Asian Business

This case mainly discusses the issue of the insufficient preparedness to do business with major Asian partners from Australian point of view (Mcgregor 2011). The lack of preparedness rests with the deficiency of understanding of Asian culture, which may create frictions and difficulties in business area (Mcgregor 2011). It is well-known that Asian emerging markets, especially China, are thriving, which necessitates significant amounts of economic cooperation and trading in between. As a result, it is imperative that future generations of Australia should gain increasing understanding of Asian culture, which should be addressed by high investments in cultural education, in order to deal with Asian business partners and nurture the long-term relationship (Mcgregor 2011).

The issue highlighted above is pertinent to the topic of socio-cultural environment delivered in CISS2001. Culture can be layered by nation, region, ethnic group, social-class and so on (Fee 2011). In this case, culture is discussed at a national level to discern cultural differences between Australia and China. One the one hand, globalization is a driving force of cultural exchange (Fee 2011). The creation of global markets, the expansion of multinational enterprises and the transfer of the productive technology would all promote cultural convergence, which flushes the bilateral trades between Australia and China (Needle 2010). On the other hand, culture can be served as a barrier to globalization, in other words, the cultural convergence may be limited by cultural diversity to some extent (Fee 2011). The inadequacy of understanding towards Asian languages and cultures may slow down the pace of MNEs expansion in Asian market and impede the regional integration (Mcgregor 2011). In addition, culture is never static. It can be learned, shared, and adaptive by people (Fee 2011). Australia's multiracial societies have made its culture more dynamic.

Cultural differences between Australia and China may be influenced by policy formulation and underlying ideology. According to Hofstede's study, Australia scores 36 and 90 in comparison with China's score of 78 and 10 in terms of power distance and social orientation (Needle 2010). In China, there is an enormous inequality among people on the basis of strict class structures. The strict hierarchy within society is the best way for Chinese communist party to gain consolidated power in order to avoid civil unrests (Convictcreations 2011). In contrast, Australia is an egalitarian society and the power distance tends to be weak, resulted from Australia's intellectual diversity and rapid changes of society (Convictcreations 2011). With regard to social orientation, China is a collectivist society. Influenced by ideology of Confucianism, the importance of relationship, responsibility and loyalty is emphasized in China (Travelchinaguide 2011). As a result, Chinese people place family and community