y of cultural diversity (Prahaled, 1990, pp. 354-357).
The global marketplace of the future will include a growing tendency toward alliances between business organizations from different countries, as opposed to simply locating facilities in a host country (Harrison, 1990, p. 72). Many, perhaps most, of these alliance partners will be companies from other developed countries. Further, the establishment of production facilities by multinational corporations outside of their home countries will occur increasingly in developed economies as opposed to Third World countries. In such environments, ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism are simply not tolerated. An intercultural approach is demanded, if success is to be attained.
The Changing Multinational Environment
Robert Reich (1990, pp. 11-14) stated that corporations are defined by their workers, not by their country of origin. Thus, he argued that Zenith is not the only American producer of television sets, as that company claims. Reich (1990, pp. 11-14) claims further that Zenith is not even the largest American television set producer. The Thompson Company of France employs 6,500 workers in six American plants manufacturing television sets (American Zenith employs 5,000 people in two American plants manufacturing television sets). The implication of this trend is that non American multinationals operating on ever larger scales in the United States must also be prepared to function in a multicultural environment (Herr and Spiro, 1990, pp. 80-81). American are accustomed to think of multicultural environments as phenomena that American multinational corporations must confront when operating in countries other than the United States (Stewart, 1990, p. 64). Americans are not accustomed to thinking of their own country as someone else's multicultural environment.
Human Resource Management Issues Confronting
Problems arise for the Japanese management seeking to es...