A major producer of plastics in the United States is about to expand its business. As part of this expansion, it will begin to sell its products in Europe and Asia. In addition, it plans to open a plant in Asia. Jerry, the President and CEO, is concerned; he has heard many stories of companies that have tried to expand globally but operations either failed miserably or did not live up to expectations due to the cultural differences between workers and customers in each country.

Jerry has asked your group to research problems other companies have had with this issue and develop ways in which the errors and missteps those companies made can be avoided by his company.

As a group you should select a multinational corporation or international nonprofit agency that has encountered these problems (this can be a previous or current employer of yours). Using the Internet and the library, each individual in the group will research the organization to discover any cultural barriers that organization encountered and what its managers did to try to overcome those barriers.

Please note that this assignment has both a group component and an individual assignment.

Group Component:

• As a group generate and evaluate reasons why people may not appreciate the cultural point of view of others. Each individual in the group should at least 5 resources or materials (citations) (three of the five citations may come from the textbook)
• As a group discuss how appreciating cultural diversity affects peoples’ ability to communicate effectively in the context of a multinational corporation or an international nonprofit agency. Feel free to add your own experiences as well as quoting others. Please share the resources, materials and citations that you find and collect on the small group discussion board.

Individual Assignment:

Each individual in the group should create and submit their own 2–3 page paper.

Each individual paper should summarize the group discussions and provide suggestions regarding the steps that the company can take and policies that can be put in place to help ensure the company’s expansion is successful. Eah individual can draw from the resources and materials shared on the small group discussion board in the processof developing their individual paper. Each individual paper should contain at least 5 references, with at least 3 sociological references which may include the course textbook materials.

This assignment will be assessed using the rubric provided here.