<p>Culture differences play a significant role in the international marketing, which has drawn many researchers‟ attention. This dissertation will focus on how the cross-cultural environments influence the choice of marketing strategies.</p><p>The theoretical framework of this study mainly contains cross-culture theories and 4P marketing strategy. These theories are put together in an analytical model where a connection between the two theories is explained that will be used as a foundation in gathering and analyzing the empirical findings.</p><p>The qualitative research strategy is employed in this dissertation. Utilizing the multiple case studies, we choose two sample companies both from USA. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured interviews on the telephone. Data was also supplemented with secondary data such as company web pages and scientific articles.</p><p>The conclusion can be drawn from this study is that culture differences influence the 4P marketing strategies in both of the companies in different ways. Language, value and customer behaviors of a national culture are main factors to affect the implementation of marketing strategy in the international markets.</p>

Research related to culture, and analysis of the collected information needs frameworks to understand and solve the complex questions about cross culture behaviour and their integration, particularly when a company with strong native cultural influence starts its operation in another country which has similarly strong local culture. Using Hofstede and Trompenaars, Hampden’s dimensions of cultural understanding, this study aims to understand and assess the challenges related to integration of cultures, when Swedish MNC IKEA started its IT Operation in Shanghai, drawing conclusions about how and if the cultural behaviours did fit the existing frameworks and underlining the cultural gaps still existing in the organisation.

Dagens arbetsplats blir alltmer internationell och därmed multikulturell. Medarbetare med skilda arbets- och tillvägagångssätt, idéer, traditioner och normer möts på nya sätt och i nya situationer. För att dessa kulturmöten ska bli givande och stimulerande för alla parter, finns behovet av en medvetenhet för de kulturella skillnaderna. Denna studie är en beskrivning av vilka upplevelser och erfarenheter som fanns inom det kulturellt blandade projektet, ”Pegasus” på Skanska Sverige AB. Dessutom kartläggs förberedelser en organisation och dess medarbetare bör beakta. Resultatet baseras på halvstrukturerade intervjuer med åtta medarbetare, med god erfarenhet ifrån det gällande cross-culture, tvärkulturella, projektet. Dessa tolkades i enlighet med en induktiv tematisk analys. Studien visar på vikten av att tillägna sig och försöka få en så god förförståelse, uppfattning och medvetenhet som möjligt för vad det innebär att komma ifrån olika kulturer. Det handlar om att gå in i projektet med öppna ögon och se till, istället för att bortse ifrån, de kulturella skillnaderna så att internationella projekt kan nå bästa möjliga resultat.

Culture differences play a significant role in the international marketing, which has drawn many researchers‟ attention. This dissertation will focus on how the cross-cultural environments influence the choice of marketing strategies. The theoretical framework of this study mainly contains cross-culture theories and 4P marketing strategy. These theories are put together in an analytical model where a connection between the two theories is explained that will be used as a foundation in gathering and analyzing the empirical findings. The qualitative research strategy is employed in this dissertation. Utilizing the multiple case studies, we choose two sample companies both from USA. The empirical data was gathered through semi-structured interviews on the telephone. Data was also supplemented with secondary data such as company web pages and scientific articles. The conclusion can be drawn from this study is that culture differences influence the 4P marketing strategies in both of the companies in different ways. Language, value and customer behaviors of a national culture are main factors to affect the implementation of marketing strategy in the international markets.

Researchers have raised concerns about measurement equivalence in comparing personalities across cultures using personality assessments. The self-reported personality measurements often do not assess the same construct, trigger different response styles (i.e., extreme response style), or use behavioral exemplars that are inappropriate across cultures (Byrne&Watkins, 2003; Chen, 2008; Poortinga, van de Vijber,&van Hermert, 2002, van de Vijver&Leung, 1997). James et al. (2005) developed a new measurement system for aggression that is different from traditional personality assessment. It is referred to as the Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression (CRT-A). The CRT-A is an indirect measure for assessing unconscious motives to be aggressive that was developed in the USA. It has not been studied with people from different cultures. Study 1 investigated the equivalences of the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) and the CRT-A by administering both to groups of Americans (n=432) and Koreans (n=363). Results based on the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and DIF analyses showed that the AQ and CRT-A are not invariant across these cultures. Study 2 replicated LeBreton et al.(2007) study regarding faking issues of the CRT-A with the Korean population. Study 2 found that on the CRT-A, Koreans were able to identify aggressive alternatives when they were told to do so, and Korean students and employees did not score differently on the CRT-A. Implications and future directions of the study are discussed herein.

This project proposes is focus on having diversity in workforces of different cultures within theglobalized world that we live in. It is not enough to be perceived as effective in a singleorganization or by one nation. Leaders must look to understand how this can create acompetitive advantage and really should have skills that are perceived as effective by manydifferent people, despite cultural differences.The aim of this research is to have a better knowledge of how a leader can be perceived aseffective in a diverse workforce in Swedish and Thai context. And we also would like to knowthe employees’ expectation toward their future manager.To figure out the employees’ expectation, we conduct a questionnaire which was send to ourrespondents in both Thailand and Sweden. We are choosing currently workforce and futureworkforce of both countries to be our respondents. We also interview manager who have beenworked in multinational company about their experience of working in internationalenvironment.

This study focuses on the conflict process in a multi-culture team and discusses those factors which bring the conflict to next stage. In this study, 6 participators in Global MBA program which was formed by National Sun Yat-Sen Univiersity in Taiwan, University Victoria in Canada, and Johannes Kepler University in Austria were interviewed. By using narrative inquiry as research method, the study integrates different perspectives and analyzes factors behind this case. The result shows that if the interpersonal relationship is based on social-exchange theory, every participator provides one¡¦s good exchange with owned culture, but culture and value differences turn the goodness into misunderstandings. The expectation of one side wasn¡¦t met by the other side. The inefficient social exchange finally became subliminal conflict. In addition, peer support and mental balance play important roles in the process, and both of them are impacted by culture. The similarity of cultures connects people from different countries and builds up peer support which raises the subliminal conflicts to the surface. The difference of the cultures makes it more difficult to understand other¡¦s kindness. Both sides can¡¦t achieve mental balance, so it moves the conflict process back to previous stage and repeats itself. Finally, the attitude after conflict incident is the key factor to end up the conflict. Positive attitude helps participators to create more cultural understanding and solve the problem. On the contrary, negative attitude comes with rude behavior and brings down the organization. The study provides the empirical experience of the conflict process and further discussion which can be practiced in the cross-culture management and conflict management in the future.

The Conditional Reasoning Test-Relative Motive Strength (CRT-RMS; James, 1998) has shown to be a psychometrically reliable and valid approach for measuring implicit motives and biases in United States and European contexts (James&Rentsch, 2004; Mot, 2003). Extended from previous research, the current study demonstrated the utility of the CRT-RMS with a sample of 186 college students in Korea. The results showed a significant association between the CRT-RMS scores and Korean college students' grade point average. Korean samples also supported the dissociative model in relating with self-report measures. Additionally, mean score differences on implicit and explicit measures of achievement motivation between Korean and US samples provided meaningful information. Implications of cross-culturally valid implicit measures are discussed.

This thesis presents a three-phase longitudinal study of naïve psychology and pretend play behaviour development between preschool children in the United Kingdom (UK) and Singapore. Research conducted in the Western contexts has shown that children develop an understanding of pretence and desires at 18 months of age (e.g. Nielsen & Dissanayake, 2004; Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997), before level-1 visual perspective-taking at 2½ years of age (e.g. Flavell, Everett, Croft, & Flavell, 1981) and followed by level-2 visual perspective-taking, appearance-reality distinction and false-belief understanding at 4 years of age (e.g. Flavell et al., 1981; Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1983; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). A major issue that has dominated the field for many years concerns whether naïve psychology follows a universal developmental pattern. The majority of the studies to date have tended to rely heavily on false-belief understanding as an index of children’s understanding of mental representation. Some cross-cultural results have shown that the onset of false-belief understanding coincides with Western norms (e.g. Callaghan et al., 2005) whereas several non-Western studies have demonstrated a time lag in development across cultural groups (e.g. Vinden, 1999). To date no longitudinal study comparing the development of other naïve psychology concepts from 2 to 4 years of age between diverse cultures has been published. The present study aims to address the gap in the literature by tracking longitudinally and comparing the developmental patterns of children’s understanding of a range of naïve psychology concepts in the UK and Singapore at 2½, 3 and 3½ years of age (phases I, II and III respectively). Singapore with its mixed blend of Eastern and Western values represents a unique case for comparative study. This study employed a repeated-measures design, incorporating a large battery of established tasks that tapped children’s understanding of pretence, desires, visual perceptions and beliefs. In addition, a semi-structured observational approach was employed to study children’s naturally occurring pretend play behaviour. A total of 87 children were recruited in the UK (M = 28.60 months, SD = 1.90) and Singapore (M = 29.89, SD = 2.76) in the first phase of study. Of the initial sample, 36 children (M = 42.75, SD = 1.84) in the UK cohort and 38 children (M = 43.68, SD = 2.79) in the Singapore cohort participated in all three phases of the study. This thesis has five research questions. The first question relates to the extent to which acquisition of naïve psychology concepts differ between the two cultures at 2½ years of age. The baseline results reported in Chapter 5 indicate that 2½-year-old children in both cohorts acquired a rudimentary understanding of some aspects of pretence, discrepant desires, action prediction, emotion prediction and level-1 visual perspective-taking. The results showed no gross cross-cultural differences. However, subtle cross-cultural differences in children’s understanding of discrepant desires and action prediction were found. The second question addresses longitudinal cross-cultural differences in naïve psychology development between 2½, 3 and 3½ years of age. The results presented in Chapter 6 reveal cultural similarities in children’s performance on several pretence understanding, the level-2 visual perspective-taking, the appearance-reality distinction and the false-belief explanation tasks. Nonetheless, cultural differences were observed in some aspects of naïve psychology. The UK cohort performed significantly better than the Singapore cohort in the unexpected transfer false-belief prediction task at 3½ years of age, after verbal mental age (VMA) and gender were treated as covariates. Additionally, the UK cohort achieved significantly higher total mean for the level-1 visual perspective-taking task across the three phases and the mental representation in pretence task across phases II and III. In contrast, the Singapore cohort scored significantly higher in total mean for the discrepant desires task across the three phases. The third question considers longitudinal differences in children’s understanding of knowledge-ignorance and beliefs from 3 to 3½ years of age. The analysis in Chapter 7 indicates that the Singapore cohort performed significantly more poorly than the UK cohort in understanding knowledge-ignorance attribution (for the false-belief prediction and falsebelief explanation tasks) and true-belief ascription (for the false-belief explanation task) across phases II and III, after VMA and gender were considered as covariates. Comparison of children’s false-belief prediction and justification scores revealed that the cross-cultural difference in false-belief prediction related to an explicit ability to predict false-belief without concurrent ability to justify a naïve character’s behaviour based on false-beliefs. Twenty-four (66.7%) and 11 (28.9%) children in the UK and Singapore cohorts respectively were able to make correct false-belief prediction at 3½ years of age. Among these children, only six and five children from the UK and Singapore cohorts respectively provided correct justifications on the basis of false-beliefs. These findings therefore indicated cultural similarities in that the same number of children in both cohorts was able to predict and justify other’s behaviour in terms of false-beliefs. The fourth question explores the degree to which presence of sibling(s), birth order, language (VMA) and bilingualism contribute to individual differences in naïve psychology development. The results in Chapter 8 show no evidence that presence of sibling(s) and birth order facilitated understanding of action prediction, discrepant desires, level-1 visual perspective-taking, mental representation in pretence and false-belief prediction in either cohort. With respect to the role of language in children’s naïve psychology development, there were concurrent (within phase) associations between VMA and false-belief prediction at 3½ years of age and longitudinal associations between VMA at 2½ years of age and falsebelief prediction at 3½ years of age for both cohorts. These findings suggest that language ability contributes to individual differences in false-belief understanding. It is worth highlighting that not all aspects of naïve psychology and VMA were related. The fifth and final question focuses on longitudinal cross-cultural similarities and differences in pretend play behaviour and examines the links between pretend play behaviour and naïve psychology development. The observational data in Chapter 9 reveal that the Singaporean children spent significantly more time engaged in non-pretend play and non-social pretend play at 2½ years of age whereas the UK children spent significantly more time engaged in social pretend play. This finding contrasted with the marked cultural differences in naïve psychology development found at 3 and 3½ years of age. It is important to note that the UK and Singaporean children showed similar developmental sequences from non-pretend to non-social pretend and finally to social pretend play behaviour and from simple to complex forms of social pretend play behaviour. With respect to other pretend play behaviour, the UK children spent significantly more time engaged in positive complementary bids, negative conflict, other forms of pretence, metacommunication and in the pretend theme of outings, holiday and weather across all phases than the Singaporean children. The associations between some early pretend play behaviour and later acquisition of some naïve psychology concepts for both cultures provide partial support for the proposition that pretend play behaviour is an early marker of understanding mental representation.

The impetus of this research to explore cross-cultural differences and conflicts between Singaporean Chinese Managers and their western MNCs managers was due to the researcher's 12 years real-life, working experiences in western MNCs. The interest was extended to discover how these managers are able to deal with the corresponding cross-cultural conflict that is embedded in the day-to-day interaction between himself and his superiors from the west The research has found out that despite the changing cultural influence on Singaporean Chinese Managers, they still exhibit a substantial number of Confucian behavioural characteristics that was inherited from their Chinese forefathers, in the area of work attitudes; the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic work attributes; the commitment to the organisation they work for; and from the job itself. Singaporean Chinese Managers are also found to be less confrontational in nature when dealing with conflicts, and are less incline to express their dissatisfaction, or even have a face-to-face argument with their superiors. The research also found that there is a growing 'compromisers' cluster, a group of people who only moderately uphold traditional values regarding family, education and morale, who are open to innovation and whose aim in life is to be socially and financially successful. It further reveals that younger Singaporean Chinese Managers are now more vocal and more confrontational than their older counterparts and possesses more westernised behavioural characteristics. Therefore, this research provides an insight into the way in which Singaporean Chinese Managers both construct and maintain a notion of identity and also explores the evolving cultural shift in the next generation of managers in the Singaporean Chinese community.