It is 15:01 Monday in Shanghai. The Chinese R&D manager in Shanghai received an
email from the parent company in Sweden. The parent company asked for a
production ready model of the latest design in five days. He called the production
manager immediately. Three days later he got the new model but with 1mm error. He
knew it would be better to provide a standard model. However, he decided to notify
this problem to the Swedish manager first and let him to decide what to do. It is the
Chinese way of showing their respects to superior by asking their opinions on
everything. (Chinese R&D managers, 2010, see in Appendix III)
The cases above illustrate some of the main issues of multi-cultural management
during the process of international knowledge transfer. The management team has
devoted both time and energy in efforts to solve the issues, yet fail to derive any
effective solutions.