International Managers in Norway - Cross-Cultural Challenges in the Norwegian Context

Abstract

Cross-cultural literature and research have described cultural differences that exist between countries. These differences are reasons to why international managers may experience cross-cultural challenges in other cultural work contexts. Several frameworks have been established to illustrate cultural dimensions, which have been used to create national culture profiles. By comparing the cultural differences, cross-cultural challenges may be indicated. Concrete challenges are not often described in detail, therefore the focus in this research project was to connect cross-cultural challenges, experienced in the oil industry in Norway, to the cultural differences described in the theory and the literature. The research question in this master thesis was “what cross-cultural challenges, caused by cultural differences in communication, hierarchy, and trust, do international managers in Norway experience?”.

The study had three purposes. First and foremost, to connect concrete examples of cross-cultural challenges to cultural differences. Secondly, to measure how well the Norwegian culture profile was reflected in the data collection, and lastly, to discuss the findings in the light of convergence and divergence theory. A triangulation of quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (interviews) methods was used to answer the research question.

The findings indicated that international managers experienced challenges in all areas focused on – communication, hierarchy, and trust. The main findings were firstly that Norwegian employees were very direct in communication. This caused challenges where Norwegians was understood as rude. Other challenges were that different languages prolonged implementation processes of new strategies, and Norwegians’ reserved body language were difficult to read and caused misunderstandings. Cultural hierarchy differences caused challenges related to consensus management. Norwegian employees demanded to participate in managements’ decisions and this prolonged decision-making processes. Lastly, challenges caused by differences in trust were related to Norwegians’ deal-focused behaviour, and the structuring and planning in the companies got in the way for bonding and trust building.