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2.2 Huawei's cross-cultural management analysis
2.2.1 Conflict between Huawei's corporate culture and culture background of employees in the UK
Huawei's wolf-like corporate culture has two characteristics. One is to encourage employees to work overtime to get more bonuses, the other is based on collectivism, the income of employees is not only affected by the results of individual performance appraisal, but also the results of team performance appraisal (Luo, Cacchione, Junkunc and Lu, 2011). In the UK, employees usually have two characteristics. First, employees think that overtime work is often seen as a problem of bad work efficiency and work pace, which leads to that work cannot be completed in time, so they are usually unwilling to work overtime. Second, British employees are willing to take risks within their own responsibilities, but are not responsible for the team's risk. They believe that as long as everyone is doing what they do, the team's goals can be achieved accordingly. When Huawei’s UK Branch understands these characteristics of British employees, they can adjust the management measures of the company. The measures are mainly to increase bonuses. That is, if local employees in the UK work overtime and they get better team performance, they can get more income than employees in China, in order to encourage Huawei’s British employees to change their mindset to accept Huawei's wolf-like corporate culture.
From the perspective of Huawei's measures, Huawei has seen the differences in corporate culture between the UK and China, and has taken certain measures to make up for these differences, but the problem is that they have errors in the cultural perception of British employees. Paying more money to employees in China can motivate employees to contribute all their energy and time to the company. It is obviously not reasonable for Huawei management to apply its management experience and logic in China to UK employees. According to the theory of Hofstede's cultural differences, there is a big difference between Chinese and British cultures. First, British people are more advocating individualism than Chinese people. Therefore, Huawei's measures that attach importance to collective performance appraisal are difficult to be recognized by British employees. Second, the British do not have a strong feeling as the Chinese have to uncertainty avoidance, so the British do not seek the guarantee of life by making more money like the Chinese. Third, the masculinity of the British society is not as strong as that of China. Therefore, Huawei's practice of giving employees excessive competitive pressure is difficult to be accepted by British employees. All in all, there is a big difference between British culture and Chinese culture. Huawei's attempt to stimulate British employees to accept its wolf-like corporate culture by increasing bonuses is a lack of understanding of British culture, and there is room for improvement in its cross-cultural measures.
Huawei should improve cross-cultural management measures based on the characteristics of British culture. Firstly, British employees are reluctant to accept excessive overtime, but they agree that employees should maintain high work efficiency and intensity. Then Huawei can increase the indicators for assessing the work intensity and efficiency of employees, so that it can meet the habits of British employees and not reduce the overall performance of the company. Secondly, the incentive effect of money for British employees is not as good as it is for Chinese employees, but the needs of British employees for respecting incentives, authorization incentives and achievement incentives are relatively high. Therefore, Huawei should pay attention to the humanization of management while giving reasonable treatment to British employees. , moderately increase their authorization and provide more help and training for the personal development of employees. Finally, it should improve Huawei's holding controlling interest system, which is not just rely on bonuses to motivate employees, so that British employees fully realize that the company's interests are consistent with their own interests. Working hard at Huawei is able to enjoy a reciprocal return, so as to improve the UK's employees’ adaptability to Huawei's wolf-like corporate culture.
2.2.2 Conflict between Huawei’s strategy and British consumer culture
Because some Chinese companies in the past did not abide by business ethics and produced some inferior products, which gave foreign consumers a bad impression for Chinese manufacturing, many European and American consumers formed a stereotype of Chinese products, that is, the price is low, but the product quality and design have very big defects. In order to eliminate the stereotype of British consumers for Huawei, Huawei has adopted a series of measures, including the introduction of some cost-effective mobile phone products, such as the glory series, the price are 10-30% lower than that of other similar products in the UK market, while the quality and function of the products are relatively reliable (Dambrāns, 2016).
Huawei's emphasis on cost-effective marketing strategies has been successful in China because Chinese consumers have lower spending power and the consumer culture focuses on affordable products that they hope to buy with the least amount of money. This is not the case in the UK's consumer culture. Smartphones are a necessity in the UK, and British consumers are willing to spend more on buying good necessities. Therefore, it is difficult for Huawei to further expand its market share in the UK by adopting a cost-effective strategy. Although Huawei's mobile phone has achieved initial success in the UK market and its market share is the third, Huawei is not as good as Samsung and Apple in terms of profitability. Because they are selling mobile phones to get more premiums with the brand image, while when Huawei sell the same grade of mobile phones, the price is often 10% lower (Fu, Sun and Ghauri, 2018).
Therefore, Huawei's marketing in the UK also requires cross-cultural management. First of all, Huawei must re-do its own brand positioning and shape its brand image, abandoning taking low prices as characteristics of its brand image, they should resort to the elements that British consumers like to shape the brand image, including: individuality, creativity, professionalism, youth and so on. Secondly, in terms of brand spokespersons, they can consider those young people who show enough potential and talents, such as the future new football king Kylian Mbappé. It shows to British consumers that although Huawei is also a new brand, it has enough potential to become a world-class brand. Finally, Huawei's mobile phone product design should strengthen the design of the appearance and operation page, and get rid of the past impression of emphasizing practicality, while ignoring the beauty and fashion.
2.2.3 Conflict between Huawei's corporate culture and British business culture
The biggest crisis that Huawei faces in the UK market is the patent crisis. Since entering the UK market, Huawei has faced more than 10 patent litigations and suffered huge fines. In 2017, the England and Wales High Court made a judgment on the long-standing patent licensing dispute between Huawei and UPI (Fan, 2017). In China, due to various reasons, the state's legal system for patent protection is not perfect, and the awareness of patent protection for enterprises in Chinese business culture is not strong. However, in the UK, the legal system is perfect, and special attention is paid to patent protection. Chinese companies may be prosecuted with a little carelessness. In order to cope with these prosecutions, Huawei had to spend huge sums of money to hire a team of lawyers who are familiar with British law and business culture to help Huawei to cope with a series of infringement lawsuits.
Huawei's spending on the lawyers' team can help Huawei to avoid the risks brought by patent litigation, but it does not help Huawei to solve this problem fundamentally. A large part of Huawei's patent litigation is caused by the lack of patent protection in its corporate culture, which is manifested in the lack of awareness of patent protection in the corporate leadership, the lack of effective systems, and adequate training in terms of patent protection, causing unreasonable use or not standardized use of patents of other companies’. This deep-rooted corporate culture is in great conflict with the local business culture of the UK.
In order to reverse the adverse effects of this corporate culture, the heads of Huawei’s departments should play the roles of their own cross-cultural leadership. Firstly, it should train the leaders of each department to understand the norms of patent use and protection in the UK, and then let the leaders pass these ideas and knowledge to their subordinates, and develop appropriate systems to urge employees to comply. Secondly, Huawei's UK employees have a relatively strong sense of patent protection. Leaders of various departments should encourage Chinese employees to learn more from local employees from the UK and encourage local employees to share their patent protection experience with their Chinese colleagues. Finally, Huawei's leaders should communicate with local companies, organizations, and social departments related to patent protection, learn about the latest UK patent protection information and institutional changes, and show them their work, achievements on patent protection. In this way, Huawei can reverse the negative impact from the British society on Huawei's always infringement lawsuits.
3.0 Conclusion
Huawei is one of China's most successful companies in the UK, and it faces many risks. Cultural conflict is one of the most important risks. Considering from the inside of the enterprise, Huawei's wolf-like corporate culture may cause foreign employees’ dislike and difficulty adapting to its corporate culture. From the outside of the company, there have been many negative stereotypes about Chinese companies in the long-term, and there are many conflicts between Huawei's corporate culture and the British local business culture. This also requires Huawei to adopt reasonable cross-cultural measures to solve it. From the perspective of social cognition, it is difficult for Huawei to completely copy its wolf-like corporate culture and management system in China and to use it in the UK. It is necessary for the enterprise to adjust their performance, compensation, and incentive systems without affecting its overall corporate performance, so as to make it match with the values, habits and traditional concepts of local employees. From a stereotype point of view, Huawei's cost-effective products and brand strategy have hindered Huawei from gaining more profits in the UK market. Huawei should be based on the consumer culture of British consumers in choosing smart to adjust its brand and product strategies, as well as the choice of spokespersons, so as to change the local consumers’ stereotypes about Huawei. From the perspective of cross-cultural leadership, Huawei leaders should change the corporate culture in which enterprises do not attach importance to patent protection, and guide employees to form a patent protection awareness to help the company to better integrate and adapt to local business culture. |
