FBC Writing Assignment

You have been hired as an external consultant for Reynolds Walker (RW), a mid-size retailer with its corporate office in Dallas, TX. It recently acquired Ito-Tanaka, a company in Yokohama, Japan. RW kept several employees from the Yokohama team and moved them to their corporate headquarters in Dallas. Everyone has been working together for four months, and management notices the Japanese employees are uncomfortable with expressing disagreement. What can the management of RW do to make all employees comfortable with speaking up? All employees speak English, so a language barrier is not a problem

For example, after a meeting to decide strategies for marketing a new line of affordable health and wellness products to the 18-35 age group in East Asia, a manager noticed that the Japanese employees didn’t feel comfortable disagreeing with the manager or providing feedback.  Here is an excerpt of the meeting transcript between Sara, the manager, Akira, a former Ito-Tanaka employee, and Sam, a longtime US employee: 

Sara: I’m thinking that the best social media strategy for this stage is to utilize X (Twitter),  Instagram, and TikTok. What does everyone else think? Can we think of any negatives?

[No one says anything.]

Sara: Akira? What are your thoughts?

Akira: I am very interested in the possibilities of focusing on these platforms instead of LINE and WeChat

Sam: I think that it might be useful to consider something else. 

Sara was surprised when she heard from another employee that Akira was unhappy with the final decision. She didn’t understand why he didn't feel comfortable bringing it up in the meeting. When she tried to confront Akira about the miscommunication, he felt extremely uncomfortable. 

To avoid any future miscommunication and create an environment where everyone feels comfortable, the management of RW has hired you as a consultant to help them figure out what potential cultural barriers might prevent all the employees from collaborating successfully. Specifically, the RW management team has asked you to help them understand the disconnect at their next meeting, so that U.S employees and Japanese employees can move forward. You have scheduled a meeting with the upper management of RW to present your findings and suggestions.

Some questions to consider when making recommendations:  

• What are the feedback styles (confrontational vs. avoiding confrontation) in these various cultures?
• For future meetings, what type of communication solutions should upper-level management use for employees of different cultures that have different approaches to feedback and chain of command?
• How does RW ensure strong relational ties between their Japanese and U.S employees while addressing these miscommunications?

Compose a one-page, single-spaced memo with 1” margins that suggests two practices RW can use to address their communication problem. Your recommendations should be heavily researched (see “Research” below) and presented in paragraph form. Make sure to communicate how your recommendations address RW's problems. 

Note: you will need to cite 4 different sources in APA on your references page. Your references page will not count towards the 1-page requirement. When citing sources, use parenthetical citations (see Publication Manual of APA 6.11-21), not footnotes. The readings cited below are all in APA format but remove the hyperlinks/URL when you cite. Please note that the memo will not be written in APA format; only in-text citations and reference pages are expected to be in APA.

Please refrain from using Generative AI tools for this assignment, aside from basic outlining/planning functions and copyediting/grammar and punctuation checks. Generative AI tools, while valuable in many ways and worth exploration, can provide users with incorrect information or analysis. We encourage you instead to meet with a CRLA certified tutor at the Business Communication Lab.  Unauthorized use of these tools will be considered academic dishonesty.

We strongly recommend reading Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map (2014) pgs. 195-218. (You can access this text through our university library at https://libraries.uark.edu/).  Pages 61-88 may also prove very helpful.

You may incorporate quality sources you find on your own, but please follow APA guidelines for parenthetical in-text citations and reference list citations.