A Case Study Of Transnational Corporate Culture In China: An Intercultural Perspective

Hofstede’s theory consists of five dimensions: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, and long/short term orientation. Different cultures have differences in five value dimensions, when transnational business develops business strategies or engages in cross-border business activities, it will inevitably face different consumer demand orientation and consumer habits, as well as different attitudes and behaviors of workers, resulting in difficulties in communicating with each other, bringing unprecedented challenges to the transnational management. Therefore, culture localization is the core strategy of corporation localization. The paper attempts to research on the transnational corporate culture in China to clear culture barriers, construct corporate culture and facilitate cross-cultural management.The paper firstly gives an overall view of research background, research significance, and the structure of the paper. On the basis of literature review and previous study, applying Hofstede’s culture dimensions theory, national culture and corporate culture, together with culture localization, the paper adopts empirical study method to analyze the behavior, related news and interviews, as well as questionnaire survey on corporate culture of Caterpillar Inc. The paper interprets the corporate culture from nine aspects: trust, mutual respect, teamwork, appointment and decentralization, adventure, sense of urgency, continuous improvement, commitment, and customer satisfaction. The paper finds the case company’s the power distance is low, in which culture employees participate in organizational changes and build a harmonious relationship with supervisors; the uncertainty avoidance is in middle level, employees tend to work independently, manage themselves, accept more view, and more likely to perform the authority from superior to subordinate; individualism and collectivism are combined, in which culture there exists competition as well as teamwork, which means employees support organization, while good individual performance will be rewarded; masculinity-oriented, which means major decisions are made by senior leaders, and policy is made and strongly executed from top to bottom; long-term orientation, in which culture the company focus on conservation, sustainable development and social responsibility.Based on the studies, the paper proposes three strategies supporting corporate culture construction: intercultural training, culture assimilation, culture transformation and innovation in host country’s environment, and draws a conclusion reinforcing the importance of corporate culture study for business success, and summarizes the research achievements, reflecting the theoretical and practical significance of the study.