Canadian College International

BUSINESS 2856

Case study (10%)
Case background
The management team of the IT department in a leading international pharmaceutical company
headquartered in Switzerland decided that in order to reduce costs and optimize resources they
would outsource the development and maintenance of software solutions to an international
company based in Chandigarh, India.
Employees were informed of this strategy and were requested to transfer the knowledge they
had in their area of expertise to their Indian “colleagues” in order to ensure business continuity
and the smooth run of activities. After a few weeks, consultants from India started arriving.
That’s when all the problems started to happen in body language interpretation between the
Indians and the Swiss, food selection and serving, bathroom etiquette and communication
between Swiss and Indian employees.
Your task is to:
1. Research particulars of the Swiss culture related to the issues at hand (2)
Ans. There’s large difference between Indian and swiss culture. Swiss employees may
feel several issues in basic routine of Indian employees.
The people of Switzerland like honesty, hard work and cleanliness.
Body Language – Swiss do not like poor body postures as they like to met a person with
good body language and active mind moreover appreciation is not provided for
movements such as pointing the index finger, slouching, relaxing or yawning in public.
Poor posture should be avoided because it is very unrespectful. On the other hand in
India body postures doesn’t matter that much. Person can sit in a comfortable way
either it’s a bad posture or good.
Food Selection- The typical breakfast in Switzerland includes bread, butter or margarine,
marmalade or honey, perhaps some cheese or cereals, plus milk, cold or hot chocolate,
tea or coffee. Lunch can be as simple as a sandwich or a full meal.
The dinner can be a full main course, or just some bread, cheese or any other light meal
on the other hand Indians like to have heavy Breakfast, lunch and dinner enriched with
Oil and spices