Several years ago as Korean brands like Samsung, Hyundai, Kia and LG soared during the global recession, I coined the term K-lobalization (Globalization with a K for Korea). I saw a trend as Korean firms instead of deferring to the local organization to boldly promote their own unique management style and corporate culture internationally and across many markets. Much of shift this was the result of the Korean brands succeeding as their rivals Western and Japanese product suffered in the downturn.
As pointed out in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series on Korea-directed organization-wide, corporate mandates…. from core value, vision, and management training directives to most recently how they should brand or even target specific consumers in local markets.
One caveat has been the roll back of locally assigned executive coordinators; expats working in the overseas subsidiaries whose roles are to serve as liaisons with the Korean HQ. We see instead teams in Korea directly reaching out to local teams by videoconference, email and phone.
There are some very positive sides to this such as requests go directly to those engaged in the work, long term personal relations are developed and nurtured as well as open two-communications strengthened.
Less constructive is in many cases Korean teams are unfamiliar with nuances in local governance, or the complexity of a project / services. In turn requests might require local teams hours to compile or research—their days already stretched thin. In some cases, requests are stacking up with new inquiries coming in faster than teams can complete. In fact as of 2016, this has become the issue I am most frequently asked how best to deal with…
So what are the recommended work-arounds? In Part 4 in the series I will address.
In the meantime I’d like to solicit your input. What situations are you encountering? Anything I missed?
For questions raised, Stacey, my personal assistant at stacey@koreabcw.com can coordinate a time for us to chat by phone, meet or handle by email.