The pygmalion effect

The pygamalion effect is a phenomenon that consist on affirmating that when the expectations put on a person are great, that person will perform better than if the expectations were low. It is also related with the constant need of looking for perfection (which does'nt exist), like the greek sculptorr of the story used to do, and he fell in love with a sculpture because no woman was perfect.

This facts are very easy to observe in people and companies, an example of it is Mc Donald's.

As it is already know there is no such a thing as perfection, there are not perfect markets or perfect clients, all of them have barriers (specially cultural) and that is why the company must addapt in order to succed, instead of looking for perfection. By the other hand when a company is big and importan as Mc Donald's people have huge expectations and the company itself have huge expectations upon the employees, this is some king of presure that can make them work more effiently.

An specifict case that perfectly ilustrates whas has been already saidis the entrance of Mc Donald's to the indian market, it wasn´t perfect at all, it represented a big risk because of the cultural barriers, but the company didn't back up, they moved forward, even when they coulden´t sell products with meal (because the cow is their sagred animal), so they came up with new products made with curry, soja, chiken and vegetables. The strategy was totally succesfull and the comapny had a godd customer acceptance in the country that has definitly contributed to its grow, this would have never happened if they had try to enter in a more perfect market for their products or if they hadn't had so much presure upon their shoulders.

It also has to be said that hen a company is trying to go forward it has more presure and it forces the managers to develop better strategies to achieve the goals, like the idea of developing new products for a new market.

1. Considering the conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences" by Nick B. Meyer, choose 1 cultural dimension and use hypothetical but realistic situations - or real ones - to illustrate the business implications of cultural differences. You may not use situations or examples already discussed in class or in the conference.

As we already know there are many factors that can influence a negotiation and one one of the most important ones is culture; this is why negotiators have to learn how to deal with all cultural barries in order to be successful; taking into account that cultures are very different one of the other in all dimensions.

One cultural dimension that perfectly explains this affirmation is the masculinity vs. the femininity; it consists in the different kind of roles that belong to each gender. Masculin roles are defferent in every culture, but they have many common aspects, they are competitive and ambicious, they live in order to work and tend to feel more sympathy for the successfu achiever. By the other hand femininity is almost the same in any culture and it is characterized by modesty and care, they work in order to live and they feel sympathy for the unfortunate.

According to these characteristics a country or a society can be clasified as masculin or feminine, and this is what has to be studied or taken into account when doing bussiness with a person or a company from a different country, because their priorities and the negotiation style can be very different according to the gender.

Japan, Venezuela and Mexico are masculin cultures and Sweden, Norway and Netherlands are feminim countries.

For example if we are going to do business with a Japanesse negotiador we have to take into account that his values are more masculin and his priorities are working and becoming more sucessful, so maybe he won´t be very interested in loosing a lot of time, and also there are more posibilities that he feels more respect for a person that he perceives as successful.

The contrary example would be if we are doing bussines with a person or company from Norway who would problably be more interested in the necesities of the other partie when negotiating or with the employees dued to its carring values, and maybe they would be less strict with the time if the other person has a family or a problem.

These examples are the prove of the importance of knowing a culture before dealing with it, specially nowadays because the world is globalizing.