Technoshop - Z’ is a high-performing multinational Information Technology (IT) company with its headquarters in Canada

‘Technoshop - Z’ is a high-performing multinational Information Technology (IT) company with its headquarters in Canada. The company manufactures and sells sophisticated software HR systems for small organizations (e.g. payroll systems). A year ago, the company acquired a high-performing IT firm in Romania in order to expand further to the European market. The company, after the acquisition, decided to send an expatriate (a very experienced IT consultant) to Romania to act as the temporary general director in order to guide the local staff in the newly-acquired firm and transmit some core cultural values of the parent company. The expatriate after a month decided to introduce two major organizational changes in order to improve staff motivation and the overall performance of the acquired firm. In particular:

- He introduced individual performance related pay with bonus and benefits based on several quantitative criteria (e.g. number of contracts with clients) for all employees.
- He gave much job autonomy and decision-making power to the junior technical staff (i.e. IT designers).

However, after 6 months, an employee satisfaction survey revealed that the vast majority of local workers were unhappy with the overall working climate and they had reduced motivation. You are required to prepare an individual essay of 3,000 words (excluding bibliography) addressing the
following topic:

Using relevant cross-cultural management theory (i.e. Hofstede’s framework), discuss the cultural issues that the expatriate faced in relation to the management of the new teams of employees in Romania and provide suggestions on what the expatriate can do to overcome those problems and boost staff motivation.