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Abstract

Successful production concepts are a challenge for every production company. Such concepts are typically seen as free of individual or normative implications. According to common opinion, they follow a strict formal logic in analogy to mathematical algorithms. Optimizing production processes is, at the end of the day, the quest for the perfect non-judgemental formula. The following case shows that this opinion is not applicable. Organizational production structures, even if they follow a strict formal logic, have always to be applied in a certain context. This context is not value free but brings its own understandings, visions, interpretations, and so on. To explain this, the case shows the effort made to transfer a working production concept of a German company to a subsidiary in India. The goal is to illustrate the importance of culture to even rational processes. The focus is on how teamwork is bounded to cultural aspects.

Keywords

Production processes cultural difference teamwork context India–Germany

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Applying Production Concepts over Borders: Good Intentions and the Limits of Foreign Culture Understanding

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