Ellen Moore: Living and
Working in Korea
Advanced Project Management
Yasser
Qarashia
Roberto
Castillo
Presentation
Outline
Korean Business Culture
Firm’s goals
Central Issue
Constraints to the problem
Available alternatives
Implementation plan
Welcome to Korea
Capital
Seoul
Largest city
Seoul
Official languagesKorean
President
Lee Myung-bak
Prime Minister
Kim Hwang-sik
Area Total
38,691 sq mi (109th country in size)
2012 population est. largest country)
50,004,441 (25th
GDP (2012 est.) $1.622 trillion (12th highest) Per capita income$32,431 (25th highest)
Source: CIA World Factbook, 2012
Korean Business Culture
Korean business managers value questioning and deep interest in their business by their service provider.
Strict organizational hierarchy is followed.
Strict supervisor-subordinate relationship.
Valid and invalid client requests are accepted without negotiating with the client.
High loyalty to work.
Precise business rituals such as exchange of business cards, or calling the other person by complete name and title.
Korean Business Culture
Strong hierarchy prevents direct and frequent client-service provider interaction.
Clients are considered to have higher rank in society than service provider. This results in unnecessary interference from clients.
Korean service providers don’t like to disturb their clients by asking business related issues. This can result in wrong implementation of solution.
Koreans don’t know how to say NO to clients.
Coaching Korean professionals is difficult as they would always answer in affirmative if they are asked whether they understand the matter or not.
Work Teams in Korea
Team based organizational culture.
High emphasis on team building.
Team bonding both inside (e.g. lunch) and outside work environment (e.g. dining out).
Sharing drinks is a team forming activity (Bruce 385).
Challenges colleagues is a common norm in social activities and meetings.
Group Norms
Face saving is given priority.
Face saving doesn’t mean avoiding negative feedback.
Demonstrating leadership by manager is important.
Leadership is demonstrated by the display of disappointment in front of all team members, in case of below standard work.
Leadership is also demonstrated by not complementing the team member for satisfactory work.
Frequent complements are signs of a weak leader.
Women in Korea
Delineation between the roles of males and females. Males are supposed to cater the public sphere and women are restricted to private life of home.
Social status and work equality for Korean women is improving. Means more professional women.
Women are generally paid lower than men for the same job and are given menial positions.
So, Women are not very common in Korean business community, especially in a position of power.
Women are accepted in business culture if they are qualified and have required skills to complete the designated work.
Women usually not invited to social dinners.
WSI in Korea
Western System Inc. (WSI) is a North American company that entered in a joint venture with Koran Conglomerate Inc. (KCI) to form Joint Venture Inc. (JVI) in Korea.
WSI is an IT company and Senior Consulting Group (SCG) is part of WSI.
WSI has won the largest consulting project in Korea and this project will be implemented within 7-10 years.
WSI unexpectedly got the project as the existing government contractor has been working with government for a long time.
Central Issue
Central Issue is a combination of two factors.
1. Organizational hierarchy of the project has two leaders, which can lead to miscommunication, thus contradiction in their decisions.
2. Lack of experience of the Korean assigned consultant and his team (background, or knowledge).
Other factors to consider
Ellen Moore is of the opinion that Korean consultants, such as Jack Kim, lack the experience and knowledge to complete the assigned project in time.
