Managing cultural differences as a vehicle of providing competitive advantage in multinational corporations

Present business are in continously increasing transformation tendency of from being a local business into becoming a multinational business. In global markets the factors creating competitive advantage of this firms consist of organization structure, organization culture and its employees. Performed researchs emphasize that competencies on managing cultural differences are one of the most important reasons in success or fail of a multinational corporations.This study examines the organizational and managerial competencies possessed on management of cultural differences and competitive superiority that these competencies provide. İn this study, firstly the multinational corporations and investigation of competitive advantage factors for multinational corporations have been covered and in following chapters applications of cultural differences management in multinational corporations and competitive advantage areas obtained after these applications were tried to determine. Within the contents, a model defining the relationship between cultural differences management and competitive advantage was developed. According to this model, research results with content analysis performed in a multinational corporations was evaluated. Within the research results, the existence of both managerial and organizational competencies taking place in the model were determined and cost, resource acquisition, marketing, creativity, problem solving, flexibility were defined as areas of competitive advantages.