honda unique, Honda's
associates around the world keep creating such inspiring experiences for its customers. Honda
put heartfelt endeavors into services, responding to changing values and increasingly
complicated needs of customers worldwide. Its services focus on improving customer
relations, with friendly and attentive sales, responsive service support, thorough maintenance
and repairs. “Life with a Honda” Honda began unifying its multiple dealership channels into a
single Honda sales channel, seeking to strengthen the Honda brand, enhance customer
satisfaction, and help ensure lifetime customer loyalty.

2. Embrace paradox.

Honda is a questioning, knowledge-rich organization, which demands that its workers at all
levels continually poke holes in the status quo. They do that through daily, often spontaneous
meetings known as "waigaya" during which decisions, large and small, are reevaluated and
turned on their head in hopes of finding a better strategic or tactical choice.

Throughout its relatively short history, Honda has welcomed paradox as a way to promote
critical thinking and reassess the so-called common wisdom, shaping new responses to
ingrained expectations. As one Honda executive put it: "Waigaya’’ to me means perpetual
dissatisfaction. At our company, self-satisfaction is the enemy." The value of this system to a
multinational organization is immeasurable.

Nothing is more important for global companies today than having the dexterity to be
simultaneously local and international, to swiftly respond to regional preferences while
scaling operating tactics and manufacturing improvements around the world. And as Honda's
success in the international arena demonstrates, this capability is directly linked to
unremittingly reexamining with every new automobile model — more broadly, with every
new undertaking what is already believed to be true.

3. Robots? Not so fast.

Even as most major industrial corporations view robots and other forms of automation as the
best way to reduce costs and maintain productivity, Honda prefers a different path. Honda's
factories are purposefully the most labor intensive in the auto industry, employing robots only
in areas that are dangerous or otherwise obviously less fit for humans than machines.

Honda believes that assemblers become disengaged and their enthusiasm for their jobs and,
by extension, local innovation is muted by the presence of machines whose sole purpose is to
build cars cheaper and faster than humans.

As Honda sees it, output and quality standards are too often set to the levels that the
technology can achieve and rather than the boundless creativity of human imagination.
Consequently, to enhance performance in a local facility, a new piece of equipment would
have to be purchased, instead of a potentially revolutionary process invented. "Once you
automate, you're incapable of further improvement," said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at
the Center for Automotive Research, paraphrasing Honda's perspective.

4. Put an engineer in the hot seat.

Since Honda's founding in 1949 all of the company's CEOs (including the father of the
company, Soichiro Honda) have been engineers, veterans of Honda's prized autonomous
research and development unit. That's an extraordinary record: Conventional wisdom among
multinationals holds that the most effective chief executives are specialists in marketing,
sales, or perhaps accounting — anything but engineering.

As a result, even CEOs in technologically based industries, like pharmaceuticals or computer

hardware and software, tend to know little about designing or manufacturing the products that
they sell or managing the global supply chain or factory footprint. That's often why CEOs
favor centralization in which their most loyal lieutenants near headquarters oversee
distributed operations, acting as both a trusted proxy and informant for the chief executive.

Reared in R&D, Honda CEOs' strengths lie in product and process innovation, primarily in
designing new vehicle models and features and in conceiving fresh techniques for building
them faster and better. Consequently, their success as managers is measured not by quarter-
to-quarter results but instead by how well they cultivate individual creativity throughout the
organization and how well they disburse Honda's unique corporate culture to its decentralized
localization strategy to produce continuous innovation.

III. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE OF HONDA IN LIGHT OF HOFSTEDE

MODEL

The organizational culture model proposed by Hofstede holds seminal importance as it has
been frequently applied by analysts to analyze the organizational culture of any company.
Honda’s organizational culture can also be analyzed in light of Hofseted’s cultural model.
The model has six dimensions, as listed below:

● Means oriented versus goals oriented

● Internally driven versus externally driven
● Easy going work discipline versus the strict work discipline
● Local versus Professional organizational culture
● Open system versus the closed system
● Employee orientation versus work orientation

Dimension 1: Means oriented versus goals oriented

Honda has successfully attained the right balance between the mean and goal orientation, as it
emphasizes the importance of accomplishing the goals, and meanwhile encourages employees
to take risks only if they are worthwhile.

● By focusing on the mean orientation, Honda ensures that the employees must adopt
the ethical and integrated ways for accomplishing the assigned goals because it
considers integrity as its core value. In this way, employees are encouraged to only
promote healthy competition.
● By focusing on the goal orientation, Honda encourages its employees to put their best
efforts into accomplishing the assigned goals. Employees are not punished for sharing
new ideas and taking risks. In this way, Honda has successfully reduced the fear of
failure from its employees.
The analysis suggests that the successful organizations like Honda intend to find the right
equilibrium position on the mean and goal orientation continuum.

Dimension 2: Internally driven versus externally driven

Honda's organizational culture is more internally than externally driven. Despite ensuring a
quick response to the changing customer needs, the top management openly
communicates the importance of adopting an ethical attitude while responding to the
market needs. The company shares a strong commitment to embedding ethics and integrity
into its business operations. The internally driven organizational culture has enabled the
organization to use its ethical brand image as a tool to get a strong competitive edge over rival
firms.

Dimension 3: Easy going work discipline versus the strict work discipline
The analysis of Honda's organizational culture reveals that the company is more closely
related to the disciplined work culture with vertical hierarchy and tall structure. It
means the management withholds the decision making authority, and directly controls
the employees’ work behavior. The creative and innovative work behaviors are promoted by
rewarding the employees with various monetary and non-monetary rewards, but the
empowerment and autonomy is limited due to organizations’ inclination towards strict work
discipline.

However, in response to the employees’ growing need for autonomy and empowerment, the
management has decided to make a gradual shift from the centralized to decentralized
organizational structure. This shift will transfer some authority from top to the bottom, and
consequently, the organization will attain a new equilibrium between strict and fluid
structure.

Dimension 4: Local versus Professional organizational culture

In the case of Honda, the company promotes a professional attitude among its employees.
There is no obligation to behave in a particular way. At Honda, diversity is promoted and
differences are appreciated. It is done to leverage the opportunities offered by such
constructive differences. Honda's example shows the importance of cultivating a
professional organizational culture to remain successful in a highly diversified
environment.

Dimension 5: Open system versus the closed system

The analysis of Honda's organizational culture shows that the company has a clear
inclination towards the open side. In Honda, there are open communication lines and
the organizational culture is flexible and well-diversified. The competitive advantage of
Honda also lies in its ability to manage a highly diversified workforce.

The open cultural system has enabled Honda to ensure a high information flow and leverage
the knowledge, skills and competencies of employees from diversified backgrounds. Both
these factors are considered important by the multinational organizations like Honda to timely
respond to the changing customers’ needs in different geographic areas.

Dimension 6: Employee orientation versus work orientation

The Honda management truly understands the value of its human capital, and hence
prioritizes employee satisfaction and motivation. Although employees are assigned with the
challenging goals, the management takes care of their concerns and avoids pressurizing them
that may lead the employees towards burnout. The equilibrium between the task and
employee orientation is attained by:

● Assigning the challenging goals and offering rewards to maximize the task
performance
● Providing employees with necessary coaching, mentoring and guidance to
accomplish the assigned goals
● Discouraging the employees from making overtime a common norm in the
workplace.
● Motivating and training the employees to manage stress and time, which is
important for both- improving the task performance, and improving the
psychological well-being.

Overall analysis
The overall analysis suggests that these individual cultural dimensions also interact with
each other. For example, the Honda tends to balance its means orientation and goal
orientation, and shares a closer inclination to the mean orientation, which is
interconnected with its inclination towards the internally driven dimension. Both these
dimensions emphasize ethics and integrity, and inclination towards one dimension (e.g.
mean orientation) automatically predicts the organization cultures’ inclination towards
the second dimension (e.g. internally driven culture).

IV. Recommendation

It is difficult for us to know what the others are thinking, so understanding the environment
will help us to guess the situation and explain the direction of action of the partner in
business. The marketplace is like a battle, knowing how to take advantage and judge are
important factors for managers, each country has a different culture, so business needs
immediate and appropriate change. And here are some tips on managing multiculturalism
when it comes to doing business in South Africa:
- Avoiding prejudice: You should expand your thinking to understand more about the
needs of work and communication between team members, thereby helping them to
resolve conflicts and misunderstandings if any.
+ As for personal distance, South Africans often keep a certain distance when talking.
Although South Africans always avoid confrontation, the level of candor varies by
population group. South Africans of European descent are often forthright and do not
like to talk around. They don't find it difficult to say "no" if they don't like or turn
down an offer. They value honesty and straightforwardness more than tact and tact.
They don't like unclear statements, open opinions, anxiety and little concern for other
people's feelings. South Africans of British descent are sometimes very vague and
precise and difficult to understand. As for black South Africans, on the contrary, they
seem to be more discreet than the above groups. Instead of saying "no" they will have
meaningful statements like: “We will think about it”, “I am not sure” or “We need to
talk about this”. Your last name won't be in a hurry to turn you down right away. For
 blacks, silence is considered denial. Gestures in this country are delicate and skillful,
especially among Anglo-South Africans.
- Interpretation
When learning about human resources, communication style is an important thing you need
to understand.
+ For example, when addressing South Africans, you should arrange the first and
last names in the following order: first the first name, then the last name. Please
add Mr./Mrs./Miss first.
+ You need to know that South Africans are often very tactful and serious in
communication and they only speak loudly when they want to emphasize something.
+ At restaurants, especially those suitable for business exchanges, you should
always speak softly. Making noise, disorderly and disturbing others is impolite
behavior in South Africa.
+ Touching is uncommon among Anglo-South Africans but is used more frequently
among black South Africans. However, you should not touch someone's head even
if it is a child, and do not use your hand to point at others.
+ Eye contact is one of the most successful ways to convey information, but don't
overdo it with someone of higher status and don't stare at people.
- Preparation: You should understand some South African styles before starting a
meeting/negotiation
+ South Africans always want to know who they are going to meet, so before the
meeting, you must provide detailed information about the titles, positions and
responsibilities of the participants as well as suggestions and tentative agenda of
the meeting. South Africans rarely change their plans, they take time very seriously
so you should not let them wait more than 5 to 10 minutes. However, don't show
anger if you have to wait as it can make your image worse.
- Observe interactions between employees
When in a leadership position, you need to be on the lookout for early signs of cultural
misunderstandings that could create conflict among team members. Empathy with each
member of the team is important to not escalate a stressful situation.
+ The customs and laws of race and color can be very strict so the best thing to do is
always follow the direction of your company's (native) representative when
encountering problems. internal conflicts. Some white people, especially European
South Africans, often have a hostile attitude toward relatives or domestic workers of
black descent. However, in the process of working, you rarely see them make racist
remarks. When working with a black businessman, be empathetic and understand the
fact that this group of people has been under tremendous pressure from the majority of
the population. In South Africa's business culture, respect for others depends on one's
education. Anglo-South Africans emphasize status and rank while others are
concerned with individual knowledge and talent. Admiring someone depends on
whether that person is honest and trustworthy
+> Cultural formation is shaped by the length of history of each country. Each culture has its
own distinctive features that create harmony and contribute to the creation of human culture.
Understanding cultures helps managers to understand their partners and make appropriate
changes in the business process, which is leading to create a successful negotiation.