Case Study Analysis

Cross-cultural Communication between Germans and Americans

The Agrikraft case reveals some key differences between German and American style of
communication. Even though some of these differences are not presented directly, they can be
inferred from the various interactions that the Germans and the Americans have in the case.

The Germans tend to speak directly and clearly. They say what is in their mind without
much concern on whether whatever they are saying may hurt or cause offense to the listening
party. This directness may seem hostile or even insulting but their goal is to have an efficient and
unambiguous communication.

Americans, on the other hand, are indirect speakers. When making statements that the
other party may not agree with they try to be as friendly and personable as possible. Their
indirectness allows them to remain polite during a conversation with another person regardless of
the message that they are passing across. An example of this style of communication is revealed
when Americans and Germans are told to name people that they dislike (Picard, Reis, &
Krumwiede, 2010). It is reported that the American expressed dislike for a German in such a
humorous and acceptable manner that there were no hard feelings at the end of the
communication.

RIM 2011 Outage Crisis

The management of RIM, the makers of BlackBerry phones, faced a major public
relations disaster in 2011 when millions of its users across the globe experienced an outage that
lasted for four days. As a result of the outage Blackberry users could not send or receive emails,

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messages, and neither could they access the internet (Pepitone, 2011). After four days of
receiving no communication from the company, the company’s CEO finally admitted that a
problem with its internal systems was the cause of the outage and apologized (Pepitone, 2011).
The vagueness of this explanation was, however, not convincing enough to its angry customers.

The outage and its handling by the company’s top management was certainly a public
relations disaster. In the wake of the disaster the company’s share price dropped by close to 30%,
it lost millions of users who moved to iPhone and Android devices, and its reputation as a
reliable and trustworthy smartphone was destroyed (Pepitone, 2011).

The problems that RIM faced after the disaster would have certainly been avoided if the
company’s management had been more forthright with its customers much sooner about what
was happening. However, to understand the management’s reaction it is important to understand
the external pressures that the company was facing at the time.

After dominating the smartphone markets for years, Apple’s release of iPhone in 2007
with a touch-screen immediately became a threat to BlackBerry’s market dominance. By 2011
the company was already losing ground not just to Apple’s iPhone but also Google’s Android in
both the smartphone and lucrative apps market (Whittaker, 2011). The one area that remained
Blackberry’s strength was the reputation of its phones for high level of security. They were,
therefore, greatly popular with institutions such as government agencies and banks (Whittaker,
2011). By putting its reliability into question, the outage managed to remove the only remaining
competitive advantage that BlackBerry had over its main rivals. That explains why its
management was reluctant to come out and admit that their systems were not as reliable as their
customers thought. The delay in explaining what had happened and vagueness of the

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explanations made many customers to also feel that the company was not trustworthy. Thus, by
seeking to downplay the full extent of the problem the management ended up making a bad
situation worse.

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References

Pepitone, J. (2011). BlackBerry service restored after worst outage ever. CNN Money.

Picard, R., Reis, P. R., & Krumwiede, D. (2010). AGRIKRAFT: ACROSS THE CULTURAL
DIVIDE. Journal of Critical Incidents, 3.

Whittaker, Z. (2011). BlackBerry’s outage post-mortem: Where did it all go wrong?’. ZDNet.