Innovating the Corporate Strategy: What would be the Mission for International Business Communication?

Contribution to a special issue of the Journal of Business Communication (July, 2000)

by Jan Ulijn (Eindhoven, NL and Ghent, B Universities,email: j.m.ulijn@tm.tue.nl

Dan O'Hair (University of Oklahoma),email: hdohair@ou.edu

Mathieu Weggeman (Eindhoven University of Technology and Twijnstra Gudde Management Consultants, both NL) email: m.c.d.p.weggeman@tm.tue.nl

***Abstract (***200 words in italics, to be made more specific for results***)

More and more of international business communicators are involved in formulating and implementing the corporate strategy of their firms. What should be the business' vision, mission and strategy? In particular when different cultures meet (national, corporate, professional), the formulation and communication of the answers to these questions, becomes more complex. A constant source of organizational change is technological innovation which induces mergers, joint ventures. acquisitions and strategic alliances as a natural consequence. Therefore, strategy is also continuously changing and expands across company and national borders. We will take technological innovation as the main drive behind a strategy mission of most high tech driven, market oriented firms both in its formulation and implementation in the following interdisciplinary effort: Weggeman (Strategy and Innovation), O'Hair (Organizational Communication) and Ulijn (Intercultural Management and Communication).

Introduction (Dan and Jan)

***Dan, May I suggest that you make your clear overhead transparencies you provided already specific with some concrete examples? Our paper has, of course, as the first of the special issue a leading/theme conceptualizing function and a survey/review character. It should be empirically based, although it cannot be a report of an experimental study on itself, but practical examples will help understanding our theory, I think. Can you act as the final native English editor who might have the best overall view at the end to suggest us revisions to guarantee the same flow of thought shared by the 3 authors in this piece with the appropriate transitions and the overall-coherence and logic. Is that OK? If you make a start here as with the Conclusion, I can add/expand, etc. As a third author, Thieu might play a minor role here, I think, but his final comments are essential and very welcome.***

***1. Dan: Innovation and culture

For your good overview I made temporarily a decimal numbering of sections avoiding the CAPS which are needed in the final submission. Just adapt once you think it is needed.

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Specific questions for you might be: To what extent are US-firms technologically driven and/or market pulled when they innovate? Is there a difference between US-firms not serving only the home market and those who serve also the global market? What are the communicative consequences of importance to the business communicator playing a role in such innovation processes? The model you presented in San Antonio is very welcome here. You will see that I try to tap on that in my own part. Would you check how we relate Thieu Weggeman's part to it? Thank you!

INSERT FIG. 1 ABOUT HERE

Fig. 1 Innovation Posture and Stratagem of Culture and Communication

***When it comes to communication, I think, you approach it very much from the organizational behavior side and me more from the psycholinguistic person-related side, so we can team up nicely?

Jan's Communication and Culture part (2 propositions and 4 IBC guidelines)

We need to explain here also what we mean by innovation in view of our title. Here are my thoughts, can you use this here, Dan?***

1. Innovation: the successful introduction to the market of an improved product or process (in terms of stage in the product life cycle or learning results from this).2. Technological Innovation: the same, but now a technological knowledge-intensive product or process (cfr the term TIC's used by Thieu below: Technology Intensive Companies).3. Innovation Management or Management of Technical Innovation: the planning, administration and evaluation of the whole of activities directed towards realization of 1 or 2.

2. Communicating innovations: A psycholinguistic and cultural perspective

If CEO's of 669 firms across 10 industries around the world consider technological innovation as being the most critical concern in their competitive advantage (Little, 1997, ***Thieu is this reference correct?***), it is almost certain that this will concern also International Business Communicators (IBC's) who play an important facilitative role in strategic and operational management activities in those global industries. If Hogg (1993) in his survey of European managerial competences records in Telecommunications companies in 6 European countries (Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain) that junior and middle mangers need as most vital apart from higher ranked communication skills (oral, written and interpersonal) among others innovation and strategic vision) to their effective performance, this will affect also IBC managers. If IBC's are self employed, being an innovator and having vision range between the top ten characteristics of successful entrepreneurs according to a similar survey by Ernest and Young with Roper Starch Worldwide (1997). IBC's have often to communicate innovations and strategy and vision are

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part of this. They are often involved as well in the corporate strategy formulation and implementation of, for instance, Multinational Companies (MNC's) finding culture (corporate, professional and/or national: CC, PC, NC) on their way as possible stumbling blocks. Already in 1985 Ulijn & Gobits analyzed the psycholinguistic aspects of the dissemination process of scientific and technical innovation in a broad sense of the whole society and came to the conclusion that this communication process had a clear cultural embedding. This dissemination process involves, for instance the technology transfer from the national laboratories of the US so far involved in military research and now moving to civilian applications as environment protection or energy saving. This is clearly another opportunity for technical communicators (Roberts, 1991) to act as bridge builders between different professional sectors. This sector switch of a technological innovation implies a change of culture also. Obviously, the innovation strategies as outlined in Fig. 1 require cultural strategies as well and communication that is the vehicle for this.

If an IBC is involved in a MNC's strategy formulation and implementation given a strong technical innovation drive, what could be then his/her new mission?

A few questions come to mind, such as:

1. What is the basic process: Vision > Mission > Strategy > Message from the top management to whom?

2. How to formulate the message minding the reader (the work floor, the middle and lower management) and taking the cultural context into account: NC, CC and/or PC?

3. How to explain that Innovation needs both Technology Push (TP) and Market Pull (MP) and requires bringing in different departments, such as R&D and Marketing in a MNC together.

In this section we will address those questions pinpointing the reader/writer/innovation message setting (2.1), the culture context: NC, CC and/or PC (2.2), and the form of the message taking into account a possible conflict between the PC of MP and that of TP (2.3), This will bring us to some research propositions and practical guidelines for the IBC's mission (2.4) from a psycholinguistic, communicative and cultural perspective.

2.1 The reader, the writer and the innovation message

Fig. 1 has outlined communication strategies for innovation externally and internally to the organization. A study by Johnson et al. (1995) elucidates well the differences between organizational and communication factors related to contrasting innovations of the private vs. the government sector. Whereas the success of a community based innovation within a large technically-oriented governmental organization depends very much on mediated use, such as agency newsletters, newspapers and television, a highly technical innovation profited most from interpersonal communication and persuasion. Fore this CEO's develop a metadiscourse to persuade their readers, as has been evidenced by a study by Hyland (1998) which analyzed the corporate rhetoric of 137 CEO's letters in annual reports of Hong Kong-based companies. What is the reaction of the readers, however? The answer to this question needs to look at the

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reader-writer-text chain at a more refined level than at the broader organizational context. The interactive reader-writer-readability model including an analysis of the communication process within and between the writer and the reader developed by Ulijn & Strother (1995) allows a psycholinguistic perspective of how IBC's can conceptually and linguistically format an innovation message on both lexical, syntactically and discourse levels. Through a systematic evaluation by questionnaires, interviews and usability testing among the readers of that innovation message, they create a continuous feedback loop to optimize the conceptual and linguistic quality of their product by increasing its efficiency. Since the classic study by Kaplan (1966) on circular (East), linear (Anglo-germanic) and digressive (Latin) paragraphing in English writing, numerous studies have confirmed culture-related diffrences in discourse formats between Englsih and other languages and cultures, for instance, for the structure of a French and Dutch business letter and a coffeemakers' user manual (Ulijn, 1995 and 1996) and for English and Dutch paragraphing in a technical environmental brochure (Ulijn & Campbell, 1997) just to cite some recent ones. Readers of Spanish, French, US or Dutch business letters or a French or Dutch user manual recognized that different structure with their own language and preferred sometimes their own (Ulijn, op. cit.), which gives valuable feedback to the writers of such documents. Prins and Ulijn (1998) demonstrate that rewriting secondary school mathematics exams in South Africa might produce different culturally adapted versions which give pupils from African and European (English and Afrikaans) backgrounds more equal chances to a high achievement in mathematics neutralizing some linguistic difficulties. This way the Ulijn & Strother readability might work in practice and be also of some use for IBC's trying to get feedback from readers.

The first job an IBC is to find out who the readers of that innovation message or strategy document will be. Are they internal (level of management) or external, clients or suppliers in a comakers chain, alliance, joint-venture or alliance partners? This contact needs also the interpersonal oral channels, which might involve not only listening, but also persuasion through negotiation with a representative sample of the corporate audience, to find out what the best form of implementation is in the case of an innovation message or a strategy document. In all those cases the perception of your message is of utmost importance in particular across national borders, as has been demonstrated by a study of a Chinese-Dutch negotiation process observed by 60 students from 5 countries, not only China and The Netherlands, but also from Germany, France and Italy (Ulijn & St. Amant, in press). In particular asking questions and dealing with time was perceived differently depending on the NC background. International Technical and Business Communicators should not overlook the negotiation aspect of their mission.

2.2 The cultural context: NC, CC and/or PC?

How does culture matter in your strategy document related to innovation? Since strategy involves management of change, for instance mergers, strategic alliances, joint ventures, acquisitions to win the innovation competition, unexpected culture differences might lead to serious failures as has been shown by a statistical study of foreign entry by Barkema et al. (1996) and in a case study about the decline of the Dutch aerospace industry Fokker by Heerkens and Ulijn (1999). Culture has definitely an impact on, for instance the organizational behavior of European MNC's as has been anlaysed by Kumar et al. (1997). National Culture has been researched so far the most, but we have the impression that both

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Corporate and Professional cultures will affect largely both the context of a strategy document, not only for its content, but also its form. In particular, PC has received scarce research interest so far. Other studies, such as Ulijn & Kumar (1999) and Ulijn et al. (in press) provide surveys of that research related to communication and innovation, including definitions of culture. Here we focus on 2 classic metaphors to explain what culture is the iceberg developed by French and Bell, 1979 and adapted by Mytrof and Kilman, 1990) and the onion "invented" by Hofstede (1991) and substantiated conceptually by Schein (1991). Both metaphors reduce the concept of culture to a bare minimum.

The iceberg shows an explicit visible top that represents the facts, technology, the price, the rationale behind things, the brain (and hands of an engineer?), the written contract of a negotiation, etc. and an implicit, invisible bottom of emotions, the human relation, the unspoken and unconscious rules of behavior. In fact, the real culture hides very much in the bottom of the iceberg which in its implicit way is considered as taboo. Unlocking this would be the first step to gain control of culture, as has been suggested by Mytrof and Kilman. The onion adds more layers to this metaphor from the visible surface outer layer of artifacts and products (or symbols, heroes and rituals) to deeper layers as norms and values, attitudes and very hidden implicit basic (unconscious) assumptions. Obviously this explicit/implicit distinction will have an effect of how the message should be formulated in a particular context: how explicit should it be or how implicit could it be?

To summarize what has been discussed by Ulijn elsewhere (see above), the broader cultural context of an MNC strategy document involves at least an interaction between NC and CC. Schneider & Barsoux (1997) propose on the basis of Hofstede's research (1991 and 1994) and with others (1990) a NC embedding for a particular CC which might have an important impact, when innovation is the message (See Fig. 2). The 2 Hofstedian dimensions: how to deal with uncertainty and with power allow to distinguish between an Anglo/nordic village market culture visible in most North-American and North-Western European firms and a family or tribe Asian culture, both low to moderate on uncertainty avoidance, Some northern European have a more Germanic culture of the well-oiled machine and most southern, including Latin America have the traditional bureaucracy with a pyramid of people, both high on uncertainty avoidance implementing rules and systems. How important is a low uncertainty avoidance and power distance for the innovative capacity of a firm? Western companies think they are how can German and Japanese companies than be innovative?

2Fig. 2 Interaction of National and Corporate Cultures through Uncertainty Avoidance and Power Distance as a potential for innovation.

LowVillage market(Anglo/Nordic)DecentralisedGeneralistPeople as free agentsEntrepreneurialFlexibilityMore delegationOutput control

Family or tribe(Asian)CentralisedPaternalisticLoyaltyGeneralistStrong social versus task rolesPersonal relationshipsSocial control

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UncertaintyAvoidanceIndex (UAI)

High

Well-oiled machine(Germanic)Decentralised decision makingSpecialist, technical competenceOrganised by functionStructural SolutionsThroughput controlEfficiency

Traditional bureaucracy(Latin)Centralised decision makingElitist (power and authority)Co-ordination at the topPyramid of peopleInput controlAnalytic ability

Low Power Distance Index (PDI) High

Source: Managing Across Cultures (Schneider & Barsoux, 1997, on the basis of Hofstede and others)

Tatsuno (1996) explains the creative fusion of the Japanese group culture, by cases, such as the Sharp company. Hofstede finds a strong correlation between Oriental GNP's and his dimension of confucianism or long term relationship. Weggeman, 1997 and Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995 suggest that Japan pursues another innovation strategy than the West (implicit vs. explicit learning). In an ultimate effort to bring Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern leadership roles in innovation together, Kalthof et al. (1997) outline the Platonic innovation spheres of the West (North and South in a nice cooperation) and the Eastern intuition and vision leading to creation, elaboration and orientation towards the market by the examples of Michelin, Kao and Sharp companies: How do they build up a successful innovation culture? What is there strategy? What happens to the CC of a given MNC with a rather homogeneous CC when it settles in the US, North-Western Europe, Latin Europe or America, or Japan, for instance. That NC will have different impacts on that CC, as we suggest in Fig. 3.

INSERT FIG. 3 HERE

Fig. 3: The possible effect of a given NC on a homogeneous CC with a view on innovation capacity

Other dimensions than uncertainty avoidance and power distance might affect the innovative capacity of a firm as well depending on the NC-context where it is operating as well on the basis of the above research, such as loose/tight (Triandis, 1995), individualistic/collectivistic (Hofstede, 1980 and later), and implicit and explicit (Hall & Hall, 1987 and 1990). When a MNC, such as Philips operates in the US it is accepted almost as one of the (American) firms loosely related to the individualistic American society where the interaction is explicit, low context and monochronic. On the other side to be successful in Japan, it should behave as a japanese firm, where NC and CC completely overlap in a tight, collectivistic society where

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the interaction is implicit, high context and polychronic. North-West Europe which is the home region of this MNC and Latin Europe and America are stages between, the first having a small overlap between CC and NC and the second the CC being part of the NC context. French would say: Philips? C'est français! a big compliment for a Dutch head-quartered multinational in French eyes, they just have incorporated it in their own society.

Since the specific content of a strategic document originates often from technical innovation as a cause of turbulence and a drive for change management, the above NC x CC interaction is going to affect the message to be formulated, but how? How does technical innovation takes paces within a firm? Obviously a new product has to be sold which brings the professional cultures of two important functions in contact with each other. The question then is tow what extent is the successful innovation technologically pushes (TP) or market-pulled (MP). Two important audiences for the IBC are the R&D department and the marketing department, what are their respective PC's?

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2.3 The form of the message: Market Pull (MP) and Technology Push (TP), two PC's that might conflict

It is a common observation that innovation might put forward a lot of functional myopia within any firm. What Marketing wanted, what R&D proposed, what Finance budgeted for, what design built, what production manufactured and what costumers wanted lead often to completely different concepts of a product. It comes, therefore, as no surprise, that innovation projects cause a lot of conflicts between departments. Biemans (1993) lists common mutual misperceptions by engineers and marketeers. Engineers would have no sense of time, costs, service or competitive advantage. They hide in the lab, continue developing a product without planning and standardization and technology are sacrosanct tow which the client should adapt. The marketers would be, in the eyes of the engineers, aggressive, demanding and unrealistic. They want everything always NOW, want to deliver a product before it is ready, are always in a hurry and impatient or cannot decide what they want. As a result they promise more than they can guarantee, do bad forecasting and change often the specifications, because they have no sense of technology, no trust in engineers and are not interested in their problems. Finally engineers think that marketeers focus on unrealistic targets. Gerhard et al. (1998) present some instruments used in German firms to manage such interfunctional conflicts. In particular TIC's with their strong R&D tradition face often strategic change from TP to MP. How can a CC cope with those different often conflicting PC's? Martin (1992) proposes different approaches, such as an integration, a differentiation and a fragmentation of the engineering, marketing and production functions. The first stresses what employees have in common, the second stresses the deviations and adaptations from the dominant culture and the last accepts the dynamic, paradoxical and confusing character of a merging interculture, a process which is uncontrollable. A recent study by Ulijn et al. (2000) confirms the different NC embedding of German and Dutch firms (See Fig. 2), the Germanic well-oiled machine CC seems to have more problems in changing the TP culture of young engineers into a MP direction than the Dutch anglo-nordic village market CC. Another study (Ulijn et al., in press) researched the process of getting young Indonesian engineers involved in the Innovation process of IT-product of a Dutch firm. Both Dutch and Indonesians situated the expected ideal innovation culture as a result of low power distance and a middle uncertainty avoidance, the design being more an aspect of a clan (person/network-oriented) and the production being more a guided missile, more oriented to the task (those CC-metaphors are introduced by Trompenaars, 1993 and similar to the God metaphors of Handy, 1993), The Indonesians in this study where found to be still farther away from that ideal with a stronger uncertainty avoidance and a higher power distance, which confirms Hofstede's data for the two countries. Innovation culture seems to be an intersection of NC, CC and PC. You draw your innovative capacity from your proession, your corporate and national environment. Careful audience analysis show tell the IBC how the innovation message could make the right cultural fit, but what are the communicative consequences of the above cultural differences?

Some research data and questions might be helpful to address this issue:

1. Engineers involved in the market communicate more orally than scientists active in R&D, because the first have clients and suppliers as the half of their information sources (Allen, 1993) (PC effect).

2. A given CC need an open communication to stimulate and encourage a full an free exchange of information and opinion more than a closed one which is meant to monitor and control the exchange and accessibility of information and opinion (Hoecklin, 1998 and Christensen & Gordon, 1999).

3. Western individuals and the Latin or Oriental teamworker (individualistic vs. collectivistic) in your MNC might need a different format of your strategy document.

4. The overall effect of NC culture on communication: Implicit vs. explicit brings a different status of a written document worldwide. Whereas in the explicit contract is sacrosanct and the end of a negotiation, with an accepted litigation culture, Orientals prefer the implicit oral harmony and trust in relation building, where the contract is more a letter of intent the beginning of a life-long negotiation. Europe is between, where an oral agreement might have legal value, though difficult to proof.

5. One typical Oriental communication pattern within a firm which fits into the high context/implicit/polychronic/circular pattern is the Japanese Ringi system (Yang, 1984). The Ringi document is circulated among managers to gather their sealed agreement. The decision making style is participatory, consensus seeking and bottom up with care for the people, but authority is centralized and seniority is respected in a top down listening way. As a result the strategy formulation process in a firm takes much longer than in a Western firm, but once the decision is taken, the implementation period is much shorter than in the West.

6. What impact have communication technologies (especially multimedia, the Internet, and the World-Wide Web) in assisting (or hindering) IBC's in their task? Do NC's which prefer implicit communication style accept easily an MNC strategic document over the Internet? Some recent studies (Ulijn & Campbell, 1999 and Ulijn et al., in prep) show this question is still open. If Japanese culture, for instance, prefers silence over speaking and writing, because it communicates so well, how would Japanese then deal with the explicit individual means of expression of the Internet? Whereas Western low context, explicit, particularism and activity seems to lead automatically to a "natural" use of the Internet, Nishigushi (1997) demonstrates clearly and surprisingly that at least 3 distinctive features of Japanese culture explain an Internet booming in this country. Internet is used as a vehicle for communatarism. High context allows to think first before you write or read through the Internet, writing being between the silver speaking and the golden silence, an excellent cultural compromise with the non-Japanese world. Finally home page creation makes the passive conflict avoiding Japanese active in expressing themselves. But are important strategic documents taken seriously if they are the result of open explicit consultation involving all employees of a firm?

7. The above implicit/explicit and oral/written dilemma related to use, for instance, the Internet for formulation and implementation of a strategic innovation message requires from an IBC face-to-face listening in interviews and negotiation about the best acceptable format. Studies, such as by Ulijn with Li (for Dutch, Chinese and Finnish negotiators, 1995), with St. Amant (See above, 1999) and with Verwey (for Dutch and Spanish negotiators, 1999) indicate that Oriental silence and Oriental/Latin interruptions are markers of an implicit care for relationship building in an indirect, polychronic way whereas Western direct questioning and interrupting is perceived as the explicit, linear way of interaction, confirmed for Dutch and Chinese by mutual and neutral observers. The IBC will have to carefully navigate between implicit oral and explicit written in consultation with the envisaged readers of a

strategic document to get that accepted and implemented, although s/he might expect some adjustments between the different cultural (NC, CC, PC) groups as has been evidenced by Ang & Teo (1997) for Singaporean managers towards their Western colleagues with respect to their time orientation. Those managers from Singapore might look more short-time, monochronic than a Western manager might expect, which is somewhat predicted by Hofstede's data (1991) on long term orientation in decreasing order: China (114), Hong Kong (96), India (61), Singapore (48), The Netherlands (44), the US (29) and The Philippines (19). One should caution against any Western or Eastern overgeneralisation!

After all, the following framework for any IBC is important: analyze your environment: your audience, your situation and your objectives with media, source and timing options using the right balance between implicit and explicit which is different across cultures, not only writing, but also oral aspects, such as negotiation with the international audience/readership of the strategic innovation message should be part of it.

2.4 Conclusion: 2 Propositions and 4 guidelines

What conclusions can we draw on the basis of the above analyzed interaction between communication, culture and innovation? Allen's (1993) work shows that scientists and engineers need each other in the R&D department of a TIC, because:

1. Science alone leads seldom to technical innovation.2. Innovations on the other hand often take place without full understanding from physics, for instance in the case of the development of electronic tubes.3. New scientific insights lead only 12 to 20 years after "discovery" to innovations, if at all, unless the engineers intervenes.4. Innovations occur the quickest if the engineer pulls the scientist. Allen makes a plea for a technology pull science.

The role of the business or technical communicator, Therefore, can be a cross-pollinator in the innovation process between scientists and engineers within a technology intensive MNC, which leads to our first research proposition:

P1a: If science leads to the fastest technical innovation when triggered by engineers (technology pull science), communicators may play a role in this by formulating and implementing such informal procedures in the strategy communication of an MNC.

Since scientists have the production of text as their main target (to be cited or perish) and engineers prefer to design and make concrete products and prefer oral communication with the outside (lay) world of clients and suppliers, the following proposition is related to the first one:

P1b: Oral communication will be a strong part of it, because to stimulate their own innovative thinking engineers use more external sources, such as costumers and vendors than scientists who rather prefer the classic written source of the literature (Allen, MIT, 1993).

With respect to the cultural effect on communication we may conclude that both the work by

Hall (Hall and Hall, 1987 and 1990) and Kaplan have consequences for the East-West comparison. People from high context have extensive networks established with family, friends, and colleagues. Information flows quickly and messages are implicit. Consequently, high context individuals require little additional information to understand a message. Individuals in low context cultures do not have these extensive networks, they tend to compartmentalize their personal relationships, work, and other aspects of their life. As a result, information flows more slowly. Therefore, low context individuals need more information to comprehend a message. Kaplan's work on different circular (East), linear (Anglo-germanic) and digressive (Latin) discourse formats might apply to oral communication as well, where this distinction may coincide with monochronic (one thing at a time, like the Western manager's calendar of the day, the top of the iceberg only) and the polychronic approach (Latin, Oriental) where managers deal with the whole iceberg or onion at once, which might seems very chaotic or too indirect for a Western manager. Where should a strategic innovation message be explicit to serve the top of the iceberg of NC, CC and PC, where should it be implicit to include the relationship, the human aspect involved in any innovation.

Since the prioritizing of the different cultural layers with respect to strategy and innovation still have to be made in the next section, we limit ourselves here to 4 guidelines for the international business communicator of a strategy document:

Guideline 1: Culture (NC, CC and PC) might cause the wrong expectations from a strategy document, because of misperception and -interpretation.

Guideline 2: Given guideline 1, "listen" repeatedly and carefully to your reader.

Guideline 3: Your mission is to be a cross-pollinator in the process of the innovation-driven strategy formulation and implementation between: top, middle and lower management, marketeers and engineers, suppliers and clients, alliance, acquisition and joint-venture partners

Guideline 4: Given all 3 previous guidelines, your job has strong negotiation and cultural aspects

Crucial to all this is the ideal balance, priority and interaction between the different cultural layers involved, national, corporate and/or professional bringing scientists, engineers and marketeers together around a strategic innovation in a technology intensive MNC, for instance?

3. Thieu: Innovation and Culture (3 research propositions and 3 IBC guidelines)

*** Thieu, I miss in your part a little bit the connection with technological innovation, could you add a few sentences on that, since a strategic document contains often an important innovation message, any example of this from your own consultancy practice would be very welcome indeed***

***An introduction is needed here including may be here or later answers to:

1. What are the basic guidelines for a mission document for a international business communicator as a derivative from his/her task to write strategy documents for the top management team of his/her (multinational) high tech firm: what should be specific to strategy, innovation and culture (NC, PC and CC) in such documents and why and on the basis of what consultancy experience and/or empirical research (mention literature sources) on the matter?

2. What is the relation between technological innovation and knowledge management in organizing the R&D sector of MNC's? What is difference between US-, Japan- and Europe-based firms in this respect? What is the impact on both internal and external (international) communication processes, formally and informally again according to your own practice and experience and literature overview? (Your references to empirical and conceptualizing research will be very welcome)

3. How would you develop a strong innovation culture in a high tech firm, to what extent would it be market pull or technology push and what are the communicative consequences?

4. What would you finally suggest on the basis of the above to the professional international business communicator who has to write up the above corporate strategy and mission leading to successful technological innovation?

(3.1) THE RELATIVE IMPACT OF PC, CC AND NC AND ITS CONSEQUENCE FOR THE IBC’s TASKS

One of the characteristics of a TIC (Technology Intensive Company) is that the shop floor is crowded by professional knowledge workers, most of them being engineers. They are highly skilled employees, performing complicated tasks with much individual autonomy. If the environment is complex but rather stable, enabling standardisation of skills as co-ordinating mechanism, this TIC is called a Professional Bureaucracy (Mintzberg, 1979). Examples are software development companies, firms delivering engineering and technical services, machine tool construction firms etc.

In case of a complex and dynamic environment, the co-ordinating mechanism tends to be mutual adjustment and the organisation is characterised as an Adhocracy. In this category we find industrial research departments, firms engaged in one of a kind technology application projects, all kinds of scientific institutions and technical laboratories (space, air, water, ground). Mintzberg (1979) further states that in a professional bureaucracy as well as in an (operational) adhocracy the operating core exerts the dominant influence in contrast to top-management, line-management and support staff departments. Professionals realise that the most expensive and discriminating production factor in TIC’s is their scarce knowledge, whereas management and supportive capacities are available on a larger scale and, therefore, can be replaced more easily. This dominant influence of the knowledge workers in the operating core on day to day organisational life, gives raise to two related propositions:

P2a: PC > CC

In a professional bureaucracy or adhocracy the Professional Culture of the knowledge workers in the operating core, has a higher impact on daily organisational life than Corporate Culture.

P2b: CC = f (PC)

The Corporate Culture of a professional bureaucracy or adhocracy is more determined by the Professional Culture than by any other organisational sub-culture.

Based on our experience gained in consultancy assignments for TIC’s, we are to state that a collective orientation towards corporate goals is difficult to realise, because of the knowledge workers need for their professional autonomy. (***Can Thieu clarify, this rather cryptical to me at least***). Some generic characteristics of Professional Culture can be given, anyway (Weggeman, 1989):

• Management rules and procedures to operationalize organisational control have only limited influence, (professionals do not believe in standard planning and control mechanisms because of the uniqueness and unpredictability of each project).

• Co-ordination is realised by mutual adjustment, many informal arrangements and get-together-routines.

• The reference framework for the assessment of professional contributions lies outside the organisation (with peers and professional societies).

• Allocation of assignments is or should be based on individual learning needs and personal preferences.

• There is a common tendency to form sub-cultures crystallised around ‘schools of thought’ and with specialised jargon as an additional entry barrier.

• In multi-disciplinary co-operation professionals tend to value their own specialism of more importance than that of others. If there is admiration for the practice or skills of other professional groups, there is often critique on underlying theories or methodologies.

• Honesty, openness, consistency and historical awareness are considered as essential values. There is little sensitivity to political game-play, outward presentation and personal appearance as well as little awareness for financial parameters.

• The professional climate stimulates the inclination to exceed requirements and specifications; the result can always be improved and made more beautiful.

In sum, little respect is reserved for managers functioning above the level of 1st line supervisor: ‘The scientist/engineer sees the manager as a bureaucrat, paper shuffler and parasite, an uncreative and unoriginal hack who serves as an obstacle in the way of creative people trying to do a good job, and a person more interested in dollars and power than knowledge and innovation’ (Badawy, 1982).

As a consequence of rapid developments in ICT and aircrafting the Global Village, predicted by McLuhan in 1964 has come to effect by now. This combined with the increase of international trade treaties providing almost world-wide coverage, has caused a mobility of – above all technical - professionals on an all time high level. They move in ‘space of flows’ through cross-national networks consisting of high-tech industries, universities and (R&D) institutions (Castells, 1998). Related to this issue Guéhenno argues in ‘La fin de la démocratie’ (1993) that after the Berlin Wall came down, the era has ended in which the national state and the democracy had a major impact. In his view global networks will be dominant in the near future. Networks in which services, information, knowledge and creative ideas are exchanged and in which contacts and relations are built up and phased out. Trans-national companies will take the lead in this process. National politics become unimportant, territory conflicts will be trivial and common public interest will flow back, just

as civic spirit and solidarity. These developments may justify the next proposition:

P3: PC > NC

In today’s Global Village the Professional Culture has a higher impact on daily organisational life than National Culture.

Based on P1a, P1b and P2 the following guideline for the operationalization of the IBC’s task can be given:

Guideline 5: In supporting corporate strategy change within a TIC, the IBC in first instance should focus on threats and opportunities caused by characteristics of the Professional Culture in force, leaving Corporate and National Culture as less relevant factors.

How can IBC's then help to communicate the change of corporate strategy, for instance because of major technical innovations, as a result of R&D and/or ICT developments?

(3.2) CORPORATE STRATEGY CHANGE IN TIC’s AND ITS CONSEQUENCE FOR THE IBC’s TASK

In this section we assume that we are dealing with a situation in which planned or designed corporate strategy change is at stake. This seems to be a realistic supposition in this context because it is not likely that the IBC has a formal task in supporting emergent strategy change. Given this assumption, it is reasonable to state that strategy formulation precedes strategy implementation. With regard to the strategy formulation process in professional organisations, several authors have come to comparable and consistent findings concerning the impact of involvement of knowledge workers in the strategy formulation process. (Arthur D. Little, 1981; Moss Kanter, 1985; Simon, 1993; Weggeman, 1995). These findings can be summarised in the following way: The more professionals have been involved in the ‘production’ of a management decision, the more they will be inclined to implement that decision. It should be noted that the kind of management decisions meant here, are decisions that – in the eyes of the knowledge workers – will affect their daily work substantially, as is the case with decisions on strategic change. If it is about minor decisions as, for instance, the introduction of a new bureaucratic procedure, professionals even might not be interested in getting involved because they have more important things to do. This decsion making process is very much related to the Japanese ringi process (See above***). These deliberations boil down to a second guideline for IBC’s: confronted with strategy change:

Guideline 6: For developing commitment with corporate strategy change within a TIC, the IBC should facilitate the early and large-scale bottom-up participation of operating-core professionals in the strategy formulation process.

Having to start with communicative support of the top-down roll out of an already fixed, boardroom formulated, strategy change, might cost a lot of time and energy to only achieve marginal results. Therefore, writers, such as Moss Kanter (1985) and Simon (1993) argue that all employees of a firm have to be involved in corporate strategy formulation.strategy formulation. Again japanese companies have put this very much in practice in their organisation of learning: how to get bottom up particpation all the way to the top in one innovative network? IBC's could definetly play a role in facilitating this process. ***Thieu,

can you explain and check this passage, if needed. I (Jan) find it still, a little too short***.

Our last guideline for IBC’s is based on an old management wisdom saying that the Effectiveness of a decision equals the product of the Quality and the Acceptance of that decision: E = Q * A. The arguments that did lead to guideline 2 also imply that a pretended ‘high quality’ strategy change will confront major difficulties in implementing if there is little acceptance among professionals of the intended change (9Q * 6A < 7Q * 8A). Furthermore based on Galbraith (1977) and Mintzberg & Quinn (1991) it can be argued that – even in case of a well known competitive situation – there simply is no one best strategy to pursue. The final argument needed to be able to compose guideline 3 is that IBC’s usually do not, or are not supposed to have expertise with regard to the context of a business specific strategy.

Guideline 7: In supporting the effectiveness of corporate strategy change within a TIC, the IBC should dominantly focus on enhancing the acceptance of the new strategy.

IBC's should definetely not invert roles with the members of the top management team or the professionals of the R&D and other departments of a given TIC, but they can have a major impact on getting the corporate change accepted and implemented.

4. Conclusion: Jan, Dan and Thieu

*** Dan, can you make a proposal on the basis of what you have now from Thieu and me and yourself. I can then expand on that, if needed. If you overlook all the research propositions and IBC guidelines of Thieu and me, do you miss some, could you make them more specific or where are they redundant, how can we conclude here for future research and questions for other contributors to this issue and summarize some final guidelines for IBC on the basis of what we have here on strategy, innovation, culture and communication. Thank you for let us picking your brains!

We do not have to worry about other contributions to the special issue, because this will be part of a short separate intro to the whole issue, but our article will serve as the lead on all subthemes: strategy, innovation, culture and communication. The deadline is 20 Aug. 1999, can you manage?***

*** You might be able to include the following summary for research propositions and guidelines a for a research based mission for IBC, could you check if everything is correctly backed up in our previous text and if things are not missing which you could add from your area of expertise? Thank you very much indeed!***

International Business Communicators including translators, interpreters and technical writers can serve Innovation Management as part of their mission if they:

1. Focus on reading/listening apart from "active" language production processes. (cfr. research by Ulijn and Strother, 1995 and Prins and Ulijn, 1998);

2. Integrate both written and oral modes, such as by writing strategic documents en help negotiate them (cfr. Ulijn and Li, 1995, Ulijn and Verweij, 1999 and Ulijn and St. Amant, 2000);

3. Combine electronic and non-electronic ways communication in the most efficient way (cfr. Ulijn and Campbell, 1999);

4. Include the right "culture": professional culture (PC) seems to be more important than corporate (CC) and national (NC)

5. Accept Innovation Culture as being a mix of PC, CC and NC (Ulijn et al., in press), also for their own profession;

6. If they use discourse analysis as a reliable and valid tool of research in cooperation with management researchers;

7. If they integrate properly with other disciplines and accept diversity of all kinds in their teams of professional practice and research, since heterogeneous groups preform better than homogeneous ones (Triandis, 1995) in bringing innovative products and services to the global market. Europe has in principle a good diversity to do so (Kalthoff, Nonaka, and Nueño, 1997)

Ulijn & Kumar (1999) draw some general conclusions for the East-West business interaction on the basis of a strategic, cultural and communicative analysis of one US-Indian and one US-Japanese case which might be useful as well for the IBC Mission (***Dan you may select the most relevant, if you wish***

Advice for Eastern partners:

• Minimize ambiguity (to the extent possible) in dealing with Westerners• Minimize any unexpected interruptions/delays on your part• Learn to cope with the more “aggressive” Western style of interaction.• Do not allow yourself to be flustered.• Maintain a long term focus but seek to exploit any short term opportunities• Be more positive than cautious in your attitude.

Advice for Western partners:

• Allow for events to unfold rather than seek to control every step in a direct way• Be patient and develop a more longer term vision for the cooperative project• Do not jump to any premature conclusion if the Asian partner does not respond in a way you expect him/her to• Learn to communicative critical information in ways which will have a greater strategic impact.Open and explicit communication is not often conducive to this end. Likewise learn to interpret “what is important” in the Eastern perspective.• What you communicate is as important as who you communicate with and how you communicate

NOTES

*** short cv of the 3 of us, Dan can you insert yours***

Jan M. Ulijn holds a Jean Monnet Chair in Euromanagement at the Department of

Organisation and Management Science, Eindhoven University of Technology (NL) and has been a part-time visiting professor in the special MA program in Multilingual Business Communication at Ghent University (Belgium), since 1996. His past professional experience includes the US (Stanford and Fulbright), China (Shanghai Jiaotong University) and several European countries. He has widely published in the field of psycholinguistics, technical communication, intercultural management and more recently about culture and innovation. He is an associate fellow of STC, earned the 1998 ABC outstanding researcher award and is a member of the Academy of Management.

He can be reached at Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven (The Netherlands), phones (office): (003140) 247.4569 and (home): 2833164, email: J.M.Ulijn@tm.tue.nl, fax: 2468054

Dan O"Hair,***

Thieu Weggeman,***Dan O'Hair, professor of Organizational Behavior and Communication, Oklahoma University (USA), 610 Elm Ave (Room 101), Norman, OKL 73019-2081, phone (405) 325-4496, fax (405) 325-7625, email: hdohair@ou.edu

Mathieu Weggeman, professor of Innovation Management and part-time associate partner of Twijnstra and Gudde Management Consultants, addresses, see Ulijn, email: m.c.d.p.weggeman@tm.tue.nl, phones (office): (003140) 2472170 and (home): 2462425

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