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Applying Production Concepts over Borders: Good Intentions and the Limits of Foreign Culture Understanding

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  • Christian Linder

    (Christian Linder holds degrees in Business (BA), Entrepreneurship (MA) and Philosophy (BA, PhD) from universities in Hamburg, Ulm and Munich. He has worked as a Visiting Scholar at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, China, and has advanced experience in field research in the Philippines. After gaining experience as an IT Consultant and Project Manager, he took up the assignment of a lecturer at the Institute for Human Factors and Technology Management, University of Stuttgart, where he is currently employed. His current research is mainly on technology management, innovation and B2B branding. [E-mail: Christian.Linder@iao.fraunhofer.de])

  • Stefan Scheuerle

    (Stefan Scheuerle holds a Diploma of Technology Management (Dipl.-Ing.) from the University of Stuttgart. Currently he is a lecturer in product development at the Institute for Human Factors and Technology Management, University of Stuttgart. He has a keen interest in new product development and production processes and methods, as well as new IT technologies supporting development and production teams and processes, and has been involved in several industrial projects. In addition, Stefan Scheuerle also supervises university students with their semester projects in the 3rd and 4th semesters.)

  • Sven Seidenstricker

    (Sven Seidenstricker works at the Institute of Human Factors and Technology Management. He lectures at different universities in technology management, innovation management and R&D project portfolio management in MBA, MA and BA studies. His areas of research interest include business model innovation, technology management and production systems engineering. His research has been published in several international journals. He holds a diploma in Business Administration and Engineering from Chemnitz University of Technology.)

Abstract

Successful production concepts are a challenge for every production company. Such concepts are typically seen as free of individual or normative implications. According to common opinion, they follow a strict formal logic in analogy to mathematical algorithms. Optimizing production processes is, at the end of the day, the quest for the perfect non-judgemental formula. The following case shows that this opinion is not applicable. Organizational production structures, even if they follow a strict formal logic, have always to be applied in a certain context. This context is not value free but brings its own understandings, visions, interpretations, and so on. To explain this, the case shows the effort made to transfer a working production concept of a German company to a subsidiary in India. The goal is to illustrate the importance of culture to even rational processes. The focus is on how teamwork is bounded to cultural aspects.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Linder & Stefan Scheuerle & Sven Seidenstricker, 2012. "Applying Production Concepts over Borders: Good Intentions and the Limits of Foreign Culture Understanding," South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, , vol. 1(1), pages 1-15, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sajbmc:v:1:y:2012:i:1:p:1-15
    DOI: 10.1177/227797791200100102
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