Case Study: Accenture: the 5 cultural dimensions

Résumé du document

The main change of the century is that local markets are not big enough for industries. The future of any company that wants to be bigger than its competitors is to go international. Selling a product won't be the hardest of things that companies will have to face while going international, but the cultural adaptation will be one of the hardest things. There are different kinds of adaptation, the product adaptation, the administrative and law adaptation, and the cultural adaptation that can be the one where facing a client as the one while creating a subsidiary somewhere. In this report, we will study the cultural adaptation basing our analysis on the 5 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede. These 5 dimensions come from an analysis done by Geert Hofstede while working at IBM and trying to understand the employees attitudes at IBM worldwide. Even if we will go through more details during the analysis, it is from now important to know that the 5 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede help individuals and companies to understand, analyze and compare the culture of different countries. To support our analysis we will look at the Accenture strategy towards international markets. How did they become one of the leaders in their sector? And how did they manage to be present everywhere in the world?

Extraits

[...] Thus they have a truly global organization. In the section below, we will analyze the geographical subdivision of their organization, and find out how they selected their cultural organization. Accenture is an international company Accenture has consultants in 49 different countries. Though it is a global company, they have sorted their different countries into groups to manage them better. The chart below shows us the groups they have chosen[7]: In order to find out how Accenture has realized its segmentation, I have used the index of cultural dimension present on the Geert Hofstede website[8] and compared the different rates in each group. [...]

[...] We come back to the others cultural dimensions in UK people are more individualistic, competitive than in France. I will reinforce this observation by the statement that Accenture uses on its website at the top of the page on the page on inclusion and Diversity; a page directly dedicated to present and future workers. On the French page the sentence is soft, delicate and shows a strong interest of the company into the personal development of each individual, with no pressure to compete or change.[15]“High performance is a continuous amelioration. [...]

[...] The values that lead Accenture are aimed at bringing companies they work with, to the top level. There is masculinity in the notion of direction as well as in the fact that they need to be assertive and competitive to lead a company to the best place to be at. Therefore we understand why Accenture is organizing its regional segmentation towards masculinity. We also infer that their adaptation within each group has something to do with the other cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede. The second part of the report will study these dimensions. [...]

[...] The future of any company that wants to be bigger than its competitors is to expand internationally. Selling a product won't be the hardest task that company will have to face while expanding internationally instead, cultural adaptation will be the biggest challenge. There are different kinds of adaptation; product adaptation, administrative and legal adaptation, and cultural adaptation which comes into play when facing an international client, such as when creating a subsidiary somewhere. In this report we will study cultural adaptation, basing our analysis on the 5 cultural dimensions of Geert Hofstede. [...]

[...] They manage their work force and try to make them feel at the place in order to be competitive the way they want to, as well as the way each individual wants to. Bibliography http://www.accenture.com/Countries/France/Services/default.htm http://www.accenture.fr http://www.geert-hofstede.com/ http://www.accenture.com/Countries/France/About_Accenture/Corporate_Cit izenship/Diversite.htm http://www.accenture.com/Countries/UK/About_Accenture/Company_Overview/ InclusionDiversity.htm http://www.challenges.fr/business/20070621.CHAP1019557/choc_des_culture s_entre_capgemini_et_accenture.html http://www.itim.org/cv_geert.html Appendices Cultural dimension comparison Appendices Bands http://www.itim.org/cv_geert.html [2]http://www.accenture.com/Global/About_Accenture/Company_Overview/History/ AccentureLeader.htm [3]http://www.accenture.com/Global/About_Accenture/Company_Overview/CompanyD escription.htm [4]http://www.accenture.com/Global/About_Accenture/Company_Overview/History/ AccentureLeader.htm http://www.accenture.com/Global/About_Accenture/Company_Overview/OurCoreValu es.htm From the Accenture Intranet. From the Intranet of Accenture http://www.geert- hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php?culture1=95&culture2=93 http://www.challenges.fr/business/20070621.CHAP1019557/choc_des_cultures_ent re_capgemini_et_accenture.html The bands at the top change regularly and you may not find them on the website at the same page on the day of the lecture. Please find in Appendices 2 the two different bands in English and in French. [...]