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Karen Leary Case Analysis

Decent Essays

Karen Leary Case Analysis

1) What is the most significant problem in the case?

The most significant problem lies between Karen and Ted is cultural difference.
Besides, they seem to have communicating problem derived from cultural misunderstanding.

Therefore, the problem is caused by both of them. But the solution should be approached from Karen first because she is the manager (and also the vice president) over Ted. She is responsible to take care of her employees.

2) What are the reasons for the problem?

As I mentioned above, main reasons are misunderstanding caused by cultural difference. And Karen should give the solution, because she is the decision maker for this case. Also, Karen uses only one way to manage her …show more content…

This must be the main reason why Karen lost her control toward Ted.

It would be the best if she tried to learn Chinese and reached to a certain level to communicate basic things with her customer directly. But she didn’t try even to know Chinese cultural relationship, which is guan-xi (觀視).

Because of this, she can’t fully use a precious human capital, which is Ted. 3) Do you agree with what was done in the case regarding the problem? Why or why not?

The problem is still open so she has the final opportunity.

Of course, Karen have done really well except her attitude toward Chinese business. She is energetic, analytic, digital, and fast. She prefers to manage her people by direct contact and by coaching. But unfortunately, Ted has completely different character. He is rather slow, analogue, patient, and calm. He doesn’t want to share his work progress because it is hard to convert the relationship to numerable result.
Moreover, she has tried to manage the organization in hierarchy culture. So she always control and counsel her employees, but in fact Chinese organizational culture is more likely to be a clan culture. Based on this, I think that the office issue is just a catalyst to bring those conflicts behind to the surface.

Also Ted did something wrong in organizational point of view. Anyway he didn’t follow the rule of the company in some ways. Although Chinese culture is completely different from Americanized company culture, as a FC

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