Assignment task:
Starbucks' expansion into South Korea posed a challenge. Should the company change its team-work and equality culture to better fit South Korea's hierarchical natural culture that valued hierarchical distance between employees or should it stay the same and reinforce its own values in South Korea?
Starbucks decided to stay true to its culture and values, but to be sensitive to the cultural needs and expectations of its South Korean employees. Because South Korean employees were uncomfortable calling each other by their first names rather than by tradi-tional hierarchical titles, Starbucks' managers gave every South Korean employee an English name to use at work. This made employees more comfortable using first names while preserving Starbucks' equality values.
Another teamwork issue emerged because South Korean men typically do not do "housework" chores including washing dishes and cleaning toilets. However, this type of work is expected of everyone in Starbucks' stores. To help its male employees overcome the psy-chological barrier to cleaning, Starbucks leveraged the South Korean cultural affinity for imitating leaders' behaviors. The international director for Starbucks' headquarters personally did all of the cleaning activ-ities and even hung a picture of him cleaning the toi-let. Because lower-level employees imitate the behavior of top leaders, this helped them overcome this cultural obstacle to teamwork.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Q1. Identify several different groups that you belong to and classify them as one of the group types discussed in this chapter.
Q2. Think about an effective team you have been on. What made it effective? Think about an underperforming team you have been on. Why was it underperforming?
Q3. Are any of the groups to which you belong too large or too small to get their work done? If so, what can the leader or the members do to alleviate the problem?
Q4. Discuss the following statement: "Group cohesiveness is the good, warm feeling we get from working in groups and is something that all group leaders should strive to develop in the groups they lead."