In Eric Lynn’s The Challenges of International Management Teams: How Different Cultures Affect Business Decisions, I read about the different views of engineering from both German and American perspectives. The report illustrated one of the main differences as what each kind of engineer defines as a quality product. The Germans prefer to design a product that cannot break and is, therefore, perfect. American Engineers tend to define a quality product as a solution that meets most of the criteria, and will be improved when issues arise. The report then gives a storied example of American engineers working with German engineers. The team was 50% American and 50% German, and cooperation quickly declined. The German engineers weren’t happy with creating a sub-par product, while the Americans were content with finishing the product and working out the remaining issues later. When concerns were brought up with the other half of the team, cultural boundaries and miscommunications led to feelings of insult and suspicion. The communication was so poor, the project wasn’t completed and over $20 million was wasted.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Cross-Cultural Engineering Teams
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I found the results astonishing when I read this report. It seems infallible to spend millions of dollars on a project to let it go to waste. I can't see any company being ok with that. I know as a personal thing I don't give up on anything I was assigned or set out to do. With workouts, even though I think I'm going to collapse the last 100meters it would crush my self-esteem if I didn't finish. I would look back at the wasted time and effort and be crippled with failure. Problems like the ones described about the German and American team should never happen. I stand strong in thinking that if we all need to understand that people are people, we all have quirks, we all have needs. By respecting each other as humans before Germans or Americans, we can avoid issues like the one above.
ReplyDeleteThe example of the Germans and Americans working together was very interesting and I think that there are pros and cons to each of their approaches. For the Germans approach, a high quality product will be produced and will be very efficient but the time to complete the project might take longer because of a need for “perfection.” For the Americans, the product might not be as efficient as the German one and the quality might not be as good, but the product will be finished earlier and will have room to be modified in the future. It is very ironic those two powerful countries, or any prominent country, that can create amazing products on their own terms cannot manage to even work together in an efficient or effective way. Cultures need to put their differences aside and accept each other in order to be productive in projects. (ENGR 103)
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