The Influence of Cultural Differences and its Application in Multinational Organizations

Multinational organizations have workforces that involve people from different countries, defined by linguistic, religious, and political backgrounds, in other words, people of different cultural backgrounds. Generally, differences related to culture are more evident and prominent than similarities and homogeneity. For multinational companies, it is a must to take cultural differences into account in their managerial practices. The goal of this research is to determine the managers’ perceptions of cultural differences in a multinational company and to explore the strategies at use to handle these differences. In this sense, the interview was used as a research method to collect data, which were further analyzed. The research focuses on an American software company, PTC Inc. operating in Romania, Japan, China, the USA, and Germany. Following the analysis of the interview results obtained new research directions were identified related to the influence of cultural differences and its application in global business