ITC associate has decided to open a new subsidiary in Poland so as to expand their access to a broader pool of experienced and exposed European employees. The company has primarily resolute in sending three major Irish managers to Poland; a decision that is welcomed by both broad advantages and disadvantages as well. It is worth noting that interaction and communication are the main tasks to be upheld by the newly appointed manager especially considering the fact that Poland is an alien country with a different business culture. As such, the three will have to employ a noble and working framework so as to side with the Poland market’s culture which obvious bares its own negotiating script. His is because before the implementation of any plans on how ITC company will establish its business stay in the country, the associates will have to negotiate with the country’s necessary internal and external stakeholder. ITC’s decision should further be grounded on the fact that there is an employment of various Poland national categories of employees as well as the need to equalize local and international competitive advantage. Ideally, Poland is one of the nations in the European sphere that embrace a hierarchical culture that is incorporated with an elevated power distance. As such, role definition remains very essential and authority, especially the government, is respected; a factor that ITC associates will have to bear in mind.

Advantages of Expatriation

ITC remains to be one of the outstanding companies when it comes to expatriation in business. The company’s associates will be the key driving forces of the project’s establishment whereas the three managers will help them as they have set skills for the implementation of the whole project. Expatriation to Poland will equally help in increasing the number of subsidiaries established by ITC in the recent past, hence not only enlarging its culture sphere but also ensuring profit maximization, economic diversity, and workplace diversity. Considerably, the culture between Ireland and Poland is different, hence making Poland a nice place for the associates, managers, and other employees to learn a new culture and interact with new people, a factor that will strengthen the company’s progress. Poland employees and other stake holders will equally have the chance of acquiring new facts and company knowhow from their expatriate counterparts, therefore, providing learning and interaction mutuality between the two parties, Ireland and Poland (Salacuse, 2004, p.5). ITC associates will also have a chance to learn more about the progress and development of business in the Poland sphere, a factor that will enormously contribute in boosting the development of their career. In any case, the world has in the recent past been articulated to be a global village thereby encouraging that working or establishing business in other countries around the world by various individuals and companies is one of the major goals of making it a nice place of living.

Challenges of Expatriation

The debut of ITC company’s expatriation in Poland is majorly and primarily dependent on cross cultural negotiations between the company’s three proposed managers and local or new subsidiary management team. As such, there are various issues that need to be shed light on for the success of the latter. Beginning with, it should be taken into account that ITC associates and managers have never worked with or been to Poland before either with ITC or any other organization. The epitome of this argument is, it will be somehow tedious especially for the ITC team to negotiate swiftly from political and cultural perspectives. However, this begins with language barrier. In essence, all the ITC team members are not conversant with the widely used Polish language in Poland. In other words, it will be difficult telling how the patterns and sequence of negotiating behaviour shall evolve between the two since the latter depends on the behaviour of both sides, hence considered to be mutual and progressive.

Prudently noting, apart from dressing, religion, food, and language, there are other ways in which the negotiations between the two parties will be most probably undermined. Lee and Carter (2011, pg. 1) opines that during the era in which Enron, an oil company, monopolised the oil business, it drastically failed and was later totally crippled due to lack of a proper formula of negotiations between the company pioneers and Indian locals. This did not only make the company lose the Indian contract but it equally led to many other countries pulling out of business with it due to the bad reputations it had set in India during the negotiations. This clearly depicts that the ITC managers are no exception since they might also fail in penetrating the Polish market if they lay down lame negotiation strategies which might probably kill the mutuality required in between them and the Polish firm as he proposed new subsidiary.

On the other hand, culture will affect the negotiations since there might be a disagreement on whether the negotiation goal will be relationship or contract based. In other words, both negotiators might view the purpose of the negotiation from various perspectives. Whereas the ITC officials might consider the negotiations as a loop-hole of amercing huge profits from their new Polish expatriate, the other party might negotiate on the grounds of hoping to earn huge salaries from them; hence making the expectations vice versa (Salacuse, 2010, p. 190). This at last cripples the negotiations watering down everything.

Despite the fact that personal style in many organizations in the current world in formal, some other cultures still use informal style of communication. For instance, when comparing the ITC managers’ culture, official dressing, communication, and general behaviour is the order of the day. However, the Polish behave quite differently as they nurture and value their ancient culture more than other countries in the European sphere. This also brings up the issue on each party’s attitude of negotiating. In some cases, one party might be interested in a win-lose situation whereas the other may embrace a win-win solution (Weihrich and Koontz, 2005). However, as the primary stakeholders in the negotiations, the Polish team might most probably be interested in a win-win solution since they will not be the initiators of the deal. On the other hand, ITC managers’ team might be interested in a win-lose solution since they will be project or negotiation initiators, hence, this will cripple the deal and at last now of the parties will gain from each other.

Irish managers are also expected to face some sought of racial injustices such as white stereotypes as they will be negotiating with the Polish firms’ representatives. Due to the fact that Ireland’s economy is far much established as opposed to the Poland’s, it might serve as a negotiation barrier as a result of the Polish considering themselves inferior before the Irish managers. This will further scale down and escalate to a more furious state whereby the Polish will not even feel comfortable negotiating on a losing deal. According to Demerath (2000, pg.128), this can be termed as neo-colonialism to the Polish, a claim that might not be true from the Irish side. To add on, the Irish will have to be more emotionally contented as to bear with the Polish’s emotions.

It will be equally tedious for the Irish and Polish to agree either commonly or specifically on the terms and conditions they will lay down for the establishment of ITC in Poland. Notably, since each side would like to have a lion share on the total cost and profits of the company’s operations on the land, the primary stakeholder, the Polish firms, will have to insist on a specific agreement. Though so, this might not be accepted by the other side due to the company’s terms and conditions of ITC as a whole. To cop-up with such a scenario, the Irish managers will have to make a brilliant decision on whether to build an agreement top-down or bottom-up. To penetrate this, the bottom-up agreement will have to be used by the Irish managers. This will not only help in bringing closer the Polish firms through allowing them to own a large portion of the company’s shares in the Poland.

Summarily, it can be concluded that negotiations between people from different cultures might proof to be tedious in a couple of ways. As noted above, this might further lead to more misunderstandings and confusion in communication. Presumably, there is need for ITC to consider the above barriers awaiting them before thinking of completely implementing their plan of having an expatriate in Poland. Otherwise, the negotiations might work against them hence destroying their long-term build reputation and financial muscles as well.

References

Demerath III, N.J., 2000. The rise of “cultural religion” in European Christianity: learning from Poland, Northern Ireland, and Sweden. Social Compass, 47(1), pp.127-139.

Lee, K. and Carter, S., 2011. Global marketing management. Strategic Direction, 27(1).

Salacuse, J.W., 2010. Teaching international business negotiation: Reflections on three decades of experience. International Negotiation, 15(2), pp.187-228.

Salacuse, J.W., 2004. Negotiating: The top ten ways that culture can affect your negotiation. IVEY business journal, 69(1), pp.1-6.

Weihrich, H. and Koontz, H., 2005. Management: A global perspective. Tata McGraw-Hill. N.p.

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