University of Massachusetts, LowellMANAGEMENT 4200 Dear Professor, I work for a China-based corporation which also has a manufacturing facility in the United States

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University of Massachusetts, LowellMANAGEMENT 4200

Dear Professor,

I work for a China-based corporation which also has a manufacturing facility in the United States. Here is a situation which happened recently and I would like to know what you think. Our USA production employees used to be able to sit while assembling. However, in China they must stand. So when the execs from China came through one trip a couple years ago and saw the USA production workers sitting (yet still producing effectively), they decided to take the chairs away and make them work in an environment standardized to China. Our senior management was basically told to accept this "as is" and our employees grudgingly obeyed since production jobs remain difficult to find elsewhere. It is obviously a cultural environmental difference as I have been to the Shanghai, China facility and would have to say their production workers are more regimented which I feel is the wrong way to go in the USA.

Evaluate the decision handed down from the Chinese executives. Incorporate what you know about cultural differences, contingency theory, job satisfaction and performance. What do you think was the outcome here? Do you think the workers ultimately were more productive standing to perform their jobs.