Case Study: Industrial Technology Development in Malaysia

1. Describe Malaysian cultural attributes and how they might affect the operation of a multinational palm oil conglomerate doing business within Malaysia.

2. What are some effective leadership and communication skill that lead to the development of a positive worker-manager relationship in international business?

3. Would you describe the respective attitudes of Aziz’s , Krishnan, and Lee Peng as ethnocentric, polycentric, or geocentric? What factors do you suspect of having influenced their respective attitudes?

4. Was Lee Peng correct in assessing Aziz’s controversial actions in the work stalemate? Should a palm oil conglomerate employ someone who main function is that of liaison between its corporate culture and the culture of its host country? If so, was Aziz the right person for the job in the detailed scenario?

1. Malaysia is a region of multicultural which has the native group as Malays, and also some Indians and Chinese are present in Malaysia. Plantation faces a critical shortage of human resources that has been grown up continuously. According to Malaysian Agricultural Producers Association (MAPA), some cultural issues on foreign workers have founded as high priority around 80% in the last year (Mateo-Babiano and Zahnow 2015).

ext-align: justify;">The palm oil industry is the intersection for doing business in future. A conglomerate multinational palm oil industry is situated in Malaysia where the manager maintains the stability of effectiveness and industrial harmony for workers of palm plantations. Some workers are from outside of Malaysia like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and India. The industry needs more effect and also need to understand each worker to grow up the industry in Malaysia (Commisceo Global 2016).

2. According to sustainable palm oil, Malaysia is the second biggest oil producer in the world. A particular communication skill must be needed to maintain the effective leadership of the industry. Some direction and communication skills are mentioned bellow (Abdullah 2015).

• Leadership in the industry must be conversational.
• He must have the knowledge about influence and motivational skills within the industry.
• The leader must know the credibility establishment and trust the effective communication skills (Mike Myatt and Forbes 2012).
• The leader concentrates needs of workers and has communication with them clearly.
• Better communication between leadership and employees must need in the industry. 

3. Aziz’s respective attitude may describe as polycentric because he aims for the awareness of multi-cultural. He consistently communicated with other workers to understand the needs of the employees. Krishnan’s attitude may discuss as geocentric because Aziz informed Krishnan about the strike and then both of them told this to Lee Peng. For this, Lee Peng's approach may consider as ethnocentric because he said to solve the problem without the interference of managers and without any consideration of legal issue (Mohammed 2012).

A positive factor has been suspected by their respective attitudes because they all are doing their work properly and maintaining integrity within the industry. When workers went on a strike against the Gajah Berang Estate in 1992, the problem has been solved by three of them consistently (Daniels and Sullivan 2013).

4. Aziz wanted to satisfy his manager and workers because he was a conscientious worker on the plantation. For this, Lee Peng was not correct to assess the controversial action of Aziz.

It should not employ someone who was functioning the liaison between corporate culture, and its host country culture because it happened as characteristics of multicultural on the plantation.

Aziz was the right person because he fulfilled all his responsibilities towards workers and he is qualified for the position. Aziz's conscientiousness, communication skills, and motivation made him the right person for the position. He handled all critical situation at own risk and also solved problems confidently. For this, from the study, it has been concluded that Aziz was the right person to take that position of manager (Commisceo Global 2016).

References

Felker, G., Jomo, K.S. and Rasiah, R. eds., 2013. Industrial technology development in Malaysia: industry and firm studies. Routledge.

Johari, A., Nyakuma, B.B., Nor, S.H.M., Mat, R., Hashim, H., Ahmad, A., Zakaria, Z.Y. and Abdullah, T.A.T., 2015. The challenges and prospects of palm oil-based biodiesel in Malaysia. Energy, 81, pp.255-261.

Le Loo, L.Y., Corcoran, J., Mateo-Babiano, D. and Zahnow, R., 2015. Transport mode choice in South East Asia: Investigating the relationship between transport users’ perception and travel behavior in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Journal of transport geography, 46, pp.99-111.

Mohammed, K.A., Othman, J. and Silva, J.L.D., 2012. Social demographic factors that influence transformational leadership styles among top management in selected organizations in Malaysia. Asian Social Science,8(13), p.51.