A French-Senegalese manufacturing organization in Senegal was strug- gling with ways to increase production. The company’ s leadership was mostly comprised of French and Italian expatriates. Following some initial efforts and calculations, the French production manager concluded that it was impossible to increase the production levels by 25%. Coincidentally, he fell ill during this time and his assistant, a Senegalese national, took over the negotiation and decision making temporarily. A Senegalese worker approached the assistant with a proposal that workers were willing to increase the daily production by 30% or more in return for two hours’ additional pay. The Senegalese assistant did some calculations and consulted some influential people and accepted the proposal. The daily production increased between 30 to 40%. Upon his return, the French production manager did not fully support the agreement since he thought that his authority had been undermined, which led to worker dissatisfaction and low morale. It was clear that both the Senegalese staff and expatriate managers were equally interested in increas- ing performance. However, they did not manage their cultural differences well and thus were not able to work effectively as a team.
The tragic earthquake in Northern Pakistan and India, in the autumn of 2005, killed around 75,000 people, and left thousands injured and sick and about three million people homeless and at the mercy of harsh mountain winter weather. The urgent relief work included acquiring and supplying tents and food for the homeless and medical aid to the sick. Among several organizations, a major U.S.-based international relief organization mobi- lized its human and organizational resources to respond to this tragedy. Successful planning and delivery of relief service, in a large part, depended